AgtSpooky's Hangout

So you guys are all well aware of my love of law enforcement and the fire department, right? All the police academy classes I take, etc. Well I'm about to lose my freaking mind over this. I belong to several professional writers discussion groups, and through one of them I found out about this. It's called the "Writers Police Academy". It is INCREDIBLE. It's a three day retreat and is everything I could ever ask for or want. Really guys, I'm like vibrating over this I'm so excited!

Just look at the list of things we'll get to do:
Crime scene evidence collection
CSI lab time (DNA, bloodstains, fingerprints)
Patrol car simulator
Suit up in a full outfit, with sidearm and Kevlar vest
Defensive tactics with full padding protective gear
Arrest and Jail training (driving an actual squad card and booking the suspect)
Firefighting and EMS training including zip lines, rappelling, live burn tower
Sit with an officer as they take you through defensive driving techniques including PIT maneuvers and skids
Live fire training inside and outside at stationary and moving targets

OH. MY. GOD. It's nirvana! LOL!

It all takes place in August, in Appleton, Wisconsin (only 3 hours from me!) at Fox Valley Technical College. It's one of the premiere academies in the nation for law enforcement, fire and EMS. They even have a full size airplane and tanker cars from a train!

Check out this link:

http://www.leelofland.com/wordpress/your-first-look-at-the-all-new-2015-writers-police-academy/

Registration opens up early in February and it sold out in less than 6 hours last year so I've got to be on the ball to get a spot because I am NOT missing this! I don't even know yet how much this is going to cost. Ask me if I care. :-)

Do I have any quilters on my flist? I just got my totally awesome t-shirt quilt in the mail yesterday (thank you ProjectRepat.com!) and what I'd like to do is actually hang it on my bedroom wall. I've seen plenty of quilts hung up on walls, but I've no idea how to actually do it. Are there like…kits or something for displaying your quilts? If not, does anyone have a suggestion on how I might do this?

So today kicks off the new fall TV lineup. While I was programming my DVR with all the new shows I want to check out I was wondering what all of you were looking forward to watching.

Here are my new ones:

Gotham
Forever
NCIS: New Orleans
How to Get Away with Murder
The Flash
Constantine
Gracepoint

So, how was everyone's weekend? My Saturday and Sunday was spent packing, packing and moving boxes out into the garage. But Friday night was awesome!

Myself, my best buddy charityflint and her husband headed down to the shores of Lake Michigan, to Northerly Island, to see a triple threat outdoor concert - Don Felder (from the Eagles), Foreigner and Styx. Woot! A classic rock fan's dream! Dean Winchester would have approved. :-)

The last time we all saw Foreigner and Styx (along with Kansas) was four years ago, at the same venue. So because we're geeks, we decided to wear our shirts and be triplets:

We got SO many compliments on our shirts! Everyone wanted to know where we got them. We're like, "Here! Four years ago!" LOL!

But then of course we had to get new shirts this year. We walked up to the merchandise booth and Charity was like, OMG look at the red one! You've got to get that one! And because we share a single brain cell, we both got it!

You can't see but the bottom of the shirt says Come Sail Away. That's my all time absolute favorite Styx song, which is why Charity pointed the shirt out to me.

We couldn't have asked for a better night. The weather was absolutely beautiful and the music was amazing. Concert started at 7 pm and ended at 11:30 pm. Foreigner and Styx played all the classics and of course we cheered very loudly for Renegade. :-) It still amazes me that after 30+ years these guys can still sell out a venue.

We had no voices left and looked like this by the end of the night, but it was worth it! LOL!

So we're a couple of weeks into the new fall TV season and I was wondering what new shows everyone was watching.

Right now I've just got three:

Sleepy Hollow - while at first I thought the premise a little hokey, I couldn't not check it out because it was by the guys who created Fringe, which I dearly loved. So glad I gave it a shot! I love it! Crane and Abbie are great together. And it's got shades of Fringe written all over it, from the music to some of the establishing shots of the town and just the freaky "cases" in general. My only complaint? Take Crane shopping for God's sake! The poor man has been wearing that same outfit for three weeks straight! LOL!

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - is there a fangirl/fanboy on the planet who wasn't waiting for this one? :-) The hype for this was huge, and so far it hasn't disappointed, at least for me. Love me some Coulson! And the mystery surrounding his resurrection has me very intrigued. The rest of the team seems to be working well together, too. And how 'bout that cameo last night? Sweet!

Atlantis (UK) - mentioned this the other day. Definite shades of Merlin, so I'm hoping it doesn't end as badly as that show did. :-/ But I enjoyed the first episode. I like the dynamic of Jason, Hercules and Pythagoras. And I also love Greek mythology, so this is right up my alley.

