![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Because I finally feel non-crappy enough, here is the obligatory "What I Did During Christmas" post. You know, aside from coughing up a lung or two (though, to be fair, the whole coughing up a lung thing didn't really set in until after I got back to Washington).
Books
The majority of my time was spent reading. On the way to the airport, at Bellevue Transit Center, I made a trip over to the nearby Barnes & Noble, where I picked up three books by Philippa Ballantine: Wrayth (which is a sequel to Geist and Spectyr), The Janus Affair (co-authored with Tee Morris and a sequel to Phoenix Rising), and lastly Hunter and Fox (the first novel in a new series). The only problem I had with any of these books was that the gold foil or whatever it was that was used for the lettering on the cover of Hunter and Fox completely rubbed off after only a few days of handling the book.
After finishing those, I went back and picked up on where I'd left off in The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Strangely, I'd previously stopped just before "The Final Problem" which introduced (and killed off) Professor Moriarty, so that's what I read when I started again, along with "The Adventure of the Empty House", which brings Holmes back from the dead (i.e. he didn't really die as it had seemed in "The Final Problem"). Spoiler alert: he used martial arts to throw Moriarty's ass off the Reichenbach Falls and then climbed up the sheer rock face to make it look like he'd died too and then avoided another guy (the eventual villain in "Empty House") who was throwing boulders down at him the whole time. Seriously, Sherlock Holmes is pretty much the 19th century equivalent of Batman, except that he didn't need any pansy cape and cowl to hide his identity. One small thing I found weird was that in "The Final Problem" it was Professor Moriarty's brother who was named James Moriarty and the Professor was not given a first name, but in "Empty House" it was the Professor himself who was named James. So, either Professor Moriarty and his brother the colonel are both named James (an occurrence that is not entirely unheard of, I guess), or else Doyle screwed up the names.
Beyond that, I took a copy of Night Chills by Dean Koontz that my mom had back to WA with me, because she said that she'd probably never read it herself. I haven't started reading it myself yet, though.
Television
This was the other big thing I did while back there. As I've said in the past, I watch absolutely zero television out here in WA (on an actual TV, anyway, since I've watched a lot of Star Trek and My Little Pony on the PC). And, usually, when I go back to NC for Christmas, there isn't a whole lot on there as well that I care to watch. That was different this time, however.
This year, I learned of the existence of MeTV.
Here's a list of what all I watched just about every day I was there, in no particular: Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Big Valley, The Rifleman, The Wild Wild West (the TV show, of course, not the execrable Will Smith movie of the same name that was based on the show), and M*A*S*H.
Speaking of Bonanza, to go off on a bit of a tangent, my mom was talking about the theme song and how it had some lyrics. Based on what she was saying, I think she was most likely thinking of this version by Johnny Cash. However, I found a couple other versions as well, such as this one as sung by Lorne Greene (aka Ben Cartwright from the show) and this one which was apparently a deleted scene from the end of the pilot episode (though a few clips of this were actually used in some of the commercials on MeTV). Interestingly enough, a few of the other shows I watched while in NC have instrumental theme songs that have versions with lyrics as well, such as M*A*S*H and The Andy Griffith Show, among others.
Back on topic, a few others shows I caught a couple of episodes of were Batman, Lost in Space, and even some Star Trek (I was hoping for the Trelane episode, but unfortunately it was just a couple of the more forgettable episodes). Also caught a few eps, or at least partial eps, of some other shows like Remington Steele, The Brady Bunch, The Beverly Hillbillies, Daniel Boone, The Rebel, Branded, The Guns of Will Sonnett, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, I Love Lucy, The Rockford Files, and Perry Mason.
Another thing of interest that I saw was the episode of The Danny Thomas Show that acted as the Poorly Disguised Pilot for The Andy Griffith Show. I mean, the episode was just straight up titled "Danny Meets Andy Griffith" (even though he actually met the character of Andy Taylor). A very young, incredibly tiny Ron Howard was there as Opie Taylor, as well as Frances Bavier, though it was weird in that she was playing a character other than Aunt Bee. And, speaking of The Andy Griffith Show, I saw a lot of that as well, though it wasn't on MeTV.
They also kept showing a bunch of commercials on MeTV for Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, but apparently those didn't start until the week that I left, and thus I didn't get to see any of them.
