Autumn Anticipation and Summer Recap

For those of us on the east coast of the US, autumn technically begins at 11:09 pm this evening. (The equinox is at 0309 hours UT on September 23; eastern daylight time is UT minus four hours, putting the equinox at 11:09 pm September 22.) I look forward to the fall every year. I look better in fall clothes. I like the 'settling down' feeling everything gets. And midway through the fall is my favorite holiday, Halloween-Samhain. I usually take a few days off around that time and simply chill out.

This summer has been tumultuous. Some of the changes have been good, some have been bad, and some I will feel the implications of for years.

At the beginning of the summer I hung out with few friends. I have begun to do my part to repair some damaged relationships and not only get out of my apartment more, but also get out to actually meet other people. I enter the fall on an improving trend in socializing.

We started the summer frantically trying to figure out what was wrong with Mom's health, and we're ending it with her in rehab recovering from heart valve replacement surgery. In the middle of the summer (literally the middle, since I spent Lammas there) I went to Alabama to visit with my parents for a week. I gained some insights into my family's dynamics, and a new appraisal of my father.

Over the course of the summer I realized I am agnostic, and I left off all pretensions of faith. I simply put aside any attempt at active belief or disbelief, and realized that not only will I not receive answers by divine revelation or insights, but also that I have far more responsibility for my life than I am comfortable with. I reckon I will do well to become accustomed to the discomfort.

One giant honking FAIL this summer: I dropped the ball on initiating an exercise regimen, and on getting my weight down. Surely these are the big projects of the fall.

Finally, I like to note one ten-second moment of awesome that occurred this summer: as I was walking home from the Metro station one weekday evening, I was passed by a runner, a tattooed Asian male, a total mesomorph, zipping past almost silently in his Vibram Five-Fingers footwear. In a word, he encapsulated the athletic and graceful potential of the season. Beautiful.

Summer Television Recap

I watch too much tv. I have it on in the evening, but I'm usually doing other things around my apartment, such as rearranging my books, picking up the apartment, doing the dishes, surfing the net, playing with Manuel, etc. Still I've developed opinions about what to watch and what not to watch. Here's my brief review of this past summer's shows:

1. Burn Notice is still the best summer show. It drooped only a little bit this past season, but over all it stayed strong. The casting remains excellent, and the addition of Coby Bell only served to strengthen the mix.

2. Rubicon is the best new show. Again, it comes down to casting, and James Badge Dale is a brilliant choice for the lead. (Also kudos to Dallas Roberts as the obsessive analyst and Arliss Howard as the Geffenesque boss—complete with gay lover.) The show is so quiet and understated that the understatement becomes part of the creepiness factor. I adore this show.

3. Syfy shows all have formulae, and the formulae are starting to wear thin. I watched Warehouse 13, Eureka and Haven, and I'll still watch them, but as a rule I wouldn't miss them if I spent the evening out with friends. Warehouse 13, due to its strong casting (C. C. H. Pounder is a goddess!) is still the best of these three, and I hope they bring back Claudia's love interest "Todd" (Nolan Gerard Funk—total hottie!).

4. Royal Pains and White Collar are still good shows. The Closer is still epic and at times moving. On the other hand, Rizzoli & Isles did not live up to the hype. It had a potentially good cast hampered by bad writing (they couldn't decide if they wanted another The Closer, or another Bones.)

5. Covert Affairs frustrates me. It features not one, but two total hotties, Sendhil Ramamurthy and Christopher Gorham (whom the directors have been taking pains to show shirtless as much as possible—and he is BUFF!). But the writing is really sloppy at times. The Iraning asylum-seeker episode was downright offensive. I watch it for the flashes of eye-candy.

6. Dark Blue went from disengaging and glacial to downright awful. Even the Logan Marshall-Green eye-candy couldn't pursuade me to tune in by the end of the season.