Jeffrey Vanneste’s Personal Blog

Rach and I spent our first Thanksgiving away from family this year.  We had Rachel’s friends from Toronto (Chris and Kaeliegh) come out to visit.  We went out for Mexican food the first night (I wanted an enchilada) and went to some pub on St. Catherines (which has a bunch of pubs and restaurants on it).

Saturday we went out to explore Montreal with (this time with a camera) as 2 married couples.  Our first stop was a huge church that is right by our apartment.  From the outside of the city you can see it up on the mountain.

After touring around the church we headed downtown on the metro.  What I find kind of funny is that there is a grocery store called “Metro”.  It’s sign is huge, you would think it would be where you get on the metro, but no, just groceries.

Here is the real metro sign.

The metro stations look just like they do in movies and video games.  Funny how that works out.

We walked around downtown, saw some drunk people, went to China town (I had one of those Chinese donuts, mmmmmm), and drove to the top of Mont Royal to the lookout over the city.

Sunday we spent most of the day preparing the chicken (we were too cheap to buy a turkey) for supper.  It was the first time Rach and I have ever cooked this big of a meal.  It turned out pretty good.

Rach wanted to make this cranberry sauce that my family makes every Thanksgiving and Christmas.  All I remembered about the recipe was that it was 3 ingredients and you put 1 cup of each.  I remembered 2 of the ingredients were cranberries (of course) and sugar.  When I went into the kitchen to see Rach make this she had used 1 cup cranberries, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup of apples.  Yes Mom/Grandma, apples.  I had a good laugh over it.  Rachel’s cranberry-apple sauce was actually pretty good.  It tasted more like apples than anything but it was pretty awesome on the chicken.

By Sunday night we were all pretty tired so we just stayed at the apartment and watched The Inside Man (which was pretty good).  That was pretty much our long weekend.

[tags]jeffrey,rachel,montreal,holiday[/tags]

So people who know Rach and I know we take our TV seriously. Very seriously. Rach gets a little obsessed with the characters from the shows while I have other… issues. I really hate wasting time watching random TV. I think I made this discovery few years ago and decided that if I was going to watch a TV show I would commit, start from the beginning and watch every episode. Rachel on the other hand is easily sucked into any show, commercial, or really any visual stimuli. It took me a few years but Rach has slowly converted to my side. There is so much good TV that if you are going to watch something you may as well watch something you like and not random reruns or whatever. Today I am here to teach you how to watch TV, the proper way.

Step 1: Determine the shows you want to watch

I’m very selective on the shows I watch. I don’t want to watch too much of one genre. Really, 3 Law and Orders are too much. 3 CSI’s are too much. Rach really likes these types of shows so we compromised (she watched some on her own). Next, don’t commit to shows that seem unlikely to stay on the air. I get really pissed off watching a show for a season just to have it taken away from me (Firefly, Fastlane, etc). Fox is usually to blame for this. My rule of thumb, if the show is airing on Fox, wait until the first season is done. If it gets picked up for a 2nd season then obtain season 1 and watch them all. Some shows you just know won’t last very long. I have my doubts about Vanished and Jericho this year. Ratings are not great for either. My prediction is both get canned at midseason. A good place to see all the shows on the air is The Futon Critic. The futon critic is one of the best TV sites. I’ll explain in a bit.

Step 2: Don’t watch commercials

I can’t remember the last time I watched a commercial. There are a bunch of ways you can eliminate commercials. The way I recommend is to buy a PVR (personal video recorder, also called DVR). In fact if you live in Canada then you should buy a Bell PVR (bell has the most/best HD channels, time shifting, and their software is hands down the best). With PVR’s you can skip commercials really easily. If you want to watch a 60 minute show that starts at 7pm simply wait until 7:20 and start watching then. 60 minute shows only have about 44 minutes of material (30 minute shows have 22). Just think, if you cut out the commercials you have more time to watch uhh more TV.

Step 3: Don’t watch reruns

If you are going to watch a show, start from the beginning. Go rent the DVDs (sign up for zip.ca), borrow from a friend, or download the shows. I always hear people asking “Hey, is <Show> new tonight?” There are some great services to notify you when new episodes are on. I personally use http://www.myepisodes.com because it has RSS. What you do is create an account, pick all the shows you watch and then subscribe to your RSS feed that it creates. Every day it will tell you which shows are new. If you want to see shows a couple of days in advance just goto the main page and it will show you the next week or so of which shows are new. If this sounds too complicated (shame on you) then just bookmark http://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/. This site shows a big calendar with all the new shows airing on it.