Lastly, on Christmas itself, I saw, of all things, He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special. (As discussed on Cracked.com.) Seriously, the whole conflict of the thing is resolved when frickin' Skeletor, of all people, discovers the spirit of Christmas and does a temporary Heel Face Turn.
In addition to He-Man, I also saw a Filmation thing called A Snow White Christmas. This was a really... weird thing. It was pretty obviously intended to be an unofficial sequel of sorts to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, except that it was clearly not done by Disney. Supposedly, it was just a sequel to the original story and not the Disney movie, but come on. These days, almost nobody thinks of "Snow White" without the Disney princess coming to mind. Anyway, Snow White has grown up and married Prince Charming (now King Charming) and they've had a daughter, who they also inexplicably named Snow White as if it weren't confusing at all. To make a long story short, the Wicked Queen returns and freezes everyone except for Snow White (the younger) and her annoying sidekick Grunyon. They go off and find the Seven Giants (that's right, not dwarves, giants). After a few adventures, they manage to defeat the Wicked Queen again and return everyone to normal. There was a bit of Christmas related stuff at the beginning and at the end of this show, but for the most part it had very little to do with Christmas at all.
Movies
Not a lot to report here, actually. I went with my sister and her family to see Wreck-It Ralph. They hadn't seen it before, but it was the second time for me. After that, we went back to their house and watched Brave on DVD, which I hadn't seen before. Beyond that, aside from watching the first half of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on the night before I was to return to WA, I didn't watch a lot of movies. I haven't even seen The Hobbit yet.
Video Games
This might shock some people, but I actually played almost no video games at all during my stay in NC. If it weren't for a few hours of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on my sister's PS2 on Christmas Day, I wouldn't have played any games at all. And it's not like I didn't have them available to me. I brought my PSP with me and everything, but I ended up just not even taking it out of the travel bag. Hmm.
Pony Watch
And lastly, something I called "Pony Watch" after the fact. At Sea-Tac Airport, a girl of around 12-15 who was on my flight to Charlotte was wearing a Rainbow Dash hoodie. And then, on Christmas, two of my grandnieces got Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash plushie toys. Disappointingly, however, on the way back to WA, which was when I decided to make "Pony Watch" an actual thing, I saw no other pony related toys or clothing. Oh well.
Books
The majority of my time was spent reading. On the way to the airport, at Bellevue Transit Center, I made a trip over to the nearby Barnes & Noble, where I picked up three books by Philippa Ballantine: Wrayth (which is a sequel to Geist and Spectyr), The Janus Affair (co-authored with Tee Morris and a sequel to Phoenix Rising), and lastly Hunter and Fox (the first novel in a new series). The only problem I had with any of these books was that the gold foil or whatever it was that was used for the lettering on the cover of Hunter and Fox completely rubbed off after only a few days of handling the book.
After finishing those, I went back and picked up on where I'd left off in The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Strangely, I'd previously stopped just before "The Final Problem" which introduced (and killed off) Professor Moriarty, so that's what I read when I started again, along with "The Adventure of the Empty House", which brings Holmes back from the dead (i.e. he didn't really die as it had seemed in "The Final Problem"). Spoiler alert: he used martial arts to throw Moriarty's ass off the Reichenbach Falls and then climbed up the sheer rock face to make it look like he'd died too and then avoided another guy (the eventual villain in "Empty House") who was throwing boulders down at him the whole time. Seriously, Sherlock Holmes is pretty much the 19th century equivalent of Batman, except that he didn't need any pansy cape and cowl to hide his identity. One small thing I found weird was that in "The Final Problem" it was Professor Moriarty's brother who was named James Moriarty and the Professor was not given a first name, but in "Empty House" it was the Professor himself who was named James. So, either Professor Moriarty and his brother the colonel are both named James (an occurrence that is not entirely unheard of, I guess), or else Doyle screwed up the names.
Beyond that, I took a copy of Night Chills by Dean Koontz that my mom had back to WA with me, because she said that she'd probably never read it herself. I haven't started reading it myself yet, though.
Television
This was the other big thing I did while back there. As I've said in the past, I watch absolutely zero television out here in WA (on an actual TV, anyway, since I've watched a lot of Star Trek and My Little Pony on the PC). And, usually, when I go back to NC for Christmas, there isn't a whole lot on there as well that I care to watch. That was different this time, however.
This year, I learned of the existence of MeTV.
Here's a list of what all I watched just about every day I was there, in no particular: Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Big Valley, The Rifleman, The Wild Wild West (the TV show, of course, not the execrable Will Smith movie of the same name that was based on the show), and M*A*S*H.
