We now pause

I did something last night I haven’t done in ages…watched part of a hockey game. It was game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals between Edmonton and Carolina. I tuned in partway into the second period and watched to the end of the third. Our NBC reception sucks, which is probably a good thing or else I’d spend all my time watching Law and Orders. I managed to get the rabbit ears (link provided for anyone who’s never encountered such a thing before) so I could see that one team was in dark uniform and one in light. Took me about four minutes to discern which was which. Never did actually see the puck. Mostly I listened while I read (The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl—a bit of a disappointment so far). When regulation play ended in a tie, I packed it in, but was pleased to see that Edmonton pulled off a short-handed goal in overtime to send the series back to Alberta for game 5 on Saturday night. I think I’ll go to the pub to see that one.

I watched Time-Flight the other night. Starts out with a decent premise, a missing Concorde. The putative villain seemed intriguing, until he turned out merely to be the Master again. I couldn’t help but wonder why he didn’t just jump his TARDIS inside the chamber he had all those passengers slaving away to open up. I find him dreary and a much more interesting story could have been had with the original guise, the sort-of-Chinese/Arabian mystic babbling away to himself. I was surprised that Tegan got left behind. Supposedly the first-ever time anyone filmed on board a real Concorde. The flight attendant character mysteriously disappears half-way through the story, too, never to be seen again! Though it had some interesting bits, not my favorite episode.

A friend sent me a manuscript to read over, so I didn’t get any writing done this morning, and probably won’t until the weekend. Probably just as well—I’m working on a new story, but it needs a little more time to gel and I also have to go through a bunch of research material since it is a period piece that requires a certain degree of verisimilitude.