jots and tittles

Wanted to get another post in, because I'll be going out of town soon and probably won't have a chance to post for a couple of days.

Last Friday for our date Amelia and I went to a store called "2000 Degrees." It's one of those paint your own pottery places, and it was actually a surprisingly fun date. I didn't think I'd enjoy it as much as I did. Mock all you want, but I actually do have a sensitive caring side. You've seen Ghost right? Just call me Patrick Swayze Junior. Because I walk through walls, though, not because of anything to do with pottery.

While it was a lot of fun, my bowl came out like total crap and it's pretty pricey once you add in the price of the ceramic piece as well as the price of "studio time." It was something like $20 for a bowl I want to throw away. At the same time, it's pretty addictive, and now that I know how to do what I want to do, I think I could go try it again and only be there for half an hour to an hour. It's also a pride thing, because my current bowl looks like a four year old painted it, and I really think I can do much better. Next time I won't mess up or make up my design as I go along. At any rate, if you've got a little extra money, and you're feeling artistic, it's pretty fun.

What's not so fun right now (just call me the king of the segue, and I don't mean the motorized scooter) is "Alias." What's going on with this show this season? Amelia and I have been pretty disappointed so far. I know they wanted to do a "series reset" type of situation, but they've completely abandoned the flow that made the show so interesting in the first place. Each episode so far this season has been wrapped up neatly in itself, and while there are hints that there is more going on (OK, OK Sydney still doesn't trust Sloane. I get it!) so far there's nothing to keep me more intrigued. What happened to Rimbaldi? What happened to an enemy they'd spend the season fighting? What happened to the Covenant? The Alliance? Why does Sydney have no friends outside the agency? Season one, that was all part of the fun, watching her try and balance two separate lives. If I'm not mistaken, that's why the show was called, ahem, ALIAS. Now everyone is in on it, the relationships all seem to have plateaued, and it's just not moving anywhere. I'm sure that some of this will change. I'm sure that probably in the next episode or two a new season long story arc will begin. But right now there are just so many threads that they've started in past seasons that it's ridiculous to spend this many episodes on throwaway plots like "Vampire Drug" "Ice Drug" and "Spy Suburbia." I still like this show, and it's still fun to watch, and I'm not yet proclaiming it's death, but they need to go beyond the rehaul they've apparently started and not forget about what actually works. Otherwise I'm just going to stop caring.

On a completely different note, we got some bad family news yesterday. I can't really go into details here, but we'll be heading away for a few days to be with some loved ones. Keep us in your prayers.