Speaking of Bonanza, to go off on a bit of a tangent, my mom was talking about the theme song and how it had some lyrics. Based on what she was saying, I think she was most likely thinking of this version by Johnny Cash. However, I found a couple other versions as well, such as this one as sung by Lorne Greene (aka Ben Cartwright from the show) and this one which was apparently a deleted scene from the end of the pilot episode (though a few clips of this were actually used in some of the commercials on MeTV). Interestingly enough, a few of the other shows I watched while in NC have instrumental theme songs that have versions with lyrics as well, such as M*A*S*H and The Andy Griffith Show, among others.
Back on topic, a few others shows I caught a couple of episodes of were Batman, Lost in Space, and even some Star Trek (I was hoping for the Trelane episode, but unfortunately it was just a couple of the more forgettable episodes). Also caught a few eps, or at least partial eps, of some other shows like Remington Steele, The Brady Bunch, The Beverly Hillbillies, Daniel Boone, The Rebel, Branded, The Guns of Will Sonnett, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, I Love Lucy, The Rockford Files, and Perry Mason.
Another thing of interest that I saw was the episode of The Danny Thomas Show that acted as the Poorly Disguised Pilot for The Andy Griffith Show. I mean, the episode was just straight up titled "Danny Meets Andy Griffith" (even though he actually met the character of Andy Taylor). A very young, incredibly tiny Ron Howard was there as Opie Taylor, as well as Frances Bavier, though it was weird in that she was playing a character other than Aunt Bee. And, speaking of The Andy Griffith Show, I saw a lot of that as well, though it wasn't on MeTV.
They also kept showing a bunch of commercials on MeTV for Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, but apparently those didn't start until the week that I left, and thus I didn't get to see any of them.
Lastly, on Christmas itself, I saw, of all things, He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special. (As discussed on Cracked.com.) Seriously, the whole conflict of the thing is resolved when frickin' Skeletor, of all people, discovers the spirit of Christmas and does a temporary Heel Face Turn.
In addition to He-Man, I also saw a Filmation thing called A Snow White Christmas. This was a really... weird thing. It was pretty obviously intended to be an unofficial sequel of sorts to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, except that it was clearly not done by Disney. Supposedly, it was just a sequel to the original story and not the Disney movie, but come on. These days, almost nobody thinks of "Snow White" without the Disney princess coming to mind. Anyway, Snow White has grown up and married Prince Charming (now King Charming) and they've had a daughter, who they also inexplicably named Snow White as if it weren't confusing at all. To make a long story short, the Wicked Queen returns and freezes everyone except for Snow White (the younger) and her annoying sidekick Grunyon. They go off and find the Seven Giants (that's right, not dwarves, giants). After a few adventures, they manage to defeat the Wicked Queen again and return everyone to normal. There was a bit of Christmas related stuff at the beginning and at the end of this show, but for the most part it had very little to do with Christmas at all.
Movies
Not a lot to report here, actually. I went with my sister and her family to see Wreck-It Ralph. They hadn't seen it before, but it was the second time for me. After that, we went back to their house and watched Brave on DVD, which I hadn't seen before. Beyond that, aside from watching the first half of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on the night before I was to return to WA, I didn't watch a lot of movies. I haven't even seen The Hobbit yet.
Video Games
This might shock some people, but I actually played almost no video games at all during my stay in NC. If it weren't for a few hours of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on my sister's PS2 on Christmas Day, I wouldn't have played any games at all. And it's not like I didn't have them available to me. I brought my PSP with me and everything, but I ended up just not even taking it out of the travel bag. Hmm.
Pony Watch
And lastly, something I called "Pony Watch" after the fact. At Sea-Tac Airport, a girl of around 12-15 who was on my flight to Charlotte was wearing a Rainbow Dash hoodie. And then, on Christmas, two of my grandnieces got Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash plushie toys. Disappointingly, however, on the way back to WA, which was when I decided to make "Pony Watch" an actual thing, I saw no other pony related toys or clothing. Oh well.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-01-08 02:29 am (UTC)From:In regards to the Snow White Christmas thing, might it have been a bad sequel to a bad sequel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happily_Ever_After_%281993_film%29)?
no subject
Date: 2013-01-08 07:16 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-01-08 07:19 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-01-08 01:06 pm (UTC)From: