Nerding Out

This weekend has been very special for a variety of reasons.

First, we bought some plants.  Two different varieties of roses actually.  These roses will be part of what will eventually be the new flower bed in front of our house.  That new flower bed is phase one of the general landscaping that we're finally getting done.  It's been, oh, five or six years since we last had to dig the house up, so I think it'll be fine to do now.

Secondly, we really nerded out.  Like, full on nerd raged out.  Since Saturday morning, we've watched about fourteen episodes of Doctor Who.

I was a pretty big fan of Doctor Who when I was a kid.  Wait, no, let me correct myself.  Like most people my age, I was a pretty big fan of Tom Baker as Doctor Who.  He was the first Doctor I saw, and all Doctors were to be judged by how well they wore an impossibly long scarf and how many offers of Jelly Babies they made to strange monsters made out of paper mache, rubber hose and spray paint.

When I was about twelve, I made a special trip to the United States just so I could have a chance to visit the travelling Doctor Who museum (I'm pretty sure it was sponsored by PBS).  Do not let the fact that I grew up on the border and said journey to the Kings parking lot across the street from the McDonald's only took about twenty minutes to complete take away from the scope of what happened.  I met K9.  I almost touched a real Sonic Screwdriver.  I saw a Dalek.

There were pictures and labels and everything you'd expect from a real museum, only this one was somehow better because it was full of stuff I was really interested in, and yet also worse because it was in the back of a trailer.  And it was in Calais, Maine.  At the risk of possibly losing literally one, maybe even two of my nearly faithful readers, nothing good happens in Calais, Maine.  There's an old story about how St. Stephen was going to change its name to Dover in honour of the whole Calais-Dover relationship between England and France.  I like to imagine that there was a heated debate to discuss the proposal, that lasted long into the night, and then the janitor came in and said "that's a really dumb idea" and then the entire council got really quiet and by mutual unspoken agreement, everyone decided to pretend it never happened and went home to their families and were happy about how much they didn't live in Calais, Maine.

But it's not like I have strong feelings about it or anything.

I was quite excited about watching the new Doctor Who series when it came out, but I was also suspicious.  The Doctors after Tom Baker were not really my cup of tea.  And also, they were made by a BBC that gave it exactly enough budget that they had to reuse the tapes for each new show - and thus almost all of the earliest episodes are completely gone.  We ended up watching a few episodes, but then life got in the way and we stopped watching it.  We did watch a few episodes out of sequence that friends and family told us were amazing, but otherwise we left it alone.

This weekend, we started to catch up.  Words cannot adequately describe the emotions I feel when, at the end of each episode they play the "in the next episode" teaser, My Lovely Wife says "let's watch another".  It was after midnight and we were still watching.  My goodness, I love her.

In other good news for me and for the masses of you, I am moving to a new/old position at work, starting July 16.  This is very good news for me, because this job has been rather taxing on my creativity reserves.  I remember a time when I used to think how nice it would be to at least have the option of working paid overtime... Fingers crossed, in a few weeks, I'll be back to my regular thrice weekly updates!

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