Staycation

My wife and I took the week off with no special plans in mind, and that's exactly what happened. We took care of some miscellaneous things that we needed to tend to and lounged around a lot. I'd like to say that I got more creative work done than I did, but it just didn't happen. I'm still feeling really stalled in that respect.

We decided that rather than buy each other separate anniversary gifts, we'd both get MP3 players and make the necessary musical conversion from CDs. It's going to take some doing to get our CD collection converted to MP3s, but then it'll be nice to be able to cherry pick some of the songs we like from performers we don't like enough to buy a full CD.

My wife continued on her anime kick and I finished season three of the Dexter TV series, both via Netflix. Dexter continues to be wonderfully written and acted. It remains one of the most tightly written television shows I've ever seen, and I can't wait to see season four. Not enough to subscribe to Showtime, mind you, but season four is already in my Netflix queue for when it is released in DVD. I watched a couple of other interesting movies as well, which I expect to cover in separate entries a little later.

On a side note, the Dollhouse TV series finally hit one out of the park with the episode "Belle Chose". Part of the reason this episode succeeded so well was that they really turned Enver Gjokaj loose in multiple roles and gave him a lot more screen time. Of all of the actors on the show, he's the one I find most convincing in truly different personalities. The other reason was Tim Minear's script, which took full advantage of the possibilities of the Dollhouse setting. The brass at Fox either didn't know what "belle chose" meant or thought the reference sufficiently obscure that most of the public wouldn't find out. I didn't know what it meant myself, but found it right away when I got curious enough to look it up. The capsule version is that it's a spicy Chaucer reference. Dollhouse continues to improve, but it's probably too late for it to achieve its full potential before Fox will have to cancel it for low ratings.

We also pulled together costumes for Halloween. We haven't decided exactly what we're wearing yet, but we each have at least two options. I'm looking forward to using them.