It’s that dark time of year where I don’t see the sun.
Today:
6:30 AM: Leave home for work
7:00 AM: Arrive at work
7:03 AM: Sunrise
4:37 PM: Sunset
5:00 PM: Leave work
OK, so this week is special because it’s month end and I’m working overtime (coming in early). And I do have the option of leaving the office during a 45 minute lunch break, which I do every day during most of spring, summer and fall. Now it’s getting too cold to walk and the traffic around here is so bad I don’t want to drive during my lunch break.
At least last year I had a desk next to a window. Now I need to walk down the hallway, make a turn and walk down another hallway to press my face against a window.
I miss the sun during this time of year.
On the bright side, the company I work for lets us decorate our office for the holidays and on Monday I dove into our stash of decorations at work and transformed the room into some crazy happy Christmas wonderland. I have some singing penguins and a Christmas Furby on my desk, others have a variety of cute noise-making things on theirs. I might be an atheist who doesn’t observe the religious bits of this season, but I love the colors, decorations and lights.
So what is there to do on evenings so dark? This weekend I downloaded the first 9 episodes of Heroes. It had been recommended to me by a few people, and there was a lot of buzz about it at the science fiction convention.
The short review: I don’t like it.
The long review: It has a format very similar to Lost, a series you can’t really jump into in the middle of and each episode unto itself doesn’t have a stand-alone plot, it’s one giant story. I don’t like this format at all (is there a name for it?). While I enjoy development of characters through the run of a series and sometimes a small plotline running through a series (a la X-Files), I want to have a complete story told to me during a single show.
Also like Lost, I don’t really care about the characters. Finally by episode 9 I was starting to feel something for a couple of them, but I don’t think it should take half a season to start caring.
But it is better than Lost. The story has direction and there are hints dropped along the way as to where it’s going to let your brain work a little while watching it.
We won’t be watching any more of it. There were cliffhangers at the end of episode 9, but I’m just not interested enough to want to know the resolution.
I’m so picky when it comes to television.