...hadn't blogged for days.

I have a tendency to get locked into things and spend a lot of time on them without accomplishing anything.  This weekend was one of those.  The kids and I spent way too much time in front of computers on Saturday (so much so that the end of daylight savings time afforded me another hour of burning my eyes out), breaking only to get necessities done.  A good time was had by all.

So I got up surprisingly awake and seriously unshaved on Sunday with a goal of not getting on the computers all day.  I did so by simply running maintenance (spyware, optimization, antivirus, disk defrag), so while they were technically on, no one was doing anything (and thus the silence until Monday morning).  What my plan was for the day was to get stuff cleaned up, as well as not bog down and get locked into a malaise.

However, I noticed something on the now-banned network, SyFy (formerly the Sci-Fi Channel, now a network with a stupid-asssed name that I mispronounce si-fee).  It's the original V miniseries.  I'd heard that ABC was doing a reboot of the series (similar to Battlestar Galactica, except probably shittier).  But I had wondered if I could find the original miniseries online.  So, seeing it was on all day, I flipped it on. 

This was a series we watched as a family back in 1983, and the second in 1984.  I was yet to be 10.  This was before TiVo, before cable, before we even had a VCR.  This was event viewing.  We actually rolled the TV to the kitchen doorway to watch it while eating (we could do that in those days).  For me, it had aliens and something vaguely reminiscing of Star Wars (as the original series aired between Empire and Jedi, when Vader being Luke's father was still a revelation).  Looking back, it was intended to be that way, referencing the Trilogy on the news early in the movie and having a marching band murdering John Williams' main theme for a couple of minutes. 

Obviously, this time around, I got a lot more of the references, like the whole Nazi theme.  And overall, the series held up, despite some laughable special effects (the skin peeling wasn't bad, but the baby lizard puppet was ridiculous).   Of course, I expected it to look a little hokey, as it was in the days of optical compositing.  Any creatures before the days of digital (with the notable exception of Yoda) look humorous now.  But since it was mostly about people and the Visitors (who conveniently never took off their people skins), most special effects were either sticking a ship in the air or shooting lasers and blowing up shit.


But progress was made, and my living room is clear.  The kitchen is in ok shape (nothing that a little cleaning won't solve.  The kids' bedroom is easy.  My room is still a grabtastic clusterfuck.  But as i have some time to clean and it's cold enough to not let the kids run outside, it should be possible to get shit clean.  If I can stay off the Internet most of today, that is.

And since one of my friends just got into town (from New Zealand), I'll probably be busier than usual....