mydarling

Not convinced? Watch this, this and this.

(And to Dan Rydell, I'm very sorry. Not only did you get creamed in that "Who's Cooler?" poll against Casey - albeit unfairly - but you were matched up against Barney Stinson in this year's Fandom March Madness, all but guaranteeing your loss. But I still love you!)

I really do not know how to feel about this. Mostly it's been a Nancy Kerrigan-esque "WHY?!?!?!?" and quiet weeping in the corner. Because seriously, you two? (Apparently they've done a few of those ice skating/gymnastic shows together and were each others date to the ESPYs last year, which... oh. See? I am totally confused.)

Semi-relatedly: HALLO THAR, MISTER OLYMPIC CHAMPION.

So the Superbowl was on tonight, and usually I'm really into it, but this year... not so much. I was really indecisive as to who I wanted to win (and had a list of very shallow reasons as to why the Colts should beat the Saints and versa), it went by incredibly fast, and although I ordered pizza shortly before halftime, it didn't arrive until the last few minutes of the game. Don't get me wrong, I'm incredibly happy for the Saints and what this victory will bring to the City of New Orleans, but. I don't know. Something was missing. Maybe because it was the first time I'd ever watched the Superbowl absolutely by myself.

However, there was this commercial which I absolutely LOVED:



It's things like this that bring out the hopeless romantic sap in me, and then I get emotional. And speaking of romantic things, I STILL have not talked about Numb3rs - specifically the episode from two weeks ago, but also the show in general, as there are possibly only two episodes left, and they won't come until AFTER the Olympics. I also need to do a real-life update, as there are things going on in my life, such as: I hate my PR professor/class! I am making plans for next year! I am now a big TV producer! But I digress. I'd much rather sleep than update this thing all the time.

Air America Radio files for bankruptcy.

So there goes my secret idea for a radio show entitled "Getting Boozy with Rachel and Ana Marie", wherein the two of them discuss politics while drinking cocktails Rachel has made. It would be air during happy hour Monday through Friday, and it would be awesome. Yes, I realize that Rachel's in New York and Ana Marie is in Washington DC, but that was a detail to be worked out at a later point in time. Or never, as it were.

Seriously though: it's a sign of the times, both in terms of the economy and today's media outlets. It really sucks for Ana Marie though, seeing as she only started working for them in January, and just got her own show back in April. On top of that, she just got her official White House Press credentials a few days ago; seriously, the only reason I ever watched a White House press briefing was because she was going to be there and occasionally liveblog it. I seriously doubt she'll get to do that at her next job, whenever and whatever that may be. But hopefully this means she'll appear on The Rachel Maddow Show a lot more? *crosses fingers*

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Has also been a sucky day for me, seeing as I got totally shut out of choosing a partner for my first video project in my Media Production class, and was thus put into a group with two people who don't know how to do anything (and I'm not super confident about the class myself, which doesn't help much); had pancakes for dinner, although cherry pie filling does not work on them (my mistake); and waited nearly 20 minutes in the freezing cold for a bus that obviously wasn't coming, so I had to walk all the way across campus back to my apartment, and while I was doing so, not one but two of the bus that I was waiting for pulled into the main stop on campus. So yeah, I'm going to take a shower and watch The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Office and 30 Rock and forget this day existed. (I would totally join in on Ana Marie's drinking, but I am still underage in that regard. Trust me, I'd drink.)

Thankfully, tommorow's Friday, meaning no classes for me. Although I do have to go look for a job on campus. Blergh.

What's been going on in my life (aka, things I'd rather be doing than post):

1. Playing around with my new webcam, which arrived yesterday afternoon.
2. Marathoning the entire series of How I Met Your Mother.
3. Reading up on football and political news via Google Reader.
4. Deciding what to write for my picfor1000 story.

Other than that, not much else. I go back to Grand Valley next Sunday, and I'm incredibly anxious to do so - going so far as to get my ridiculous sleep schedule back to something more normal. Some of the drama alums from my high school are having a party Friday night, but I'm probably not going to go because a) I can't get a ride to this person's house; b) Numb3rs returns then (SHUT UP, IT'S IMPORTANT); and c) there's going to be a lot of people there I don't know/weren't really close to while in high school, so it'll probably end up being really clique-y. So.

(See, I told you: Boring.)

1. Christmas was great. Very low-key; It took us literally ten minutes to open presents. I got David Plouffe's The Audacity to Win, season 3 of 30 Rock, and a check for $60 from Grandma - which went towards this webcam, Kristin Gore's Sammy's Hill (because I need 60 more cents to qualify for free shipping, and that was the cheapest thing I could find that I actually could have a use for) and this shirt (which is technically free, but with shipping cost me 25 cents), all while also paying of my credit card bill to something more manageable. Dinner with the aunt&uncle&cousins was good as well; I was able to pick up my two little cousins Lucy and John (I had been forbidden to lift anything heavier than 20 pounds before and shortly after my surgery, but now I'm all better), ate some delicious beef tenderloin, and played a super-intense game of Mad Gabs with my older cousins and the adults.

