This coming season, I’m looking forward to a nice mix of new and old series, because many of my last year shows are back. I’m interested in checking out some new things even if I don’t continue watching them all season just because there are some interesting concepts coming out this fall that I might want to really enjoy, but I won’t really know until I see.

Scoring Key:
yes: Red Hot, Must See TV! - There are 6 shows
should: There’s a big reason why I should watch. - There are 6 shows
probably: Probably want to watch. - There are 2 shows
maybe: Maybe this will be good. - There are 6 shows.

Networks:
abc: 6 (fall preview)
cbs: 2 (fall showcase)
nbc: 6 (fall preview)
fox: 3 (fall preview)
scifi: 3
abc wins with the most "must see" shows. I’m so surprised at how many things nbc is coming out with that I’m interested in. I’m gunshy with fox and aren’t considering any new shows from them. And cw is not a network I can see anything interesting on.

Monday wins for the most hectic night where I may have to use 2 VCRs to get everything because my TiVo isn’t dual head. Let’s hope some things move around still before starting dates.

Biggest surprise for me is that so many of the shows start the same week. In the past, it’s been more spread out. September 17th is the earliest (Prison Break), and last year, there were some at the end of August, I could have sworn. Everything else is the week of September 24-28

There are certain sites that help me every year in making up my list. Here’s the sources I used this year, besides the network sites themselves:

• Laurel’s TV Picks - this is a fabulous resource, and her daily posts about what’s on are great too.
• The Futon Critic - there’s tons of casting news and other info here too.
• tv.com - they don’t have a fall preview section yet on their site, but I think they will.
• zap2it’s upfronts - photogalleries of the shows for the fall and more info.

Along the way, I’ve found that I really enjoy helping keep book lists up to date, and where better to do that than wikipedia. So I’ve been editing several topics for some of the authors and improving and standardizing a bit on the formatting. It’s really fun.

Here’s some of the authors and series I’ve been reading:

Tracie Peterson (wikipedia):

• Yukon Qwest series - Treasures of the North, Ashes and Ice, and Rivers of Gold. see also my reviews at Vox


• The wonderful standalone novel A Slender Thread - vox review

Beverly Lewis (wikipedia)

• parts of several series

Gilbert Morris (wikipedia)

• Starting on the American Century series with A Bright Tomorrow


• Continuing with the Winslow series reviews on Vox

Lori Wick (wikipedia)

• The Place called Home series, including the first in the series, A Place Called Home - reviews on Vox


• The Kennsington Chronicles - reviews on Vox

As you can tell, I’m really enjoying being able to read again. And these are just a few of the ones I’ve been reading, too. It’s become quite a joy in my evenings to be able to spend time before bed absorbing myself in a book again. I used to do this all the time when I was a teenager, and now I’m back into it and feeling very proud of myself for not only reading the books, but tracking them as well!

I’m doing almost all of my blogging over there. Sure, a little link blogging here and there, but most of it is there. I couldn’t help but play with the new link code today to help tell everyone about the fun that is Vox!

Did you know that this week has been the 2006 Boobie-thon? It’s a great event for a great cause. I’m proud to have been a part of it every year. Plus, it made me more aware than ever about breast cancer, and all the things that charities like Komen can do to help. AND? Bloggers are amazing, participating in an event that raises this much money every year, woooo!

You should go check it out and help finish up the donations with a bang! The end of the event is tomorrow, so hop on over before that!

• Prison Break: FOX, Mondays at 8pm (8/21)
  Very possibly most most anticipated returning series for me. The ending just had me so enthralled last season. I love these brothers, and I loved them before they were on this show. (TV.com)
• Lost: ABC, Wednesdays at 9pm (10/4)
  I’m not quite *as* excited about this as I was last season, and I’m not sure why. Maybe I will get more excited as the previews start showing; it’s still early. (TV.com)
• The Nine: New! ABC, Wednesdays at 10pm (10/4)
  I’m sure I’m not the only person who giggled at the idea of having Matthew Fox and Scott Wolf with shows back to back. But really, this looks like an interesting concept. It also has Lourdes Benedicto on it (she was on the short lived Titans with Ingo) and the girl who Sucre loves on Prison Break (Camille Guaty). And John Billingsley who has been on Angel and Stargate among other things. It’s probably the new show I’m most interested in seeing. (TV.com)
• Bones: FOX, Wednesday at 8pm (8/30)
  I can’t help it, I really did enjoy this last season. I was surprised it got picked up for a 2nd season, because umm, fox usually gets me addicted to shows and then cancels them. I guess we’ll see how far this gets. I do so love David Boreanez. (TV.com)
• Numb3rs: CBS, Fridays at 10pm (9/22)
  This is a feel good show that I love to watch with E. Plus, they ended it with a romance just waiting to find out what would happen and I’m so anxious to see where they go with that! (TV.com)
• The Office: NBC, Thursdays at 8:30pm (9/21)
  We’ve been watching reruns this summer, and they are JUST as hilarious again. And OMG, I can’t wait to see what happens. The one piece of news I do know is that another Daily Show correspondent, Ed Helms, is joining them and that is sure to be hilarious. (TV.com)
• Dancing with the Stars: ABC, Tuesdays at 8pm
  I haven’t heard anything about who the dancers will be this season, but I’m firmly hooked on this. (TV.com)
• Battlestar Galactica, Fridays at 10pm (10/6)
  Now it it’s new non-adjacent-to-stargate-timeslot!!! I can’t wait, seriously!
• Stargate SG-1, Fridays at 9pm (already started)
  AND the best part about this season? Richard Dean Anderson is coming back for some episodes! Woo! The 200th episode should be interesting, and Morena Baccaran is up for a guest role too.
• Stargate Atlantis, Fridays at 10pm (already started)
  Yay new episodes! Just great stuff, all around, I don’t love this show as much as I love SG-1 yet, but I do love it an awful lot!
• And, as always, I watch little shows in between, here and there like Good Eats, Mythbusters, and What Not to Wear.

And then there are the "maybe" shows... (see extended part of post)

There aren’t a lot of fall guides to the upcoming season yet, but these are the ones that I used so far:

• Laurel’s TV Picks - always the best honest source of info. I love reading her daily picks on my feeds, too.
• TVGuide’s grid
• Futon Critic

I’m guessing that zap2it and TV.com will have their own features, too and I’ll add to this post when I see more.

• Grey’s Anatomy: ABC, Thursdays at 9pm (9/21)
  I got behind on these last season and still have multiple episodes waiting for me on the TiVo. E didn’t enjoy it much and so I needed to find time to watch it when he didn’t mind and since I work the whole time he’s gone every day, it’s hard to find time. Anyhow, I degress. It is an excellent show, and I love the actors. So I’m interested in getting caught back up and into enjoying it. I’m not sure if it will survive the move to Thursday nights, though. (TV.com)
• How I Met Your Mother: CBS, Mondays at 8pm (9/18)
  Another show that the time slot has screwed me up. I really enjoyed it, it made me laugh, but it’s always on at a time that something else is on, and so I tend to forget to set up the VCR so I can see it, too. I love Alyson Hannigan, so that’s a big draw for me, but the whole cast was great. We’ll see if I can be better about taping this this season. (TV.com)
• Day break: New! ABC (11/15)
  The reason I looked at this? Adam Baldwin. But the preview actually looks good, a Tru Calling-like experience. So I might watch this initially to see how it looks. (TV.com)
• Standoff: New! FOX, Tuesdays at 9pm (9/5)
  Another Firefly alum: Gina Torres. I’m interested to see this one because although it seems similar to The Nine, it seems a bit more focused around the relationships of the team of the crises negotiators rather than focusing on a single event. (TV.com)
• Studio 60: NBC, Mondays at 10pm (9/18)
  While this is the show on everybody’s lips right now, I’m not sure it’s my kind of show. It has Matthew Perry and Amanda Peet, among others, but, yeah, I’m just not sure. I might watch to see how it looks.
• Las Vegas: NBC, Fridays at 9pm (10/20)
  I lost interest just before they moved this show to Fridays and then even more after that point because there were other things I was so excited about (sci fi friday). I don’t know, the storylines just got kinda ridiculous. But I did really like the characters initially, so I may tune it to see if it got better.
• Heros: NBC, Mondays at 9pm
  Greg Grunberg is the interest here.

His parents were in Seattle for a conference his dad was participating in (he’s part of the Adventist Health Study), and then they drove down here afterwards. His aunt flew up so they could all go to a family reunion/anniversary party on Sunday.

So it was a good excuse to get the house pretty and cook yummy things like Chocolate Chip cookies for snacking on, and breakfast on sunday morning. My breakfast would have turned out better if I had remembered that tater tot casserole could possibly take an hour to cook instead of a half-hour. But it was still good, and my french toast from real french bread served with blueberries and raspberries was a hit. (I’m hungry just thinking about it again!)

We took them to Old Spaghetti Factory, the original one in Portland. It’s right on the waterfront and always impressive, and even though his parents had been there before, his aunt had not, so it was a fun treat. We did that instead of a big family get-together because we were worried that 1) I wouldn’t be up for making dinner for 15 people and 2) we didn’t have enough seating for 15 people. Both were probably true, but I think his family was disappointed that they didn’t get to see my family.

So even though it was short, it was a nice visit. And my house is still pretty clean, enough that I took some pictures and will have to share a few once I get them uploaded

Edited to add: some of the photos are up in my Vox collection: Our House. I may add a few more, but these were the focal points.

By the time we came home, I had a headache and ended up taking a 2 hour nap and still being tired. Part of it is just me being worn down lately, but I do believe that being in the sun didn’t help. And part of it is the CFIDS that has caused sun to be more of a problem for quite a few years. E laughs and says I’m a vampire girl and that’s why I can’t be in the sun

So what am I going to do today? Oh, I’m gonna go be in the sun. It’s gonna be 80° today, and Leah’s birthday party is at a park. Luckily, it’s not till 4PM, so it won’t be quite as bad as the middle of the day. And there’s a covered area, I’ll try to plant myself there. I do still plan to slather myself with sunscreen!

This is very exciting to me. Why you may ask? I can finally mention what I am working on! For the last many months, I’ve been working on Vox. Getting ready for visitors, you see! It’s been a lot of work by a lot of people, and I’m so proud to see visitors finally in here checking it out.

My Vox blog is at kristine.vox.com. I’m sure that at some point, I’ll intergrate some of that here, or at least link to it from the header. I’m having a fun time using it because it combines so many things all in one place. AND it’s a place that I can share what I want with who I want, so it’s even going to be somewhere I can point my mom to without being bashful about stuff here on kadyellebee. VERY nice, for sure.

A few good examples:

• Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day
• Every day is exactly the same by Nine inch Nails
• Haunting Me by Stabbing Westward
• Faceless Man by Creed
• Bring me to life by Evanescence
• Fumbling towards ecstasy by Sarah McLachlan (which actually should be on the top of the list because I it so much)
• Are you happy now? by Michelle Branch
• Lucky by Biff Naked

And I thought of this when Every day... and Boulevard... played back to back when shuffling This isn’t all of them, by any means, just a few that popped in my head once I started thinking of it.

What do you think? Is it just my melancholy/istj-ness that makes me enjoy this? Or is it a musical phenomenon that some people are just more drawn to minor keys?

^[1] I’m not a music major, so maybe I don’t have these examples completely right. cori would know

I do have the A/C on, so it’s not terrible inside. But I can feel it in my head. I’m definitely more miserable when these massive changes happen. And all I want to eat is cold things. I need some fruits and veges! I think I’m gonna make E stop and get Subway, that way we don’t have to cook or even think of trying to find something fresh in the fridge... there just isn’t much there!

Oh, and plus I sat in the yard at Leonard and Sarah’s yesterday, and we could literally see waves of pollen blowing off the tree and onto us. Eeek, no wonder my head is a little screwy!

Tomorrow looks to be only in the 80’s. I can do that a little better

I needed a mother’s day gift for my mom, so we decided we could at least make it as far as the mall and then see how it was going. (I have very weak ankles, one of them has bones that aren’t in quite the right place, so walking is more difficult for me, and i have to take it slow!).

It was a BEAUTIFUL day. Blue sky but not too hot. Sunshine and a touch of a breeze. I put on sunscreen and we went off the mall to look for shoes for E. Can you believe that the entire time I’ve known him, he’s had one pair of tennis shoes? I mean, he doesn’t wear them every day or anything, but they are sufficiently worn out ;) So I’ve been on him to look at new ones.

While we were there, it was lunch time so we got something to eat from the food court. I really like Paradise Bakery, which has a delightful turkey cranberry sandwich and yummy pasta salad (and they give you a fresh cookie, and they are to die for!). E finds multiple places to choose from, and so he likes that a lot, not getting the same thing every time like I do. ;)

On the way to Target and Bed, Bath, and Beyond (where I figured I’d find my mother’s day present), we stopped at a little empty park. It looks perfect for flying a kite because there’s so much grassy area. We walked the rest of the way to Barnes and Noble, where I waited instead of walking the last half mile. I’ve picked up a book about digital photo editing a few times now to skim it, and so I sat and read more of that (The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby) The color/balance adjusting tips may really help me, so I keep trying to memorize the steps. I’m not sure, I may just need to buy it There was a middle-school group singing in the back of the store, which was kinda fun to hear.

