dear isobel

I love watching television. I always have mine on, even if I’m not watching it. I like the background noise. So when I became unemployed last fall, I was able to clear out all the shows on my DVR that had been piling up.

What to do with my unbearable amount of free time, I wondered? The answer was of course, daytime television. Not soap operas. I already watch one and I don’t have the energy for another. Not talk shows. They annoy me. What’s left?

The daytime small claims court shows. And wow, since the last time I checked, their number had tripled. So I decided to try a few out and over the last two months, I’ve watched an episode of almost all of them (I might have missed one or two) and for those of you at home looking for something to watch, maybe this will help you.

Cristina’s Court – The first few times I watched this, I really enjoyed it. Judge Cristina was very sympathetic, very emotional and I almost always agreed with her. And then the parade of celebrities started. Not actual celebrities but like F-list celebrities like Butch Patrick from The Musters, or some blonde chick from the Cathouse on HBO. Chyna, the wrestler. Miss India. And every time they came on, Cristina would stop and introduce them with some clips or go over their career and it just got to be too much. It was less about the case and more about the people and that was so boring to me.

Divorce Court – It’s a shame that I had to stop watching this one as well. I really really liked the judge. She’s smart and funny and her judgments were always sound — but every episode was exactly the same – some woman thinking her man was cheating on her. It was insane and I just couldn’t sit through it anymore. If the judge ever switches shows, I’ll tune in.

Judge Alex – I only just set this on my DVR but so far I like it. He’s great at interrogation, which means nothing slips through and no one can get away with anything.  The jury’s still out on this one, but so far it’s a keeper.

Judge David Young – I also really like this one. He’s very smart, very funny and I can’t think of one show where I didn’t agree with him.

Judge Joe Brown – Also a recent addition to the DVR. He’s very technical and low key — uses a lot of big words, which in itself is fine, but over a half hour, it can feel like too much. I might drop this one from the DVR if that proves to be the case more often than not.

Judge Judy – The classic. She has no room for bullshit, doesn’t waste any time on back stories and I can’t think of a single time I disagreed with her. She was a late addition to the line up but still a keeper.

Judge Maria Lopez – I’ve watched her since the beginning of the experiment and at the time, I liked her. But the longer I watch, the less I enjoy it. Something about her grates the nerves after a while. She’s very smart and she knows it. She takes great delight in treating the people in her courtroom like lesser individuals, even those in the right. I might drop this one.

Judge Mathis – Nine times out of ten, I think he’s fabulous. He’s very funny and interesting and I almost always agree with his judgments. But he tends to harp on the fact that he grew up in Detroit and constantly asks people about drugs, if they were on it, if they sell it, if they were ever addicted and it’s a little much.  But for the most part, I like him.

People’s Court - Ah, Judge Marilyn Milan. My absolute favorite. She’s incredibly fair, even when she doesn’t want to be and she’s not afraid to take anyone to task if she feels like they’re in the wrong. She’s the best one on television by far and if you’re going to watch just one judge show — I think the classic People’s Court is the one.

Once I’m back at work full time, I won’t have the time to watch television like I can now, so lot of the shows I watch on a daily basis will have to be cut but for now, while I have the time, they’re fun to watch.

Title: The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes Author(s): Anne Stuart, Jennifer Crusie and Eileen Dreyer Purchase: Amazon Grade: A -

I love and adore Jennifer Crusie and I’m usually in line to purchase her books on the day they come out but I waited to buy this and I’ll tell you why: I’m not a fan of books that are written by more than one author and I’m not a huge fan of anthologies. I had never read anything by Anne Stuart and I had never even heard of Eileen Dreyer, so I decided to wait a while until I had some extra money.

I’m sorry that I was so quick to judge — this is a very fun and fast-paced novel, one of the hallmarks of a fabulous Crusie novel. At first, I wasn’t able to tell which author wrote each character but as soon as Mare’s story got going, I could pick out Crusie’s voice very easily. That didn’t mean that Lizzie and Dee were not as fun or well-written, but after reading everything I can get my hands Crusie-wise and then reading it again, it was easy to pick out her contributions.

The reason that I gave it an A- is simply that I felt in some ways the stories were just a little too fast. It takes place over a weekend and usually, I can overlook that sort of thing. A great number of romance novels take place over a short amount of time and the mark of a really fabulous author is to make you forget that everything you just read happened in a matter of days. I wasn’t able to get there. Mare’s story was easier to believe because her true love was a man from her past and I could believe her story having a resolution in about forty-eight hours.

