While I was up all night with a ladytimes-related migraine and some of the worst cramps I've had outside of a mercifully long-ago encounter with an ovarian cyst, I read Kristin Cashore's Fire, in which ladytimes are a featured plot point!

Funny when the universe does that.

Anyway, I liked Fire even better than the much-lauded Graceling. I do wonder, though, if someone couldn't take Cashore aside and give her some thoughts on character-naming. In Graceling, one of the main (male) characters is nicknamed Po. On top of this being a rather dubious choice for other reasons, this former mothers' helper strongly associates it with the littlest Teletubby. The heroine's name is Katsa, which sounds like it's missing an 'up from the end. Very jarring.

I also don't know what makes a book YA if this is supposed to be, but better minds than mine have spent screens and screens of Internet working on that one.

Snow! Ugly wet snow, but snow! I think the weather patterns are making my neck and head hurt, but...snow!

I hope this early-for-our-area coating is a harbinger of a snowy winter, with lots of non-dangerous snow days. But I'm just eleven like that.

I have watched the first disc of S1 Castle and can't help but find it terribly endearing despite several issues with the formulation of the central and recurring characters. And if I had straight hair, I would get Stana Katic's mesmerizingly versatile cut.

Happy Birthday, harriet_spy!

Shorter Twilight: The Movie: It's really fucking annoying when your mother doesn't return her voicemail messages.

(Long-time followers of my little brother should be disturbed but not surprised to learn that he is apparently all over this shit, and has been secretly for months. As in, he has gone to see the actors at local mall appearances. Oh my god, you guys. This is my fault for taking him to *NSYNC concerts. I have never felt like a bad parentified sibling until this moment.)

Oh, V. *sigh* V, V, V. If that's how you really feel, maybe you should be airing on FOX, for however long that would last.

-I have been on a leisure-item-spending diet for a while now, so I was unprepared for this new and confusingly logical gambit of providing consumers with an iTunes-compatible digital copy with their DVD purchase. I can now firmly say there is no better way to spend a two-plus hour treadmill run than watching Star Trek on a tiny screen. Wheee.

-I have started watching S1 of Mad Men, and I have to wonder: am I going to like any of these characters eventually? I think I'm up to 1x05 or 1x06 and so far the best I can muster is more or less sympathy for certain of them. I realize this seems sort of beside the point when the show is compelling, the clothes are to die for, and there's a cultural phenomenon at play, but...I would like to find that some of these people are endearing.

-I also started watching Leverage S1, and they are all more or less endearing. So it is possible.

-I had to pass by a movie theater yesterday (really, pass by...there's one near our Target). Good lord! More enthusiasm than an *NSYNC concert, and I have ample basis for comparison. Somebody tell me that one of you was at a midnight showing in a TEAM ALICE t-shirt. (It must exist, right?)

Awww. It's like Merlin discovered how much I love slow-mo. Slow-mo moments in every episode! (And, as usual, lots of people making cute faces. I do have to marvel at how much of this show's charm hinges on the facial expressions of its four leads.)

I'm going to be sad when this weekend of entertainment and cold medicine is over.

I finished my Voyager rewatch. It sort of boggles me that Voyager has almost no standout episodes -- past S2, it's consistently decent with occasional forays into WTFery, but it has no equivalent of "Best of Both Worlds" or "The Inner Light" or "The Visitor" that one can point to and go, "Ah, yes, that's a fine hour of Star Trek."

On the other hand, there are definitely stronger-ish episodes, and I like how the vast majority of the show's most endearing and enjoyable (IMNSHO) hours deal directly with storytelling, particularly with how Voyager's characters would relate their different stories, with the ways Voyager's own collective story will be perceived by others, and with who gets authorial control. "Living Witness," "Worst Case Scenario," "Muse," "Bride of Chaotica!," "Pathfinder," and "Author, Author" -- as some of their titles might suggest -- all fit this mold. (Then again, technically speaking, so does "Fair Haven.")

Also, Voyager kind of eats the Bechdel test and spits it out. Especially in the way that its men have to ask each other for relationship advice. If there are two women alone together on the screen, it means either (a) the ladies are talking about their relationship with each other, (b) they are trying to resolve some big effin' peril, or (c) the Borg Queen is hate-flirting with Janeway and/or Seven. That ship sailed home on cybernetic lesbianosity, you know.

Um, now I have to figure out if I want to rewatch Enterprise. It's been four years. PROBABLY I DO, OH NO.

ETA: Shit, son, I almost forgot to preorder the movie, which comes out Tuesday. Star Trek coma, ahoy!

