Spent the weekend mostly cleaning and following up on things from Comic-Con last week. Photos are all up at Flickr, and alenxa and I are posting write-ups at K-Squared Ramblings.

Some highlights so far:

• Lost was *the* panel to attend this year.
• Flash Forward looks awesome.
• Mad Science: The Science Behind Science-Fiction was fun, with reps from Eureka!, Fringe and Caprica/BSG.

Oh, and there's the matter of the costumes...

Saw Noises Off at South Coast Repertory. Hilarious. Also brings back memories from high school & college productions. Forgot to tape Lost.

I'm just hoping Desmond and Penny will survive Lost.

My brother and his fiancée drove down from San Francisco to visit last weekend, and we ended up spending a lot of time hanging out with them at my parents' house. And playing Munchkin. Which was fun, except for the interminable turns when someone needed to discard a bunch of cards and, because most of us were new at the game, agonized over which cards to toss.

Family gathering on Thursday at my grandparents' house. In the old days we'd drive to my parents' house, then pile into their minivan and carpool the rest of the way, but since my mom traded it in for a Camry, we had to split 6 people across two cars. I'd planned on driving since I knew neither Brion nor Marti was going to want to spend ~2 hours driving in holiday traffic after spending the entire previous day on the road.

Other than visiting family, I mostly stayed at home. No Black Friday sales. I did order tickets to a play (The School of Night, about the death of Christopher Marlowe), and tried to order tickets to Man of La Mancha only to discover it was in presale, and I didn't have the code. (Subsequently signed up for Reprise's newsletter. Next time...)

Did a lot of reading. I'm about 100 pages into George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, and decided I needed a break. I picked up Robert J. Sawyer's Flashforward the day before ABC announced the first casting for the TV pilot. Jack Davenport -- yes, Steve from Coupling and Norrington from Pirates of the Caribbean -- is playing the lead , and Courtney B. Vance (Law & Order: Criminal Intent) is playing a character who is either new to the adaptation or shows up at least halfway through the book. I get the impression from earlier articles that they're not adapting the plot so much as they're taking the concept and using it as the basis for an ongoing series. I also reread Girl Genius from the beginning, which is much easier to do in book form than on the computer.

alenxa completed Nanowrimo over the weekend, having written 50,000 words during November, though she's pretty sure the full novel is going to be more than twice that.

Also, on Tuesday we went out to Huntington Beach's street fair to see Gigi Edgley, Farscape's Chiana, do fire twirling (write-up w/ photos at K2R).

Today, I'm tired. 9 days of antihistamines plus 3 days of getting to bed late and getting up early plus a couple of weeks of not sleeping well. Okay, back to work.

What makes people think it's OK to post insults/threats just because your old blog post isn't what they wanted to find on Google?

@alenxa It was on the one about using the disarmed emergency exit as a shortcut during construction...5 years ago. WTF?

You know, it would be nice if ABC would SAY things like "In 3 weeks" when they're going to preempt Pushing Daisies 2 weeks in a row.

I like having (nearly) full movement in my arm again.

End of an era: Our last box of real Sudafed has expired.

1. Finally took the time to finish reading Victory of Eagles. Very good -- on a level with Throne of Jade, which had previously been my favorite in the Temeraire series.

2. Also took a bunch more boxes to storage, including 4 comic boxes. I'd intended to put half my comics in storage when we moved back in May, but I wanted to catalog them all first so that I could find them easily. Then my arms fell off after we moved, and I didn't want to carry the boxes, and then I just kept putting it off. Now we've got a chance of clearing a patch from the co-ax outlet to the TV, so...

3. Arranged for cable. I'd been hoping we'd be somewhere more permanent by the time the fall TV season started, but we haven't had much luck.

They're coming on Thursday, but we've made arrangements for the second ep of Bones and the premieres of Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles (try typing that three times fast) and Fringe (that was easier!). Seriously considered Time Warner's DVR package, which is only around $10/month, but it's only available with their digital cable package... which starts at around $50/month. And there isn't really anything we'd be watching that isn't on the $15/month broadcast-only package, at least not until BSG comes back sometime next year.

4. Finally saw Wall-E, in a theater with 4 other people, including a kid who kept making comments and hadn't yet learned the art of moderating his volume. And a sound system that went wonky during the second-to-last preview and stayed that way through most of the film, even after I went out to report the problem during the short. Fortunately it was just an undercurrent that sounded kind of like a high-pitched refrigerator warble, and not distortion of the soundtrack. Also, the print was rather badly scratched in the middle third of the picture. Despite all that, the movie was still quite enjoyable.

1. I've been going through old comic books looking for Hostess ads from the late 1970s.  They had these one-page stories where a hero would run into a really lame villain, and be able to stop them by distracting them with Twinkies, or fruit pies, or cupcakes.  Some of them are total crack, and there's a web archive with snarky commentary.  I got the idea to profile the villains that the Flash fought (even though there's still a bunch of minor villains and supporting characters from canon to add), so I've been looking for pages to get higher-res scans.  I found 2 of 4.

The funny thing?  It turns out that the Omnivore's 100 list I posted includes Hostess Fruit Pies because the author was nostalgic for those ads.