2. Speaking of family get-togethers, one of my uncles and his two kids are coming later tonight! Both are close in age to Graham, Monica and I (cousin Mairead is Graham's age and Austin is right in between Graham and Monica) and they're staying until after New Year's - so we've got all kinds of shenanigans planned; and unlike last time Mairead was here (back in July, right after I got out of the hospital), I won't be too tired or weak to participate. We're getting together with the aunt&uncle&cousins again for a New Year's Eve party (which will definitely include an epic Mad Gabs rematch), and then everyone is coming over here for New Year's Day to watch bowl games on our big TV.

3. Other than the holiday plans, not much else is going on. Graham had ACL surgery last week, so I'm busy tending to his needs. Definitely catching up on my sleep. Marathoning TV - I finished season 3 of 30 Rock in about two days, and I've now moved on to How I Met Your Mother. Ordered my books for next semester (only $200 worth). Gearing up to try and write a lot in the coming weeks.

4. Also busy working on my year-end stuff. My picspammy entry is almost done - I have one more show to picspam, and then decide how I want to format it. My playlist of songs I listened to in 2009 is finalized, and I'll get that posted ASAP. And of course there's those year-end survey things - I did the fandom one earlier today and I'll probably do the year in review one sometime tomorrow if things aren't too busy.

5. NFL playoff scenarios give me major headaches.

I totally didn't forget about yesterday (December 16th) being John Spencer Day; in fact, my first tweet of the day was on that particular subject. However, I did not participate in the annual obligation to quote Leo McGarry here on LJ, as I was too busy getting finals finished up and cleaning/packing/getting ready to go home. I planned on making a post once I got back home, but I ended up not getting here until after 1 AM, even though I left Grand Valley around 7 and it takes roughly 2 and a half hours to get here - there was a really bad accident on the freeway just outside of Grand Rapids that left traffic backed up for miles, so instead of waiting we took a detour to the local Target for a little bit, then ended up sitting in traffic for roughly an hour AFTER the accident was getting cleared. This is not the first time getting home from somewhere has gone badly: you'll remember it was this time last year that I had a hard time getting home from Chicago via Amtrak, since my train was canceled as the tracks had frozen and a another train (oddly enough, from Grand Rapids) was stuck on the tracks, and ended up having to take a bus home and arriving around 7:30 PM, nearly five hours later than my original arrival time of 2:30 PM.)

But anyway, I've been doing the whole "Quote Leo McGarry on LJ" since it started back in 2006, so to compensate for missing this year's, have Leo's Big Block of Cheese Day speech and Leo asking Josh how that bullet didn't kill him. If we're going off the comparison that the Obama administration is exactly like season 7 of The West Wing, that makes Leo Joe Biden, which I absolutely love because Joey is adorable.

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Obviously all finished with finals, which went off without a hitch. I only had finals Monday through Wednesday, and they were well spaced enough that I didn't have to go through my usual self-exile from the internet that usually happens during this week. In addition, all of them seemed pretty easy; even my World Politics one - the midterm was brutal and it was my hardest class overall - went over smoothly, which I chalked up to the fact that the five free response questions on the exam were all ones I knew really well and could properly answer (although I struggled with the multiple choice portion, simply because I didn't study at all for that portion, focusing more on the free response questions because that's where the majority of the points were.) Comm Research was open-note/open-book and Mass Media&American Politics was just a simple four-page paper, so high marks are guaranteed; not sure how Comm, Social Problems and World Politics are going to shake out. Grades are available on Christmas Eve, so depending on what they are, it'll be a great Christmas present or a not-so-great Christmas present.

And now that the semester's done and I've got nothing important to do over my nice long three week break, I'm just going to relax. I've got all kinds of Christmas-themed TV to watch, from episodes of The West Wing/Studio 60/Sports Night/The Office/CSI:NY (there are also Christmas episodes of The Big Bang Theory and The Simpsons, but I've watched them already), as well as the holiday standard fare of A Charlie Brown Christmas and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, both of which I had to download due to inconvenient scheduling on television. After the holidays are over, my TV viewing will basically consist of various Bowl games and watching the first wave of television come back for the new year - including Numb3rs, which I'm obviously really excited about because, hello, shiny HD! And I'll have to say goodbye to Jon and Stephen for a few weeks, which is totally okay with me because Stephen gave this really cute little send-off at the end of his show last night.

