I finished the first revision round on the WiP, reducing it from 4400 words to 4000 in the progress, which is pretty much par for the course. I tend to overwrite by about 10% in the first draft. Another day or so of molding and reshaping and off it goes to the editor.
I hate it when I get really good news, but it comes with a request not to blog or tweet about it for the time being. Well, the bit about “blogging or tweeting about it” is fairly recent. Used to be they said “don’t talk about it.” Talking is so passé.
I got a CARE package last night. What did it contain? Timbits. Just yesterday morning they were in a Tom Hortons in Halifax and by supper time they were in my eager hands. For those who don’t know, Timbits are doughnut holes. Or, rather, what is removed from the doughnut to make a hole. Yummy.
I had my second acupuncture experience today. This time she hooked up four of the needles in my lower back to a TENS unit to provide electrical stimulation, too. That was great.
The snake guy was back at it on Survivor last night. First new shot of the episode: a snake. And then two shots after that, another snake. At least there was a very cool clip of a preying mantis eating. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.
Do you think Jeff Probst knew there was talk around camp that people were considering quitting? He sure banged that theme home during the Gulliver competition. “Nobody’s giving up,” he said, over and over again. He seems more determined to press teams to perform in the middle of competitions. I don’t remember him doing that so much in the past.
I used to think it was lame when they had movie night on Big Brother, but having it on Survivor was even worse. It always seems like the contestants are primed to say good things about the show, although I think I heard one of them mutter about how fat Jack Black is. If it was supposed to be a promo for the film, though, it had the opposite effect on me. A horde of Lilliputians couldn’t drag me to see it.
NaOnka should meet Sarah Palin. They’re both so good and coming up with new words that are almost but not quite what they mean to say. This week it was “smuffed,” which sounds sorta naughty. Her torch was smuffed out. I was hoping she or Kelly would tell Jeff they thought their torches should be thrown in the fire. It really sucks that those two end up on the jury, but apparently the producers were sticking to precedent.
Things got interesting when the two self-evictees got to Ponderosa. For the first full day, Alina wouldn’t have anything to do with them, hiding out in her cabin. Brenda was really good with them, and her example helped Marty figure out how to welcome them as well. I think she’s a pretty smart cookie, even if it sort of backfired on her in the game. This isn’t the game any more, Brenda reasoned. We’re meeting them in the real world now.
When SVU started this week with a scene in Olivia’s apartment with her foster child, I thought: this is getting old. Then I laughed when Elliot seemed to mirror my thoughts. “How long is this going to go on?” No matter how much they flaunt police procedure, no matter how many times they rub Cragen’s authority in the dirt, they always seem to get away with it unpunished. I was hoping it was Cragen who had somehow deep-sixed Olivia’s parental rights. Question: do people routinely get shot on the steps of, on the sidewalk near or in the parking garage of the courthouse in New York? Cause it seems that way based on TV shows. Most dangerous place in the city.
Law & Order: Los Angeles riffed on the Tiger Wood sex addiction debacle. The Tiger stand-in was a guy who had to pay his wife $1 million every time she caught him cheating—and she caught him a lot. The guy’s favorite thing to do was to pay three women to spend the night with him, which led to Skeet Ulrich’s character asking him, “What is it with you and foursomes. Is it a golf thing?” His partner, upon hearing that a stalker was loitering outside a hotel and texting the object of her desires for hours, said, “How did people work out their crap before cell phones?”
