I’m still out of town with the emm visiting the niecettes and will be for the next few days. It’s super muggy here right now, not to mention skies full of dark clouds and rain drops keeping the thunder and lightening company.

The flight was uneventful; the dude sitting next to the emm was seriously hung-over and the smell of booze wafting from him was disgusting. The emm tells me he was quite interested in what I was doing on the computer, kept looking over, trying to read the screen.

Star and Bar are absolutely adorable, naturally. Bar’s starting to talk a wee bit, but nothing quite intelligible yet except the words hi and bye. Star is Star and nothing there’s changed. She’s still her very own little person. Stubborn! Opinionated! Wicked smart.

Somehow, although I’m on vacation, I was able to post the second installment of Sarah Jane Smith - Fashionistsa Fever Part Two, entitled Inspiration Can Trip You Up, But You’ll Be Better for It. It’s been cross-posted at Scary-Crayon, as well. I don’t know about Wes, but I’m just going to sit back and wait for that email from Lis Sladen to hit my mailbox, telling me how much she enjoyed reading the first two parts and looks forward to the next two.

As if!

Oh, I do slay myself sometimes.

I know I’ve been watching more Doctor Who than is likely healthy lately (since Monday, I’ve watched five serials), but I swear it’s only after I spend the first half of the day on my job search. It’s not even that rewarding because there’s something going on with a) the disks, b) the disk drives, and/or c) VLC/Nero. I’ve yet to test the files on my Mac, because I’m afraid to find out it’s really something with the Windows laptop; it’s pretty much totally replaced my television, and if it dies, I’m not sure what I’m going to do, except press Myrna Loynux into service. I hope to God I don’t have to do that, since I’m not good with Linux at all, and I strongly suspect the disks wouldn’t play because there’ll be Something Very Important missing and I’ll have little or no understanding of How To Install Something Very Important.

I’ve an ulterior motive for watching all these serials, at any rate; similar to that project of old, the infamous Pussy Galore Exegesis (which is still lurking on my hard drive, needing only a good editing and minor rewriting, but still technically unfinished for all of that), which is a typical-of-Mickey over-analysis of the character, her wardrobe, and her sexual orientation, there’s another typical-of-Mickey over-analysis of Sarah! Jane! Smith! and the improvements seen in both her wardrobe (pink striped sox and cammies!) and hair over her time with the Doctor, a thought mentioned a few days ago in an earlier post. Never mind how the character of S!J!S! improved so much; what’s important here is the superficial things…clothing and hair. Wes expressed some interest in an article for Scary-Crayon, and since I do enjoy the over-analysis of such things, I jumped at the chance. I’ve found on a disk all the screencaps uploaded to Flickr of most of the serials in question some months ago now, so I won’t have to download the ones I want to use, thank goodness. What I will have to do, however, is figure out what the hell’s going on with the tele-laptop because the way it’s running now, I couldn’t get a good screencap if my life depended on it.

Maybe I should just reinstall VLC. Maybe it’s been corrupted somehow. Oh, wait. I know…Tammy corrupted it, Tammy and her rubber dinosaur boyfriend. I think it’s all over but the shouting, then.

Still working on clearing out the folder where I keep all sorts of random images for inclusion in future posts. It’s not going so well because I keep adding things to the folder faster than I’m posting them. The two pictures here are of Star and Bar. The top photo of Bar shows what seems to be a magical flying high-chair tray; what is not pictured is el cunado holding the tray just outside the border of the photo. Makes it that much more interesting, I think, because it really does look like the damn thing is airborne. The second photo shows Star’s unnervingly intense blue eyes; this is one of my favorite pictures because of the subject and because it came out so perfectly. No doctoring on either photo, no cropping, either. These are straight from the Fuji.

I suspected weeks ago I was very possibly overdosing on Who: to wit, this incident which cemented the truth of my suspicion. I was still rather sick, but not sick enough to say sick as a dog and walked outside for the first time in days, only to see this random scene and…

the absolute first thought to cross my mind was Doctor Who, specifically The Sontaran Experiment:

I’m not making this up because I can’t; I’m simply not that creative. We happened to be outside on Wednesday and the sister had put everything back in the yard after the lawn guys had been mowed it the day before. It was our last chance to get any family pictures taken (there are not many of the sister, the niecettes, and Auntie all together in one photo), so we decided to take advantage of it. After a few shots of us and then the sister, el cunado, and the niecettes, I turned to walk back to the picnic table and saw the beach balls there on the lawn, laid out like so many transmat thingies. In my still slightly feverish state, I seriously expected any one of the TARDIS crew - or any combination thereof - to magically appear among the orbs in the sister’s backyard. Well…not really. That’s a wee bit of exaggeration, naturally, but still somewhat accurate for all that.

