The best TV shows of all time (this week)

Two different people have asked me in the last week about what I would consider the top tv shows of all time. Clearly, this is something I need to share. So without further ado and in no particular order...here are what would make the top 5 list at this point:



Sports Night. Because even if the first three seasons of The West Wing are arguably Sorkin at his best, this is where he did it first. Because it was my introduction to Peter Krause, Felicity Huffman, Josh Malina and the multitude of Sorkin regulars showing up in bit parts. Because it died an early death thanks to the boneheads at ABC. Because even though the Damn Dating Plan was awful, the first season build up to the Dana & Casey kiss was fantastic. Because "you're wearing my shirt Gordon" is a moment that still gets me to this day. Because of the many, many, many quotable moments and expressions that I still manage to get into my day to day life (and rejoice when someone gets the reference). Every couple years the series gets popped into the DVD player and rewatched.


Six Feet Under. It has to say something that I waited almost two years to watch the final season even though it was sitting on my shelf ready to go. I just liked the idea that there were more episodes for me to look forward to. It was smart, and heartwrenching and funny and had an incredible group of actors...and it made me cry.




Sex and the City. Look, I'm a single 30-something woman. Of course I love this show :-). And yes, I've had the "which character are you" discussions with friends...over brunch natch. But beyond all of the frivolity and fashion and discussions about sexual proclivities, this show to me was about friendship. How no matter what other relationships where going on these women had each other. And it makes me thankful for all the fantastic friends in my life. It's also completely rewatchable and I stop flipping through channels to watch it on a regular basis...even though I own the DVDs. And I can't tell you how many times that situations and conversations I'm having with friends remind me of episodes of the show. Does that make me sad? Maybe...but it also means that the show gets it right.



Veronica Mars. It was smart. It was funny. It had great dialogue with fun pop culture references. It managed to weave a season long mystery arc with more contained mysteries of the week and keep each episode entertaining...twice. Kristen Bell's Veronica is a kick ass heroine. Logan Echolls is the bad boy we all want to reform. Great guest stars...Paul Rudd! Alyson Hannigan! Michael Cera! I loved this show and mourned it's ending. And it's the one show on my list that I don't have in my DVD collection, must rectify that.






Lost. I think J.J. Abrams is brilliant and will watch anything he puts his name on (Cloverfield is the exception to the rule). This slot almost went to Alias because I'm nervous about including Lost as it's not finished yet and could go off the rails or end in a mess. I was somewhat late to the bandwagon on this one because I missed the first season in the days before timeshifting and the PVR with two shows already in that time slot when it premiered (yes, I've mentioned that I watch a lot of tv so shut up). But after hearing rave reviews all season I picked up the first season when it came out on DVD a few weeks before season 2 was set to start. I figured I'd watch it over a few weeks and tape the first couple of episodes. Silly me. I spent an entire weekend glued to the television and was ready for the premiere the next week. This show has more OMG! moments than anything I can think of. And while I think the third season contained a few of a missteps (Nikki & Paulo...shudder), the negotiated end date of the series allows the men with the plan to execute it the way they wanted to...I just hope they don't disappoint me.


So there they are. If you're looking at the list and thinking 'she totally missed show x', you may be right. But these are my top 5 and I'm sticking by them...for now.

Your turn.

Open for business

For all of you who were waiting breathlessly to see what I ended up deciding on the murphy bed...












Am officially ready for guests :-)

No day but today

I saw Rent for the 5th time last night. And yes, I know this pales in comparison to the count of the legions of "Rentheads" out there. I've mentioned how much I love musicals before and this is the one that kicked it off for me. I saw it for the first time in London at the start of my post university European tour and it was one of those hair standing on end, goosebump experiences. I proceeded to listen to the soundtrack so many times that I can sing the entire thing from beginning to end (and have subjected more than one friend to my 'performance' on road trips...sorry folks).

It was made even more fun last night for the fact that I was introducing it to a friend that had never seen it before. At our pre-show dinner, D and I were doing our best not to oversell our excitement for the show to Vicky who was our Rent virgin, though we couldn't stop ourselves from busting out a line or two...maybe it was the martinis...probably not. I thought it was a good production and Vic loved it (thankfully). For me the show is made or broken by whoever is playing Roger and he was fantastic (and played by South African Idol winner Heinz Winckler). Before the show last night I had said to myself (and others) that it would be my fifth and final time and now I'm not sure about that. It's closing in New York after running for 12 years and I'm thinking if I get there before June it might be worth seeing there before they shut it down ;-).

I can tell you that the soundtrack will definitely get a run through on the 3 hour drive to the cottage tomorrow.

Have a good long weekend people!

Wanna feel 13 again?

Here's the recipe:

- 7 girls with sleeping bags
- voting survivor style on which cheesy movie to watch
- 1 part 'Rock of Love'
- 3 hours of discussion (aka gossip) on celebrities, relationships and fashion
- copious amounts of food

- 3am talking til you're falling asleep in the dark

Wanna know the best part of doing this when you're over 30? (other than the fact that you don't have parents telling you to 'settle down and go to sleep')

Thanks Kate!

Beds...how much does size matter?

I've been debating on getting a murphy bed installed in my second bedroom for awhile. It's sort of turned into a giant storage room and I figured there's likely a better way to use the space. I'm sure an actual mattress is much more comfortable for guests to sleep on than the pull out couch. And then I can move my couch up to the cottage and replace the pull out there with one that's actually younger than I am. So, I finally had someone from Space Solutions come by today to give me a 'design consultation' and quote.