But it was hard to buy Lizzie and Elric and Dee and Danny in particular. I just didn’t feel it. I could feel they were very attracted to each other but I just couldn’t see their resolution as neatly. The authors were trying to submerge you into this entire world and I just never quite had a handle on it.

In the end though, it was well-written, the characters were fun and easy to read and I would not have minded longer books (or even a trilogy with a different book from a different author). Even if some aspects of the book were not exactly what I wanted, I still enjoyed it thoroughly and now I have two new authors to track down.

I watch a few different series that cover real life crime stories. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine and I can’t imagine a week without my 48 Hours Mystery, City Confidential, American Justice, or Cold Case Files and those are just the ones I watch all the time. I like to flick through the different channels to find random episodes of other series to tape.

The upside to this is occasionally the same series covers the same story and you get a chance to get an update. A&E’s American Justice covered the Marty Tankleff case. He was convicted in his late teens of murdering his parents on Long Island and has been fighting for release ever since. There were a lot of interesting elements to the case — unfair interrogation techniques, investigation procedures and even some celebrity help (James Gandolfini showed up at a hearing) but American Justice ended with Marty still in jail. I think the show was produced between 2003-2005, I can’t remember the exact date.

This morning, I watched an episode of CBS’s 48 Hours Mystery that taped last night and I almost deleted it from the DVR when I realized that it was the same case. But then I remembered that American Justice had been a few years ago and maybe there was some new developments. I was glad I watched because this time, the show (produced within the last year and first aired in 2008) ended with Marty being released and starting college on Monday.

It’s nice to know my television addiction has an upside

I bought two new books to add to my ever growing computer application library. This purchase brings the total to, er, five. I’m working on it

I bought Excel 2007: The Missing Manual for Starters and Wordpress for Dummies. I bought the Excel book because I want to expand what I know about the program, obviously. I know how to do a lot of basic functions, but I’ve only scratched the surface. I’d like to be able to do more complicated things. I bought the Wordpress book because I’m trying to learn how to create my own themes and I haven’t quite found anything online that I like. It’s also a nice resource just in case.

The other books I have are more web design oriented. Two are about PHP/MySQL and the other is CSS. I want to pick up a few more designed for XHTML, Search Engine Optimization and whatnot. It never hurts to do some research.

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I never thought I’d be one of those people who’d enjoy ebooks. My favorite thing about reading is turning off the computer (but never the television!) and putting up my feet to read a tangible book. I like the different covers, I like being able to see the books lined up on my bookshelves — which was fine when I started to work and didn’t have a large amount of books.

Whenever I think about my lack of savings and money to spend, all I have to do is look to my right and see my huge bookshelves crammed with over 600 romance novels and another 150 random reference, history, mystery and true crime novels. I’m at the point where it’s going to be very difficult for me to continue purchasing without making more room, a fact that’s not entirely possible with the amount of room I have to work with. It’s actually a big factor in the reason I’d like to start saving to move into my own apartment (with the current debt to salary ratio, it’s not looking likely), I want more space to myself.

So with my diminishing available to store space, I started to look into ebooks. I found two sites that I browse regularly: Ebooks and Ereader. Ebooks didn’t necessarily require me to download anything extra, but they recommended Adobe Digital Editions, which uses less system resources and is a bit more light weight than Adobe Acrobat Reader. That’s fine. Their prices are about the same as bookstore prices and the selection is decent (not always what I’d like.)

Ereader does require separate software, which they provide for free. They have a huge selection of books that mostly unavailable to me in the bookstores or will cost me more money online and there are discounts in their newsletters, so I’ve bought about 10 books for about $40, which is a decent discount over what I would pay in the stores, full price with gas mileage.

All in all, I enjoy Ereader more. I will always try them before going to Ebooks. The selection and prices are better and I like the interface a bit more. But I like both sites in the end and I recommend anyone with my space issues look into the idea of ebooks as an answer. Because, hell, not buying books or selling the ones you have is never the answer. Selling my books! Would you sell your child?

On a site note, I added an events calendar to help me keep track of my favorite author releases, domain renewals, birthdays, bills, paychecks, etc and I added a quotes plugin. There isn’t a huge selection of quotes available but I’m working on it.