Semi-Daily Question: Which Fall TV season premieres are you looking forward to? Or has your show already started?

From That's My Answer!: Which Fall TV season premieres are you looking forward to? Or has your  show already started?

Oh, man. This week is crazy with shows I'm looking forward to. I review TV for a number of sites, and it's always hard to keep up when they're all airing, and it's especially hard when I have school deadlines at the same time as everything is returning!

I've already seen Castle and Bones come back, as well as Hawaii Five-0 and Grimm. I review the first two, and watch the second two when I can. I caught the Mindy Project, NCIS and NCIS:LA last night, and I have to catch up on Revolution, HIMYM, and 2 Broke Girls. I'm really, really looking forward to Person of Interest and The Mentalist and Fringe coming back, and I'm even a little excited about Elementary, even though I don't really like Johnny Lee Miller as an actor, and I'm such a fan of the BBC Sherlock that I had to get over it when they announced this one. But still--it's Sherlock, right? There's also Big Bang Theory, and I'm interested in Last Resort--mostly to see how they can possibly keep the story going when it's a story of a face-off. And I might catch 666 Park Ave, just to see how Terry O'Quinn continues to take over every show on TV. And there's Doctor Who, too, though that one is about to go on break, right after it breaks my heart.

And I'm looking forward to Supernatural and Arrow and Beauty And The Beast, but those aren't for a few weeks yet.

The thought of being excited about only one show feels way alien to me. I mean, I love these shows (the ones I've seen, anyway) for their stories and their characters and their potentials for love, and if it hooks me, I want to know what happens next. I want to watch them all every week, but that's impossible--especially on Mondays and Thursdays, when everything is on. I have to decide which ones I'll review and keep up with, and which ones I'll catch up with later.

So what's you're answer?

Wednesday Worksheets: Submissions Tracker, Shopping List and Gratitude Journal

This is part of a series of worksheets to help you organize your life! Click the tag for more!

This week we have:

• Submissions Tracker: This can be used for stories, novels, articles, or, really, anything else that needs to be submitted, because it's a very straight-forward sheet. There's space for the date, the item being submitted, who it was sent to, and how long they take to read it, as well as to note a pay rate and whether or not it was accepted. You can use a sheet for multiple projects going out at a time, or you can use a whole sheet for multiple subs of one project.
• Shopping List: A nice itemized and totally open shopping list divided by Staples, Fruits and Veggies, Meats, Dairy, Proteins, Canned and Dry goods, Starches, and Household goods.
• Gratitude Journal: Some people note their gratitudes daily, others just when they need to remember something, but this sheet will help with both. There's several cells per sheet, with space for the date and for three things you're feeling grateful for. 

If there are any worksheets you would like to see, drop me a line or a comment, and I'll see what I can do!

Self-censorship is giving someone else your life

(from: http://fjordlord.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/the-good-the-bad-and-the-silent-when-the-media-wont-tell-the-whole-story)

There's a difference between knowing when to keep your mouth shut and removing parts of your life, and we're talking about the second one here. It could be a political issue, but really I'm talking about the personal level: say you just broke up with someone or lost a good friend to a bad fight or were fired from a job. If you go back through your history--all your pictures and belongings and blog posts and mementos--and remove everything that reminds you of that thing you lost, you're letting them win. You're willingly handing over a part of your own life, and you're therefore giving it up, declaring that your own experience doesn't matter and isn't important enough to keep, to metabolize, to make sense of.

Sounds dumb, doesn't it?

It's a symptom of victim mentality, really. If your own experiences don't matter enough to keep and to learn from, does anything you do or say even belong to you? And if you don't own your own mind, your own past, who does?

So don't do it. Don't excise the painful parts. Don't give up your own life because it hurts. The sore parts are the parts that define what we do in the future, and who we are when we come out of it. Instead, learn from them. Work through them. Feel the pain and feel your way out of it. Speak out against it happening again, to yourself or to others. Own it. Let yourself define your experience, and not let the reaction to the experience define you.

Neatest things I saw this week (last week)

1. Rainbow Roses

(From here: http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/rainbow-roses-are-for-real.html)

Actual roses, with rainbow ink infused in their stems while they grow. I wish they'd actually grow like this naturally--I'd buy, like, fifteen rosebushes!

2. A Plethora of Galaxy Nails

Over on Ashley is PolishAddicted.

I love the Galaxy Nails thing--it's my favorite nail trick I haven't tried yet!

3. Firefalls!

This is Horestail Falls, a seasonal waterfall in Yosemite that lights up like it's on fire only a few days in February each year. This, and more pictures of it, are detailed on Kuriositas: http://www.kuriositas.com/2012/09/horsetailfall.html

Links from last week

Geek: The Geekiest Girls You Know blog

Culture: Why Can't We Sell Charity Like We Sell Perfume?

Life: Study shows that home birth is fine for low-risk pregnancies

Geek: Doctor Who manicures! (make sure you check the links at the bottom, too!)

Geek: Galaxy Nails (also with more in the links at the end)

Happiness: Seven Must-Read Books on the Art and Science of Happiness

Happiness: Rules for Consistent Happiness

Happiness: Top 8 Ways to Wake Up Ready & Raring to Go

Productivity: What Successful People Do The First Hour Of Their Work Day

Monday Inspiration: Brene Brown

"In order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen — really seen.” 

