utenzi

It's not my house that is burning down, it's the show House . Apparently critics are starting to take notice that the writing on the show is in a death spiral. No doubt the sexual and romantic relationship between Cuddy and House this season will be viewed later as the handwriting on the wall . I don't know if it constitutes a true Jumping the Shark moment, but their being in bed together at the beginning of this season must be close. The other reason for the word "Burn" in the title of this post is a more promising one. Burn Notice starts up again this coming Thursday. I liked last season almost as much as the first season and a lot more than the seasons between. I hope this coming season holds the line. Program it in: 10 pm on USA Network. If anyone cares, that annoying Conan O'Brien is making his debut on TBS tonight. He's got a slot between 11pm and midnight.

Every year I delay using A/C in the warmer months and heat in the colder months. This year hasn't been an exception to that. Most of last week it ranged from 56 to 58 in my house. A bit on the cool side but nothing really bad. I spent the weekend at my girlfriend's house and when I returned to my house at 5pm on Sunday it was to find the house had cooled further. Down to 51.2 degrees, to be exact. That was the limit. I don't like it to go under 55 so I turned on the heating system within 5 minutes of getting home. Brrr! Now it's a toasty 62 in here and I'll probably turn it up to 65 tomorrow. It takes a while for the house to warm up so I'm gradually getting it used to the idea, you see. It was supposed to go below freezing last night but I don't know if it did or not. There was a little ice on Carrie's deck but it didn't feel all that bad outside when we went hiking at 9am. Probably around 45f. But a couple of cold nights really dropped the temp i...

I didn't feel like waiting until December. The two pictures here were taken last Saturday. I was hiking in the Cabe lands area of Eno Park, near the quarry. Both pictures feature distant relatives of ours. One an insect the other a spider. While the two are both in the phylum Arthropoda, they're in different classes (Insecta and Arachnida). The hornet pictured there on the left was crawling on my leg after I put it there. I found it on a rock. I had it in my hand for a while but every time I tried to take a picture of it, it fell off my hand and back onto my leg. The hornets movements felt kinda funny because the wings never stopped moving and that created a slight tickling sensation. Because of the cool temperatures, the poor thing was moving a mite sluggishly so it was early to pick it up. But not so easy to get it to stay put. I had an eye exam yesterday morning. I really hate those pupil dilation drops. It was a rainy overcast day so the sunlight didn't bother me but t...

It's been nearly a month since my last post. Maybe this is becoming a once-a-month blog. These pictures are from a hike I took with a Meetup group last weekend. The hike was a 9.5 mile meander along 3 trails in Raven Rock park, near Lillington NC. The last month has seen a few changes in my life. My mother succumbed to lung cancer after a 2+ year encounter with the disease. She was diagnosed 23 months ago with a fairly advanced tumor in her left lung. Fist sized, they said, and gave her a couple of months to live. She stayed nearly pain free for almost the entire two years. It was a very slow growing tumor and really fooled the doctors. The last 2 weeks were bad though---the cancer, relatively mild for most of its span, showed its fangs at the end. That happened a month ago. During the two bad weeks and the month since I managed to gain some serious weight. I don't know how that happened. (okay, I ate a lot) And now I'm up to 193 and am supposed to see my doctor on Monday. ...

In what is quite a surprise to me, my favorite of the new shows is Chase , an NBC police procedural about the US Marshal Service. A lot of the appeal is generated by the female lead, Kelli Giddish , who stars as U.S. Marshal Annie Frost. It's difficult to believe that the actress is only 30. She looks and holds the screen like a performer with a lot more experience. Just look at all those "determination" lines around her mouth and eyes! Talk about sexy. Or is it the gun and badge? LOL the leather jacket doesn't hurt either! Lone Star , another series with a Texas hook, seems to be canceled after just two episodes. It was a very good show but I had already decided to stop recording it. The story line just looked to be getting too convoluted and The Event is my show this season for convoluted plot lines. I don't need two like that. I've already deleted from my record list Running Wilde and No Ordinary Family , both after just watching one episode. They were ...

A few pictures from last night's hike at Occoneechee Park. The sunset was pretty. This picture was taken through the trees as we were sitting at the Quarry Overlook. It was in the low 70s when we were hiking which was a huge change from the low 90s that we'd been used to hiking in. This change in the weather was quite welcome. Even more welcome was the 36 hours of rain we'd had from Sunday afternoon until quite late Monday evening. I'd not mowed my lawn in over a month. At my house it'd been around 7 weeks since I'd had any rain. My back door wouldn't lock. I thought there was some kind of water damage to it and it'd warped. Since my area is pretty safe I just didn't bother locking it. And then when leaving for work on Monday, the lock worked again. I guess the door was so dry it changed shape! I'd never had that happen before. This second picture is the group of us leaving the overlook with the sun shining through the trees behind us. Tonight af...

A recipe I was following the other day asked for ground lamb. Now I don't know about you, but where I live ground lamb isn't typically stocked in stores. Actually, lamb of any stripe is difficult to find. So then the question became should I use ground beef or ground pork. I didn't even bother to contemplate ground chicken or turkey. Ickers! What I would have liked to do would have been to have a mix of 75% pork and 25% beef but given that the packages of ground pork were 1 pound each, I would have had to make enough to feed an army. I could have bought a pound of pork and a pound of beef and just used a quarter of the beef but that wouldn't have been quite enough. In the end I went with just using 2 packs of pork and nixing the beef entirely. Sorry cows! Or like actress Clara Peller used to say in those Wendy's commercials , Where's the beef? So that's what you see over there on the left. Just ground up piggies. Quite a bit of fat in them. At the beginning ...