Another sure sign is laughing outloud at the villians because they’re just so ridiculous. I mean, really…the Nimon looked more like a Mithric sacrificial bull in drag, and the Mandrels had bell-bottomed legs. I understand it was the 1970s and all, but how seriously can anyone take villians who look like mutant refugees from late in that decade ? Those are the two most recent serials I’ve watched and actually decided mention the absolute absurdity of the villians, at least from a visual standpoint. I may have to do this on a more regular basis, since I find it so amusing.

Possibly one of the strangest and most alarming signs I’ve been watching too much Who and should branch out into other things (I’ve certainly got enough backlogged to keep me busy for quite a while, even without a job) is giving serious thought to including on the sidebar a list of companions with/who is the:

• Best/worst hair
• Best/worst wardrobe overall
• Best/worst single outfit in an episode
• Best/worst lines
• Most/least annoying attitude
• Most/least annoying overall
• Favorite overall
• Favorite of the moment

et cetera, et cetera.

This brilliant idea actually came to me as I watched The Horns of Nimon and found myself admiring Romana’s hair; not only is it a beautiful shade of blonde, but it almost always looked freshly brushed and shining, and it’s so long. I know from experience that’s almost an impossibility, well…at least with my hair, anyway, and especially at that length.

I sincerely commend her on the lack of Marcia Brady-ness to her hair, especially because it’s one length and parted in the center. Some of us are not lucky enough to have attractive cowlicks, or the ability to believe cowlicks can be a hair-fashion plus and not a total minusy minus minus.

Naturally, Romana 2 would win that category, hairbrushes…hands down, although S!J!S!’s hair improved about a billion percent between her first and last appearances. For that matter, so did her wardrobe. That, though is a post worthy of exclusivity and will definitely appear one day, complete with screen caps.

Thank goodness Romana wasn’t wearing one of those odd little hats this time around! I really don’t like them; the only hat I’ve liked on any companion is the purple and green number Romana 1 sported. Oh, and of course, I love the knit cap S!J!S! donned for The Sontaran Experiment (see the picture above-she’s so adorable!).

There were a couple more things I was going to list here, but they’ll have to wait for now. Maybe when I get around to posting them, there will be additional signs to know you’ve watched too much Doctor Who.

I swear to the gods in Valhalla that I’m going to post stuff about my trip. Soon. But until then, I leave you with this clip from YouTube, full of Sarah! Jane! goodness (there’s no other kind of S!J! !!) and an adorable outfit (and another pair of striped sox…I <3 striped sox), not to mention something nasty in the plastic box she's carrying...

The Hand of Fear (1976)

I’m just sorry it’s not a clearer shot…hey, that’s a great excuse to watch the serial again!

There comes a time in one’s life when it becomes apparent one has too much of something, be it CDs, DVDs, books, dishes, shoes…t-shirts. I fall into the category of someone with far too many t-shirts, and yet I keep buying them. In fact, I bought two more just last night. Below is just a small sampling of my collection (an ever-growing one, at that), all from my favorite cyberspace t-shirt store, DJTees.

I’ve taken to wearing fancy socks at the factory, much to the amusement of my factory-mates. These two screen caps illustrate where I got the inspiration, although I do draw the line at camouflage pants with tie-ties at the ankles. I’ll keep to the socks, thanks, and just…um…admire those who wear the camouflage pants with the tie-ties and the pink striped socks at the same time.

In all honesty, the socks themselves are not all that fancy; the fanciest pair is indeed a pair of pink striped socks, although the stripes are pink and white, not a lighter pink and a darker pink, as worn by Miss Smith. Although I eschew the camouflage pants, I do put my own slight military twist to the outfit by combining these lovely, girly socks with my beloved steel-toed combat boots and a pair of jeans with the cuffs rolled up just enough so the socks are just visible when standing, and more than visible when sitting.

Put that together with Leather Kate and a new preferred hairdo, it’s quite a look. Unfortunately, I’m unable to find a picture of that particular inspiration at the moment. I’ll have to search my files, for I think there’s one hiding somewhere.

This screen cap is simply and unabashedly gratuitous, although if you look closely enough, more of the ensemble is visible. But really? It’s only included here because it’s Sarah! Jane! Smith!.