I'm going to try and get back into writing again while I've got all this time to do so; I signed up for picfor1000 totally on a whim, hoping that might start something, and I'd also like to get this fic I've had swirling around in my head for a few weeks down on paper at some point. Decided to do a picspammy challenge after a long, long break; thinking about doing their "end of the decade" challenge and have already come up with a preliminary list of the events I want to spotlight (hopefully one or two for each year, but possibly more) and am definitely taking suggestions, as long as they're not too obscure. And as usual, I'll have my end-of-the-year playlist of songs I listened to throughout 2009 - a task which is proving very difficult, as my tastes are constantly changing and I'm trying to keep the list down to about 12 songs.

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And finally, for all of you: my thread at the Holiday Love Meme (to those of you who have replied, a hearty thanks; I'll get around to those flisters who have it sometime tomorrow); and my Formspring, where you are allowed to ask me questions on literally anything - should you be so inclined.

( A few very brief thoughts on tonight's House. )

In short: really not what I needed after last night's Pats/Colts game. Not only was I having terrible flashbacks to Superbowl XLII, but now the MIGHTY BENGALS OF CINCINNATI of all teams are actually really being considered as contenders for this season's Superbowl! SERIOUSLY.

It has been a very stressful week for me. I got offered a chance to job shadow at the local ABC affiliate on Tuesday evening, an as much as I'd really like to go, I don't drive and getting there by bus on time would be damn near impossible. I found out on Tuesday that my Memo Essay for World Politics is due next Thursday - I definitely knew that, seeing as it was given to me at the beginning of the semester, but since it wasn't due for a couple of weeks and I had other more urgent things to work on, it got pushed to the back burner. So obviously, I haven't started working on it - and it's worth 20% of my grade, so if I do poorly on it, I'm pretty much guaranteed to fail the class. Commence freaking out.

I'd been trying to relax a little bit, as I haven't been sleeping well as of late and have been getting some pretty bad headaches - including the one earlier today, which required a heavy dose of Tylenol and a three-hour nap - by watching the World Series. I'm not a huge baseball person, but it's nice to have some sort of distraction, even if I'm too distracted by it to actually do my homework. Anyway, I had finished everything I needed to do last night, so I watched Game Six. Thrilled by the Yankees win (PHILLY CAN SERIOUSLY SUCK IT NOW), I stayed up on the internets for a little bit. That may have been a bad idea, since I came across this:

CBS Reduces the Number of Numb3rs episodes this season from 22 to 16. Which I figured would be the next step after CBS has to make the decision to continue with either your show or Without a Trace (just barely escaped that one) and one of your main actors, Peter MacNicol is forced to take a temporary leave of absence from the show as a cost-cutting measure. What irks me about this is that the most recent episode brought in about 7 million viewers - which is impressive for any average television show, let alone on a Friday night. It handedly wins the 10 PM Friday timeslot almost every week. The fact that CBS increase episode orders for all the CSI's is also pretty upsetting - I always though that with the big name casts and what goes into making a seemingly "formulaic" show that it actually be more expensive to produce than Numb3rs. To see CBS go the way of NBC - eschewing popular, good quality programming over something more mediocre simply because it costs less to make - is pretty depressing. Isn't CBS supposed to be doing really well? I can understand why NBC is doing this, but CBS? SAD.

On a slightly less serious note, this cutting back of episodes better not mean that I don't get to see Charlie and Amita's wedding on-screen. I WAS PROMISED AN ON-SCREEN WEDDING, YOU GUYS. IF I DON'T GET IT SIMPLY BECAUSE CBS ARE IDIOTS, I'M REALLY NOT GOING TO BE VERY HAPPY. (And don't say "If you don't get it, I'm sure people will write fic about it!" HAHAHAHA, like that's going to happen. No one cares about this fandom, so there is no good fic. I'd write some myself, but I am not the best writer. But I'm not complaining about that. I WANT MY WEDDING I'VE BEEN WAITING A VERY, VERY LONG TIME FOR.)

However, I do have some great things to look forward to in the next few days: I'm job shadowing at the local PBS affiliate tomorrow afternoon, which is actually on Grand Valley's downtown campus - super convenient, as it is just one half-hour bus ride away; I AM GOING BACK HOME FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE I MOVED OUT TO GRAND VALLEY AT THE END OF AUGUST, which I'm obviously beyond excited for - I really miss my family a lot, you guys - and I'll be back home by tomorrow evening, meaning it's entirely possible I will get to watch the two-hour Law & Order extravaganza in HD on our big-screen TV. And I found out last night via a promo that Rachel Maddow will be on Meet the Press on Sunday, which is always exciting. And even with all this excitement, I'd really like to squeeze some doing of homework in - but that's highly unlikely. I'll be so thrilled to be home that I won't want to do anything.

( This meme in no way makes up for the fact that I haven't done a real-life update in quite some time. )

Other things I need to post about besides real life things: the past three episodes of House and general thoughts on this season of Mad Men - which, sadly, is almost over. Where did the time go, you guys?