~ Brené Brown

Babysitter Tales: Acorn

I took A2 with me to the bus stop to wait for A1. I'm starting to really like the walk-- it's only maybe two blocks, but that's a long way for a two-year-old to walk, so we walk slow and he looks at a lot of things. It's so strange being with someone so young--everything really is new for him!

We've developed this habit that we'll get to the bus stop, say hi to all the other parents and younger siblings, and then wander another block up so he can see the flowers. He sticks his face right in there and snuffles them like a puppy, and touches all the petals, and sometimes picks one or two. And then we wander back and he picks up interesting rocks to throw at the shrubs or to line up in neat little lines while we wait.

This time, while we were there, he found an acorn. A big fat one (not the one above, but one like it!), more than an inch long. He loved it, and carried it around while we waited. I've never seen acorns so big--Florida acorns are all tiny and hard and round, and even the bigger ones are sort of lean and narrow, but this one was like the iconic acorn, fat and stout and big. I bet it had lots of acorn meat in it.

A1 came and he sort of hugs everyone and then sees what the baby is carrying in his sticky little hands. He found the acorn and asked what it was, which was startling; I forget that five isn't that much older than two, really, and things are still new to him, too. I explained how it's a tree-seed, that there was a little baby sprout in there that would come out and grow into a little tree.

A1 declared "We need to plant this."

So we went home, and as soon as he'd put up his school stuff and gotten a drink of water, we found some sturdy sticks and dug a hole in the ground, and planted it. He watered it from his own prized Avengers cup--and he's not one for sharing, so that's even bigger a deal than you know--and covered it back up.

Every say since then, he comes home from school and goes to that corner of the yard behind the basketball hoop to check on it, and waters it with his own water if it looks dry.

I think if ever an acorn had a chance to be a tree, it's that one.

Shonagonisms: Actors who are secretly english

• Hugh Laurie - House
• Andrew Lincoln - Walking Dead
• Lauren Cohan - Walking Dead
• Ed Westwick - Gossip Girl
• Stephen Moyer - True Blood
• Josh Bowman - Revenge
• Andrew Garfield - The Amazing Spiderman
• Owain Yeoman - The Mentalist
• Damian Lewis - Homeland
• Idris Elba - The Wire 
• Anna Friel - Pushing Daisies
• Michelle Ryan - Bionic Woman (flop that it was)
• Gary Oldman - Almost every movie he'd done
• Jamie Bamber - Battlestar Galactica
• Jason Isaacs - Awake
• Jake Weber - Medium
• Bob Hoskans - Half his movies
• Sophia Miles - Moonlight
• Tim Roth - Lie to Me
• Henry Cavill - Superman
• Rufus Sewell - Eleventh Hour (remember that?)
• Marianne Jean-Baptiste - Without A Trace

Bonus: Other non-Americans

• Alan Cumming - The Good Wife - Scottish
• Simon Baker - The Mentalist - Australian
• Alex O'Laughlin - Hawaii Five-0 - Australian
• Tammin Sursok - Pretty Little Liars - Australian
• Kevin McKidd - Grey's Anatomy - Scottish
• Ryan Kwanten - True Blood - Australian
• Liam Hemsworth - Hunger Games / Expendables 2 - Australian
• Rose Byrne - Damages - Australian
• Anna Torv - Fringe - Australian
• Christian Bale - Batman / Et al - Welsh
• Ioan Gruffudd - Fantastic Four / Ringer - Welsh
• Anthony LaPaglia - Without A Trace - Australian
• Jason O'Mara - ABC's Life on Mars / Terra Nova - Irish

Wednesday Worksheets: Weekly Work Tracker, Yearly Events, Subscriptions, Critique Page

This is part of a weekly series to help you life a more organized life. Click the tag for more sheets!

This week, we have:

• Weekly Work Tracker: A cell for each day of the week, perfect for those who have one job (or, if you have more than one, a sheet per job, and a weeks' worth of info for each). There's date, day, time in and out, total hours, total pay, and a section for notes in each cell. At the end, there's an open cell for reflection--the use of which is up to you!
• Yearly Events: A one-page, at-a-glance grid to write a quick note to yourself about things that happen once a year: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, celestial events, yearly fees, whatever. There's a column for each month of the year, and there's 31 cells in each column, so you get the whole year on one page. There's not a whole lot of space, but it's enough for a year-at-a-glance!
• Subscriptions: A chart to track your subscriptions! There's the usual date, name and cost columns, but I've added a column to note the kind, too--magazine, service, delivery, whatever you have a subscription to!
• Critique Sheet: There's lots of times when you're asked to crit something--a work, an idea, an event. When you are, you can use this sheet, that helps you outline strengths, weaknesses, and offer advice. Pretty straightforward, but a great place to start.

Sheets are free to download, and if you use them, link back to here! If there are any that you'd like to see me make, just drop a comment and I'll add them to the list!

Monday Inspiration: Bill Copeland

"Try to be like the turtle - at ease in your own shell."

--- Bill Copeland

Source:http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_inspirational.html#YSfWMVtVAfT5Uoph.99