That’s pretty much it for my TV tips. If you like to follow TV news (episode summaries etc) then check out http://www.zap2it.com/ or http://www.tv.com. If you want to see how many episodes came out in a season, when an episode aired, or other basic info on a series then check out http://www.epguides.com. And finally the mack daddy of all TV sites, http://www.thefutoncritic.com. They finally redid the site and are promising RSS soon. You can get so much information from this site: upcoming new shows, when a show premieres, daily and weekly ratings (so you can find out early if the show will get canned), a rough TV guide, and finally, they have the best TV news. If a show gets cancelled or picked up these guys will report it first.

Now what do we watch? CSI, CSI: NY, Heroes, Jericho, Lost, The Office, Studio 60 on the sunset strip, Veronica Mars, Corner Gas, Dexter, Entourage, Smith, and Justice. Rach watches Without a Trace, Cold Case, and The Amazing Race on her own and I watch Doctor Who, Prison Break, Battlestar Gallactica, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Family Guy on my own. Shows we have on backup (when there aren’t any new episodes to watch) these shows are our queue: Grey’s Anatomy, Numb3rs, The Unit, House, The 4400, Bones, Criminal Minds, CSI: Miami and Weeds.

And one last paragraph. Which shows do I recommend? I think everyone should watch Veronica Mars (because this as close to Joss Whedon we can get), Lost (because J.J. Abrams is so awesome), CSI (because it really is as good as you hear), Dexter (because I miss Dead Like Me), Curb Your Enthusiasm (because it’s what Seinfeld would have been like if it didn’t need to be censored), and Battlestar Gallactica (because it’s the best show on TV right now).

[tags]jeffrey, rachel, tv[/tags]

Rachel and I caught up on TV on Friday night (Justice, CSI: NY, Jericho, The Office) so that was pretty much our whole night. Saturday Rach cleaned up the house since she was having some of her friends from school over for supper and a movie in the evening. We had chicken fajita’s for supper and watched Click with Adam Sandler which was actually pretty decent (a lot better than 30% on rotten tomatoes anyways).

Today Rach and I went to go buy some cooking supplies for when her friends spend Thanksgiving with us next weekend. We needed a big mixing bowl, hand mixer, cookie sheet, and a muffin tray. We were going to use some of our HBC money from the wedding but we ended up going to Costco first. At costco we found a box that had 7 mixing bowls, a nice hand mixer, and a bunch of cookie sheets and muffin trays. What was suppose to be free ended up costing us $100. Good times. The mixing bowls are pretty sweet though, they have rubber bottoms.

I think tonight we are finally going to watch V for Vendetta since we put up the projector screen on Friday. Speaking of that, we decided to just tape the paper to the wall. Cheapeast screen ever. It cost about $40 for this screen. It actually looks really good.

[tags]montreal, weekend, jeffrey, rachel[/tags]

I think I hate all our neighbors. Everyone is so loud. We have the piano player right beside our office room. I assume it’s an old lady. She plays the same 5 songs every day. When she screws up she likes to mash on the keys. I wonder if she actually thinks no one else can hear her play. I would like to cut the strings on the piano.

Neighbor number 2 I think is a zerg queen. They have spawned many small children that are awake through out the night. She lives above us and likes to walk around with tap dancing shoes. I think they might have a roller rink up there too.

Neighbor number 3, the dance party room. They like their loud music. I have our subwoofer turned all the way to the lowest setting. I’m starting to guess that no one else cares about noise here.

Neighbor number 4, the dog kennel. Well just one dog. Apparently pets are not allowed in our apartment unless you talk to the landlord and they say it’s OK. This is just a little dog but it likes to bark. Last night it barked for almost an hour.

Neighbor number 5, the builder. This guy likes to start hammering stuff at 7am. Sometimes I imagine that he isn’t even building anything, he just takes the hammer to the wall and laughs hysterically pounding away.

On top of the neighbors our apartment has a bus stop in front of it, it’s next door to a hospital that has ambulances coming and going all the time, and a busy street with people honking their horns all the time. Every night here I have slept with ear plugs. This is me venting. The end.

[tags]jeffrey,montreal[/tags]