When E showed back up with the car, we went over to see if there was a movie showing. We were guessing the car would take MUCH longer into the day, so that was our fall-back plan for hanging out. Even though the car was done, it still seemed like a good idea. Sure enough, a showing of Poseidon was happening like 10 minutes later, so we went for it.

Finally, we went back towards Target, which didn’t have what I was looking for. I wanted one of those picture holders with metal do-hickys to stick snapshots in for my mom - she has a desk at work for the first time since having a job and I thought that might be an easy way to snazz it up. I have a feeling that it was seeing Christie’s Photo Holder with the flowers and bear that got me thinking of it! So we went down to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and found something that was close enough to the idea, but still not exactly. Its just a foldering photo squares frame that is still pretty cute. I’ll print out a few pics for it maybe, gotta browse through iPhoto and see what I can find!

And then we drove home in the nice happy car with fully working breaks and better wheel bearings. All in all, i probably walked at least 2 miles. And my ankles are sore, but not as bad as they cool be! Good stuff, and a fun day.

Today, our plan is a barbeque at Leonard and Sarah’s with the rest of the family. It should be fun, and it’s set to be another beautiful day (my dashboard tells me 80°, woah!) Maybe I even need to dig out shorts!

Happy Mother’s day to all my favorite mothers out there!!

Today, we are going off on an excursion . . . E and I both have the day off, and so we are going down to our favorite stores, where there are cool restaurants that we don’t get to go to very often, and hopefully we’ll get some fun loot along the way.

I’ll be moblogging along the way, I’m sure, because it sure is nice to have my phone with a nice cam along. I’m bringing my real camera in case any good photo opportunities present themselves.

I did take some great pictures of my big project from yesterday, cleaning my craft closet, but my browser crashed just as I sat down to finish posting this morning, so I’ll have to find the file names of the pictures again. doh!

Have a happy day, my friends... I’m sure planning on it!

I’ve been in the "omg, i’m almost 30" mode for the last few months or more. But this weekend, I’m just gonna be in the "celebration" mode.

So in part of that celebration, I’m taking a few days off next week, to just rest, play, relax, organize, and be ME. It’s quite exciting, I really needed this.

The weather is PERFECT today, and it’s going to stay very nice into next week, and that really makes me smile. And the chances of rain on my actual birthday have gone down a bit since when I first looked, so that will make my day out driving with Eric more fun too.

Should you enjoy looking, here’s my wishlish. It’s quite obvious what a silly geeky girly girl I am looking at some of the things I might want.

I’m still freakin' out that I’m almost 30. But a bit of fun with family this weekend will decrease the weight of that for a bit. ;)

Oh, and I’m looking forwards to some moblogging of my extended weekend, and pics with my camera too, so you have a front row seat to the festivities.

I had it narrowed down between several brands and types after last weekend, and we went out scouting the stores to actually feel them and see what I thought (Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7, Canon Powershot s2 is, and a few of the Kodak Easyshare models including the p850, among a few other options that were comparable in features and price).

After looking and reading a bunch of reviews, and comparing the options, it was an easy choice: I went with the Canon Powershot S2 IS.

Oh, and Circuit City is where I ended up getting it. They had a great online deal and then you can pick it up in their store. I got a camera bag, and a memory card, and some rechargable batteries while I was out at diff places throughout the weekend. So I’m totally set for some great picture taking in my *ahem* spare time ;)

It is so pretty. And everything I’ve taken so far with it, I’m quite pleased with. I’ll upload more, but for now, I wanted to see what Flickr was gonna do with my EXIF data so I tried that first.

So the big fun comes now in learning all of the options on the dial. I’m definitely more comfy with point and shoot, but I think I could really enjoy learning more. Anybody got any tips or books I should be reading about P, Tv, Av and more? I’m making my way through the manual, and so far, much of it is sinking in, but I have a feeling to be REALLY good, I need to learn more. My bday’s coming up, and I could add some books to my wishlist to give some great ideas to my family and friends.