There are also a couple more that I'm interested in, but haven't started up yet:

Almost Human: Karl Urban is the only reason I'm going to check this one out. Not a big fan of Michael Ealy and the entire show is a blatant rip-off of Mann and Machine, that I really liked, so it loses points for that.

American Horror Story: Coven - I loved the first season of AHS, and absolutely hated the second season, but the witches aspect of the third season is what's bringing me back to give it one last shot.

So what about you guys? What's on your TV radar?

So my very first photo op of the day (at 10:45 am for crying out loud!) was with Krycek himself, Nicholas Lea. I was so excited to meet him! I was wearing a t-shirt I'd gotten at Media West a long, long time ago, with an illustration of Mulder and Krycek's faces and I was hoping that Nic would notice.

We all line up and they take us in the photo op room and he's standing there and is like, "Good morning!" and I pretty much wanted to faint. :-) What was cool was, he didn't have a hugely long line, so as you walked up he shook your hand, asked what your name was and just chatted with you for a minute. It was so nice! He did indeed notice the shirt, said he loved the art and said, "Wow, we look really serious, don't we?" We got ready for the photo and I asked if I could have a hug and he just grabs me and pulls me in and says, "How's this?" I'm like, "Umm, yeah, that's great!" LOL!

The photographer snapped the picture and while she was checking to make sure it was okay he didn't let go of me and started rubbing my back! SQUEE! The photographer pronounced the photo okay (yeah, I beg to differ) and after we stepped apart he shook my hand again and said it was a pleasure to meet me. :-)

Okay, so here's the photo. I'm not fond of his facial hair, but I'm loving how the hug turned out. But look at the composition of the pic. I didn't crop this at all. The photographer SUCKED. Where's the rest of our bodies?? Or hell, just the rest of his freaking arm! There were many complaints throughout the day about certain photographers.

After the photo op I got his autograph. And just like in the photo op line he was Mr. Chatty, shaking your hand again, etc. I walked up and he's like, "You again! Still loving the shirt!" I thanked him for being there, we talked about X-Files and then I brought up Supernatural. He told me all about walking onto the set with all of the old cars and getting dressed up in the period clothing. He had a blast. I told him that it was one of my favorite eps all season and he said that he had so many people that weekend tell him that. He was really happy that he'd done good as Eliot Ness and he said he was going to call the SPN folks and ask if Eliot could time jump forward into 2013 because he really wants to be on the show again. Yes, please! :-)

All in all a fantastic experience meeting Nic for the first time and I hope I'll get to see him again someday.

Geez, is it Monday already?? Can I go back to the weekend, please?

Had a lovely afternoon on Saturday. I had gotten this Groupon deal for a wine tasting and tour at a local winery for up to 10 people. So I got several of my co-workers together, along with my hubby and my best buddy charityflint. We had a great time! The tour was okay, some of the wines were so-so (I'm apparently not a red wine drinker) but we just had a nice time hanging out together. Check out this crew:

They had this really pretty gazebo out front, and since John and I were dressed fairly nicely I asked Charity to snap a pic of us:

Then on Sunday I had another Groupon deal for a new park that opened up not far from us. It was for mini-golf, batting cages and a hot dog lunch for two. The weather was very iffy, with low, dark clouds but we decided to chance it. I'm so glad we did! It never rained and the sun came out. But the threat of rain must have kept everyone away, as we were the only ones playing mini-golf (I completely trounced John! Ha!) and there were only two other people in the batting cages.

One was this little boy, about seven years old, who was apparently on a Little League team, as he was in his uniform. His father was being really harsh with him, IMO. I thought he was doing very well for being that small. But nothing was good enough for his father. We ended up finishing at the same time and when he and I walked out of the cages I went over to him and told him what a good job he was doing. The kid looked shocked and then he just beamed at me and said thank you. I'm glad I gave him a little pick-me-up.

I used to play softball all the time, was on several teams, but it's been a couple of years now since I swung a bat and boy, were my arms protesting after 36 pitches! Before I dropped the bat on my foot we called it a day. :-)

Our last stop of the day was to a new grocery store, called Mariano's. It's along the lines of Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. Holy cow this place was awesome! They have a guy playing a piano when you walk in the front door, for crying out loud! Their hot, prepared food section and bakery was outrageous. Along with their meat, deli and seafood selections. The place was huge and I was really impressed with both their prices and overall variety of all sorts of foods. We ended up going home with several things. They're opening up one even closer to where we live in a few months. I know we'll be there!

And that was pretty much it. Just chilled back at the house for the evening.

What about all of YOU? Have an exciting weekend?

So having four days off for the Memorial Day holiday was great. Getting up at 4:45 this morning for work - not so great. :-) But I can't complain too much since it was a nice mini-vacation.