My verdict on Twilight is I'm genuinely confuzzled by its success. I was prepared to accept that it is the sort of thing people like if they like that sort of thing, but...I sense from my friends and my frequent jaunts through the YA sections of bookstores that there are puh-lenty of takes on falling for high school vampires, and many of them are written by authors who I suspect understand how annoying it is to see the word "topaz" used more than once in a novel. Then again, lo-fi source has never hurt and often fosters a good fandom, so I suppose Twilight is like...training wheels for its own fanfic. There, I've answered my own question in a single paragraph.

Oh, hulu, please do not be describing Stephen Fry as "Bones guest star Stephen Fry."

I have a cold. I have cough syrup. I have a copy of this Twilight book all the kids are mocking about, which has been shifting through the TBR piles since I got it as a Christmas gift. You know, last Christmas.

What could go wrong?

ETA: There is a typo on PAGE NINE. Page nine of a four-hundred and ninety-eight page book that is the hottest thing since coals. The hell?

Oh, man, sticking Joel Gretsch alongside actors whose culty TV show did get to tie up loose ends makes me grumpy. GRRR.

Other than pilotitis and a serious case of The twist is...that you're an idiot! afflicting the first episode of V, I am on-board with both/all of ABCs endearingly mediocre hyuuuge-ensemble genre offerings this season. I started White Collar, but I'm growing afraid that it's called that because all the female characters of color disappear. And that is all the TV I appear to be watching live this season. Possibly an all-time low.

( the voyager rare pairing that will send me straight to hell if only I can find the fic )

(Please don't judge me.)

Um, unrelatedly, why didn't any of you tell me that Spaced is on hulu??

When The Rock did his (truly awful) episode of Voyager, would anyone have suspected that this dude would have a fairly stable acting career, with an emphasis on kiddie fare, nine years later?

-Sunday night was Friend B.'s wedding. I am only now (Tuesday morning) getting my hangover. Oh, hell. Today should be interesting.

-I haven't watched Three Rivers, but I'm going to hex it for making me have to come downstairs to explain to my mother what is and isn't realistic display technology. Because they apparently bought the holo-projector last seen on Century City.

-I went to the movies for the first time in a while last week, and saw the preview for Sherlock Holmes. WHUT was that? (Memo to self: You still haven't watched Iron Man.)

[When I started this entry, it originally began "I'm in a terribly good mood and ready to deal with luxury problems for a while!" Yeah, then this day axed that. Anyway. It's not like my luxury problems are going to go away either.]

Having killed both my black and brown heels within the past month (yes, I own two pairs of heels, and fail at Girl), I am in the market in a slightly urgent way. Both Nine West Kids and Steve Madden Girl, my occasional rescuers, have betrayed me this season, and are turning up flip-flops, gladiator sandals, and knee boots. I am currently being tormented by the fact that these start in a 6. WHY, CRUEL GOD? We were destined to be together.

I mocked Merlin's kerchief throughout my accelerated viewing of S1, but in the first episode of S2 he doesn't wear it, and I'm all, This is totally wrong. Where is Merlin's binkie? (It may not help that he actually needed a kerchief at one point during the episode, and there was almost zero lady content to distract me.)

( essentially nonspoilery initial reaction to Flashforward )

Um, I never watched V, but the remake trailer looked good. I've probably just offended some die-hard dormant V fandom. Oh well.

This was the first morning I woke up and felt an autumnal chill in the air. Delicious. Bring on the soups, sweaters, slankets, and space heaters.

Unfortunately, I did my waking at 5:30 because a fire detector battery was dying chirpily. It could all be a false start.

Observations from S4 and S5 Voyager, starting to get into the episodes I've only seen once or twice (i.e., those that are woefully unfamiliar to me in comparison to most of modern Trek):

-Ohhhh, right, the very special Nazi two-parter. That sure happened.

-As did "Retrospect." Yeah, I clearly didn't remember seeing this the first time, or I wouldn't have rewatched it. I have no idea how Bryan Fuller and Lisa Klink collaborating ended up in that travesty.

-The fact that there's apparently no pharmaceutical treatment for clinical depression in the twenty-fourth century is . . . depressing.

-Yeek, Ellen Tigh is making out with Chakotay. Yeeeek. (PS - Chakotay sure does not like straightforward chicks. I still maintain that [spoilery relationship spoiler involving Chakotay] makes way more sense than people think, if you look at the ladies Chakotay has macked on prior. Hint: Janeway is the least complicated of the line-up.)

-I realize that "Drone" is a cheap knock-off of TNG's "The Offspring" and, honestly, if you're going to rip off prior entries in the franchise it helps to not pick one of the most beloved and memorable. Whatever: I still like it. It's distracting that One is played by one of the Nazis from the very special Nazi two-parter, but I realize that these episodes come from a kinder, gentler past when people didn't marathon unholy amounts of TV in short time-frames.

-Yeah, let me say that once more: Ellen Tigh made out with Chakotay.