Here's my dilemma...apparently if I want to have some actual storage space built in with the bed (shelves and drawers and whatnot) I really need to go with a double bed instead of the queen that I was thinking about. Whatdya think? Is a double bed good enough for my guests??

Vacation(s) aftermath

So now what?? I've travelled from sea to ski in the past two weeks and now it's back to the real world with seemingly nothing else to look forward to.

Ah, but let's relive the memories shall we??

Ships & Dip III was truly fantastically fun. We arrived in Miami at about 1:00am on Saturday and checked into our airport motel (just couldn't justify spending the money to stay on the beach when we were heading out on a cruise). And while we had some thoughts of heading to the beach or doing some shopping on Saturday we ended up spending the day having cocktails around the pool and enjoying the sun. Am almost (almost) embarrassed to admit we ate both lunch and dinner in the hotel bar. But sticking around proved to be the first of many good decisions on the trip as we connected with Fin to get the shuttle schedule for the morning, got to say hello to Alan and Sean (of GBS) as they arrived and promptly copied our mojito order and reconnected with a bunch of people we had met on last year's cruise over appetizer dinners in the lounge.

Sunday's boarding was quick and uneventful. After strolling the ship and trying to get our bearings (trust me, this was much more difficult than it sounds, I ended up as the group navigator for the week and managed to get us pointed in the wrong direction only a couple of times) we got ourselves a beer and waited for our luggage to arrive. See, when you go on a cruise you tag your luggage and have to leave it with the porters as you arrive and then wait for it to be delivered to your cabin. It's like checking in at the aiport with the added anxiety of getting stuck on a ship with nothing to wear for the duration of your stay if your luggage goes astray. My little suitcase was there within about an hour and I was able to unpack and get organized pretty quickly. Mom's got dropped off sometime during the sail away concert so she could finally relax ;-). The mandatory muster drill (punchline: where's the ketchup) brings up thoughts of Titanic as you report to your station with your life jacket and hear about what would happen in the event of an actual on board emergency. And then we were off! 5 days of music and partying on the ocean.

I'm not sure I will never be able to enjoy a 'standard' cruise after the party that Sixthman puts on. In 5 days I think we saw 20 concerts and about 5 comedy sets, with full days in Grand Cayman and Jamaica in the middle there somewhere. I knew that the BNL and Great Big Sea shows would be great (and they were!) but all of the artists put on a great show. I enjoyed the smaller, more intimate sets by Jason Collett, Brian MacMillan, Joe Pisapia, Lori Cullen and Jason Plumb. And after missing them last year, I got to a Guster and Thinbuckle show. Mostly, it was just really cool to see really talented people jump up on stage and perform with each other spontaneously.

So to share a bit of the cruise, here are my two new fav GBS songs

Walk on the Moon...Thurs night Lido deck



Straight to Hell...Songwriters panel


And my other "new" find on the cruise was Boothby Graffoe who I managed to catch 1 1/2 times while on the boat. Funny, funny, comedian/singer/songwriter from the UK...and I'm not just saying that because we shared a seat on the shuttle back to the airport in Miami and I felt like I got my own personal 30 minute set ;-)



I've got to say, there's no way the John Mayercraft Carrier (which was getting ready to take off on the same boat on the day we got back) could have been half as much fun.

Mom and I also managed to make our way off the boat for a very fun excursion in Grand Cayman. We got to SeaDoo 4 miles out into the ocean to Stingray City, where we fed and held giant stingrays. Having never driven a personal watercraft on the ocean I was a bit unsure what to expect, only that it would likely be much different than taking off on our mostly calm lake. I think I got the hang of it after a while and developed a technique where I tried to ride through the waves like ski moguls but I also felt like I got a complimentary sea salt facial with the ride. The next day we spent a day on a beach in Jamaica drinking Red Stripe beer. And somewhere in all of that we managed to catch a few hours of sleep ;-).

We flew back into Toronto in the midst of a snowstorm, which was a reality slap in the face. Thankfully managed to get in with only a couple of hours delay. I feel like I'm tempting fate by even saying this but I've had nothing but good airline experiences recently.

And then I spent a whole 5 days back in the real world before heading out west for the weekend with some friends for what was supposed to be a ski outing. Not for me, of course, cause I may be the most inept person on the planet on a ski hill. My plan was to join them at Lake Louise, do some skating or just walking in the morning and spend the afternoon at the spa. Well, the best laid plans and all that...

Calgary/Canmore/Banff was cold this weekend. Seriously freeze your eyeballs cold.

Here's what Lake Louise can look like in the winter




Here's what it looked like when we were there

Not quite what we had planned :-). But we had a fun long weekend of relaxing, eating good food and drinking great wine. And at least managed to take the road trip to see Banff and Lake Louise...though I'll clearly have to go back and see it at it's best.

And that's what I've been up to for the last few weeks!

Come aboard...we're expecting you

It's vacation time people. As of tomorrow I'm leaving the snow and cold behind and heading south. Plans include, but are not limited to, seeing the Barenaked Ladies, Great Big Sea, Sarah Harmer, Harland Williams and others perform, visiting Stingray City, and having a number of umbrella drinks on board, in Grand Cayman, Jamaica and anywhere else we manage to find a bar ;-). Have a good week or so while I'm not around to keep up with the news on the interweb...