Things in the Snarke House are… in transition? I guess that’s a pretty good description of the goings on around here.  Will had his first official day of grad school today.  When we thought about this day a couple of months ago, it was supposed to be the start of a brand new schedule of just class, studying and paid by the hour research he’s doing on a study being commissioned through PSU. He was supposed to be all the way done at his non-school job for about a week now.  Unfortunately, that job only *just* started interviews to replace him last Friday so he’s still having to go in for a few hours each day until they find someone they like.  This means that we won’t have anything even remotely resembling a set schedule for at least a couple of more weeks (if we ever get one at all).

Ask me how I’m dealing with THAT.  Or just listen for the sound of slamming kitchen cabinets and suss it out for yourself. 

In other news: Premiere Week! The greatest week of all weeks!

I haven’t finished watching all of the new television that I saved on our DVR last week. I still need to watch the Undercovers, Blue Bloods and…for some reason I really want to say The Expendables, but that was a movie.

Anyway:

I loved just about every single thing I sat down and watched last week.  The only show that I have reservations about is Sh*@! (or whatever the symbols are) My Dad Says.  I want to like it.  I like the idea of William Shatner being this generation’s Archie Bunker, but I am leery of something based off of a funny Twitter stream. My favorite two lines of the episode were when the guy at the DMV said the line about Sesame Street and William Shatner’s lamenting “why can’t anyone do a decent impression of me?” I also kind of love that nobody can say the actual title so they all say “Bleep My Dad Says” instead.

Honestly? I’m really glad that television is trending back toward the half hour situational live comedy. I think I’ve lamented here about the lack of sitcoms over the last few years as just about everything went to single camera narratives and I’m glad to see the return of the laugh track. At the risk of sounding like a pretentious douche, the sitcom is the closest we’ll ever get to live theater on television and I heart them. Even when they’re terrible.

That said, I’m not sure what my favorite premiere was. It would be easy to go with Big Bang Theory or Grey’s Anatomy—two shows I knew I’d love no matter what.  At the same time, Glee inspired an impromptu dance party in my living room with my cat (who was far less thrilled about the dance party than I was) and House went in a totally different direction than what I was expecting and was a really nice surprise.

To be honest with you, I don’t know if I’m the best person to really “review” the fall lineup.  I am not at all critical when it comes to television.  If it entertains me then I’m pretty happy with it.

What about you? New favorites? Pleasant surprises? Anything you wanted to catch but missed?

About an hour and a half ago I sat down with every intention of writing out a blog post.  Then I remembered that I had gotten a text message from my Mom that was responding to a text message I had sent her. I decided to call her instead of type.  90 minutes later, here I am. I have to leave in fifteen minutes to go meet Will at work so that we can do some very! exciting! shopping! that I was going to blog about already but now don’t really have the time to do that.  So, instead I will give you a recappy list of awesome stuff from this week in my world:

Premiere Week!

Shopping! (which is tonight, really, but I’m including it anyway)

Yummy Dinners!

“Window” Shopping! (aka looking lustfully at things in stores that you cannot currently afford to buy and, really, are kind of glad that you can’t afford to buy because then your house would be chock full of stuff like whatever it is you’re looking at and your apartment isn’t really big enough to handle that volume of stuff)

Saving Lots of Money!

Premiere Week! (worth mentioning twice I think)

You know, to see if I like it.  So far, a headline and a sentence and a half in, I really like it.  I like that I can see how my post will look as I’m typing instead of having to wonder how it will look when its finished. 

Why am I changing up how I write now? Dunno… I’ve been trying to find a good place to write my blog posts outside of the actual WordPress interface for a while now.  I tried MS Word. Transferring from Word to WordPress was a giant hassle and everything looked weird.  I tried the plain text editor. That was just…no.

So far this feels pretty okay.  Apparently its super easy to add things in here like photos, etc.  We’ll see how it plays out!

I’ve noticed that, over the last few days, most of my traffic has come from people searching for “W00tstock Dallas” on Google. This is both neat and a little scary for me as, well, I’m happy to help promote the show in whatever little way I can (and if reading my Wootstock post persuades you to buy a ticket then that makes me really happy) but I know that there isn’t a lot of concrete information about the show here.  I mean, why would there be? I’m not a part of it (yet. HINT HINT W00TSTOCK PLANNER PEOPLE).  I’m just a geeked out audience member. So, before I forget: if you are looking for concrete information on the show, how to demand it in your area and how to buy tickets, etc, go to the official W00tstock site. If you’d like someone to just geek out with about the show, then hi! Let’s be BFFs! Colon Close Parenthesis (totally cribbing off of Big Bang Theory on that but whatever).

I also thought I’d use this post to talk a little bit about something that I noticed on Twitter today–something W00tstock related, I swear.

You probably already know that the final W00tstock performance run for 2010 was announced this morning.  If not, you can find out more at the W00tstock site (see that link up there?).  You probably also know that, due to a scheduling conflict, Wil Wheaton won’t be able to be at those shows, at least not in person.

Trust me when I tell you that the show is still worth seeing.

This morning, after the announcement went up, my Twitter stream exploded with people bitching about the lack of Wheatonian goodness in the final shows of the year.  I saw some people saying “wow, I hope this doesn’t happen if they want to come to my town” and “wow I hope that if the show comes back to my town it will still have him in it.”

I get it. I really get it.  If you’ve known me for more than ten minutes you already know that I am an uber geek for Wil Wheaton.  I can’t say that I wouldn’t have a moment of “aw nuts” if it turned out that he couldn’t be a part of the next W00tstock that I get to see and I certainly don’t want to deny anybody his or her right to express themselves in whatever non-dickian way they see fit. But! I promise that the show will still be awesome! I have absolute faith that you will still have a good time.