2. Dinner with MIL Saturday, after alenxa went to a cousin's wedding shower.

3. Majorly dehydrated on Sunday, or something.  Tried to start going through the piles of boxes against the edge of our living room, but ended up spending the afternoon on the couch reading, sipping water.  Read sections from The Flash Companion and a comic book trade, Supergirl and The Legion of Super-Heroes: The Dominator War.  I'd picked it up months ago, before we moved, since it was a sequel to a story I'd liked that came out in 1989 (Invasion!) but hadn't gotten around to reading it.  Not bad, but didn't wow me either.  Fortunately felt better in time to...

4. Hit the Orange Street Fair on Sunday evening.  Passed on Abelskivers (sp) this time.  Was in line, but realized I just didn't want them.  Agreed we have to explore Old Town Orange sometime when it's not a fair and businesses are open.  I think the last time I did that was more than 10 years ago.

5. Responsible day today.  Groceries, Laundry, etc.

6. Interviewed the outgoing writer on The Flash last week!

Goals for this week:
1. Locate cable outlet.
2. Arrange for some sort of TV service.  The fall season is starting, and we'll actually be watching stuff live and not just off of DVDs.

Last night we watched the first two episodes of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, the web feature by Joss Whedon and company. It's a comedy about Doctor Horrible, mad scientist super-villain (Neil Patrick Harris); Captain Hammer, the super-hero who keeps beating him up (Nathan Fillion); and the girl from the laundromat whom he's too shy to speak with (Felicia Day).

It's funny. It's quirky. It's short (3 episodes at ~13 minutes each). It's structured as a video blog intercut with narrative scenes. And yes, there are songs. (They remind me of a cross between "Once More With Feeling," and of all things, Moulin Rouge.) Though I still get "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair" running through my head with slightly altered lyrics. "Dr. Horrible. Dr. Horrible. Telephone call for Dr. Horrible..."

Episodes 1 and 2 are up for free right now. Episode 3 goes up on Saturday. Then the whole thing goes offline on Sunday. There's a panel next Friday at Comic-Con, and they plan to offer it as a regular paid download and eventually a DVD.

(reposted from elsewhere)

Last night we got the biggest Halloween crowd we've had in years. Which isn't saying much, since it was only around a dozen kids, but I think there were a couple of big groups that collided, because about 6 or 7 of them showed up at the same time. alenxa redid her Sylar Victim makeup, and scared some of the kids. (One actually asked, "Does that hurt?") After that first round, she stayed in the back room and I handed out the candy.

Since I was up late anyway last night (making sure everything on the laptop worked after upgrading to Leopard), decided to get an early start on Nanowrimo after midnight rolled around. Only jotted down 135 words (including the title & byline), but it's a start. Then I spent too much time looking around the site for counting tools and such. Should've gone to bed as soon as I stopped writing. I'll probably be blogging progress reports over at K2R this year, instead of here. Haven't decided for sure yet. Here's my profile.

Pushing Daisies continues to be fun. Anyone else here watching it?

I've finally done it. After resisting for years, I've bought an iPod.

Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to play with it yet. Our music collection is on alenxa's computer, which is old enough that its USB port is USB 1.1. This hasn't been a problem until now, since she syncs her iPod with Firewire. Little did I know that the latest generation of iPod only supports USB. I charged it this afternoon, and started the initial sync this evening. So far it's about 1/3 through.

At least future syncs won't be so bad.

In other news, I've found myself in the middle of an online firestorm twice this week. ( Safari for Windows and a relaunch of the Flash comic book. )

And what is it with Newsarama's forums? They seem to crash daily, or else they do maintenance at random times without telling anyone.

Meanwhile, we've finally started season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. With effort, we should be able to catch up before Comic Con and not have to worry about spoilers.

Apparently, Rob Thomas is in talks with DC Comics to bring the series there, much like the current "Season 8" comics for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Heroes: Excellent!

( Spoilers for this week's Veronica Mars and Lost )

Friday: rain, at last! Clouds were clear in the west just before sunset, producing a really impressive red rainbow towering in the east. Did some work on my Superman-Flash Races page, restructuring it to make it a bit more accessible to the sudden influx of visitors more familiar with Lost than the Flash.

Saturday: Went to Wayzgoose at UCI. Spent some time at the CHP booth catching up with Susan, katyakoshka & Dave, wayens and others. Missed sekl, non_seqvitvr & company, though. Wandered around the School of the Arts on the way out, getting a sense of what had changed. The last few years I've mostly seen it at night, on the way to or from plays. Remembered I had a camera, & took some shots of the campus, but wished I'd taken some pictures back at the CHP booth. Also wished I'd taken more pictures back in college. At the moment, I can think of one roll taken my senior year, plus stuff from trips -- Ren Faire, camping, etc. But not much in the way of random pictures of friends.

Stopped at the market on the way home and ended up with pizza ingredients. alenxa made pizza, and we watched the Heroes marathon.

Incidentally, this weekend confirms that Saturday evening, if you happen to be home and have to share a laundry room with other tenants, is an excellent time to do laundry. There's no competition.

Sunday: Mostly random stuff. Errands. Watched the first few episodes of Drive, with Nathan Fillion and some other Jossverse alumni (Tim Minnear's a co-creator, and Amy Acker shows up from time to time). More interesting than it sounded from the description. Will probably watch the new episode tonight (fortunately, it's on before Heroes, not during). Also spent way too much time reading Lostpedia.