Remember: W00tstock is not just about Wil Wheaton (as much as we all heart the guy).  It’s also about Paul and Storm, Adam Savage, (usually) Molly Lewis, whatever Wheatonian Stand Ins they get and a whole host of other acts that they book for the evening.  Mostly, the show is about you: inspiring you, entertaining you and giving you a safe and fun space in which to geek out without the fear of being harshly judged by someone who doesn’t get it.

This could quickly turn into a love letter to the show but I’ve kind of already written that. I just figured I’d use my recent Google given powers for good and not, say, forcing you to look at pictures of my cat (though she is seriously cute).

Also: for those of you wondering, the PAX post is still percolating.

Yesterday I told Will that I was going to need to go to a movie some time this week because “I need to think.”  He didn’t get it.  Apparently it’s weird to do your best thinking in a movie theater. Who knew?  That’s where, at least in my adult life, I’ve always gone when I am too deep into my own headspace and am not as able to talk myself down out of trees or off of ledges.  Don’t worry too much–I just have a lot to think about.

The summer was kind of rough–money wise, getting along wise, you know how it goes.  Judging by the tone of some of the other blog posts that I’ve been reading over the last few weeks I’m not the only one who is ready to turn the page from summer to fall and, hopefully, stop feeling so damn cranky and gruff all the time. I’m also toying with the idea of starting a project.  A project that could potentially balloon totally out of my control and I need to do some thinking about how I most want to approach it or if I want to just put it up on a shelf for now while we work to get our, well, everything under control.  See? There’s a heck of a lot going on up in this brain of mine.

A few housekeeping things:

I’m still trying to figure out my approach for my PAX post.  I’ll tell you now that the weekend at PAX was not quite as relevatory (whatever, it’s a word now) as my evening spent at W00tstock. Still, I noticed some things and want to explore them.

I changed my blog theme!  I truly love the theme that Carissa made for me but, with the changing of the seasons comes the time to change the theme.  It’s getting to be fall (especially here where early winter already seems to be setting in) so I wanted something with more muted shades.  Plus, I am really proud of my header.  I made it all by myself!  Those stripes? Were a bitch and a half to make, but I’m super proud of them. The superfluous capitalization of “cellulite” isn’t really something I meant to do, but meh. It’s not just cellulite that has landed, it’s Cellulite! That’s way more important (I totally almost just used asterisks just now to emphasize the word “way” because I switched over to Twitter mode for a second)!

I’m trying valiantly to get back into my blogging groove and to figure out a regular schedule.  Will’s schedule is going to be changing drastically any day now, so it’s hard for me to figure out what kind of approach I want to take to my day.

And finally: yesterday I ordered a month’s worth of meat from New Seasons.  You can do this online and then go pick it up (or if you want to spend five more dollars, have them deliver it to you). You can do this with pretty much everything in the store and you know? If all of the “middle of the store” stuff (side dishes, baking supplies, breakfast stuff, etc) weren’t so damn expensive I would have done all of our grocery shopping that way.  I will definitely be doing our monthly meat order this way from now on.  So easy!

Finally finally: tonight is our first fully homecooked meal in, oh, months. We? Ate like crap this summer. For serious. Wow. I’m kind of ashamed.  Not now, though! We have meat! And mostly stocked cabinets! So tonight we’re making grilled chicken, baked potatoes and corn. NOM. Nommity nom nom nom.

As I write this, rain sheets down my computer room window, Jonathan Coulton’s “JoCo Looks Back” album is playing over Rhapsody and the cat is asleep on the top of the desk.

It’s cozy.  It’s exactly the kind of afternoon I’ve been waiting to have again since the weather got all hot and sunny. I am really glad it’s fall (okay, technically not for a couple of weeks). Fall is my very favorite time of year.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we didn’t have a blast sending off summer.  We said goodbye to summer by spending the weekend in a dark and booming Expo Hall at PAX. It was fun.

I’m still working out my major feelings surrounding some of the experiences that I had over the weekend. Hopefully it will not take as long for me to post them as it did for me to write about W00tstock. For now, here are the highlights:

People watching while we waited in line to play Dragon Age 2 (and pretty much the whole time)

Making friends while waiting in lines to talk to Wil Wheaton and watch the Saturday night concert

Eating at Johnny Rockets again for the first (and second) time since college

“Discovering” Jonathan Coulton at the Saturday night concert (yeah, I’m really late to the party on that one).

Getting to see Paul and Storm perform again

Getting to talk to Paul and Storm twice!

Getting to talk to Wil Wheaton again!

Hanging out with my awesome sister in law who let us stay at her house for the weekend

In just a few minutes Will is going to get home from work.  We’ll load up the car and be on our way to PAX!  Hurrah!

I am not sure what I am happiest about most right now:

The prospect of spending a couple of days watching my husband geek out over the hobby he loves the very mostest in the whole wide worldest

Hopefully getting to spend thirty seconds talking to a certain Wil Wheaton so that I can thank him for featuring my W00tstock post (no time to link it, will be leaving any minute now) on his blog.  Because, you know, thanking him on Twitter, in the comments on his blog, in a blog post of my own and through e-mail is not enough.  Will (husband–notice the double l) once told me that I only need thismuch encouragement to get T H I S  B I G  A  R E S P O N S E.  I wonder if this kind of makes his point.

Getting to spend some time with my sister in law, who is very graciously letting us crash on her floor even though everybody else she has ever met has also decided to descend on her this weekend.

The cushy insoles that we bought to make Will’s last pair of shoes more comfortable fit my feet too so I stole them to make my own shoes more comfortable this weekend (what? he has newer shoes and won’t miss them).

Have a super fantastic weekend!