Let's see….main thing John and I did on Saturday was get all of our planting done outside. The flower beds were a mess and it took quite some time to get all the weeds and grass out of there, then put new topsoil down. Thankfully it was cool and overcast out that morning otherwise we'd have been hot and miserable with how long we were out there. But in the end it turned out really nice. We've got a few different varieties for some different colors. The tulips are finished blooming and are dying off, so they'll be gone shortly so that you can see the other flowers better:

Ended up having breakfast with my co-worker friend on Sunday morning instead and we had a great time. Always nice to get together outside of work so that you can talk about….work. :-) She even went with me grocery shopping afterwards because she didn't feel like going home yet. And she ended up buying groceries herself!

Was kind of a slug for the rest of the day on Sunday. Got caught up on a few TV shows on the DVR and sat down and read the rest of The Bestseller Job, the latest Leverage paperback book. I really liked it. But poor Eliot. Can't he ever get some happiness in his life? Since Hardison and Parker and Nate and Sophie all hooked up, Eliot's always the fifth wheel. :-(

Monday was house cleaning/laundry/movie day. The first two, not so exciting! But both movies were good. First was Behind the Candelabra, the story about Liberace that Scott Bakula was in. Scott was in it more than I thought, which made me happy. Now I don't know much about Liberace's life, but man, this movie didn't paint him in the best light. But since it was based on his ex-lover's book, it's not surprising. Then we watched The Eagle which my friend Tina recommended to me, with Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell. It was much better than I was expecting and yeah, Tina, you were right - the slash potential between Marcus and Esca was SO there. :-) And last but not least was Connor Trinneer's movie Star Runners. Totally cheesy but he looked great. The giant bugs, however, I could have done without!

Tuesday was the best day of them all. John and I headed to Elmhust, about a half hour from where we live, to go to the Lazzadro Museum of Lapidary Art. In other words, a rock museum. :-) I'd been there countless times as a kid, since I had a huge rock collection. Hadn't thought about the museum in years until John and I were in Elmhurst for a craft show a few weeks ago which was in the park right across from the museum. We had the whole place to ourselves for over an hour and it was lovely. I was once again astounded at the beauty that Mother Nature creates. I took a ton of pics and I'll post more in the next couple of days, but here are a few. I love geodes the most. The second one, on the plastic stand is one I bought there in the gift shop:

Then there were countless jade carvings:

We went to the Elmhurst Art Museum next, which we'd never been to. There were some…interesting works there. *g* I'm not much into modern art but I did enjoy the photography and the works from some of the local artists.

For lunch we went to Nu Crepes which was so, SO good. We'd never been there before, either, and it was such a cute place inside and it was packed! And people just kept pouring in. I had the Nutella and raspberry jam crepe and John had a savory one filled with veggies. They were so big we had to talk half of them home! Then as if we hadn't eaten enough, our last stop was the Cupcakes for Courage bakery, where the proceeds go to cancer research. We scored ourselves a lemon/raspberry and a fun-fetti one. Had them for dessert last night and they were delicious. I actually did some food photography with the fun-fetti one that I'll post later this week.

Then we just chilled at home for the rest of the afternoon/evening. John watched some TV and I read the latest PsyCop book. The only thing I didn't accomplish was getting some writing done on my Enterprise fic. Well that's not entirely accurate. I did jot down some dialogue for two upcoming scenes, so I guess that counts.

And now here I am, back at work and already wishing it was Friday. :-)

So what have all of YOU been up to?

Well, that was the weekend from Hell.

It actually started on Friday morning when John called me at work. We'd been having non-stop rain for days and days. John was going down to the basement to do some laundry and saw that the carpet in the corner of the family room was all wet. Turns out there's a crack in the foundation. As if that wasn't bad enough, he goes down to the basement and discovers that the sump pump has stopped working and the water is all the way to the top of the pit, getting ready to flood the basement. Oh and did I mention it was still raining outside.

So John calls our landlord and his handyman saying they both need to get out to the house ASAP. This was at 10 a.m. They both say they're on their way. In the meantime John is doing nothing but sucking out the water from the pit into buckets and pouring them down the sink in the basement. This went on for FOUR HOURS. My landlord didn't show up until 2 p.m. and the handyman never showed up. In the end, we had to have an entire new sump pump installed.

That ended up being the easy part, if you can believe it. Back up in the family room with the crack in the foundation - of course it had to be on the side where I have all of my big bookcases with all of my Star Wars collectibles and the water was coming in behind them and now out in front. So what did John and I have to do? We had to run out and buy a dozen of those plastic totes and start removing everything. We're talking at least 100 pieces of collectibles that all need to be wrapped in tissue paper or bubble wrap. We worked all day on Saturday and until about noon on Sunday packing everything up. Then we had to move all three bookcases (which also have glass doors so you can imagine how heavy they are) all the way to the other side of the family room. Which also meant we had to move both couches to fit everything. And OMG, the water damage was worse than we thought and had been going on a lot longer than anyone realized. The mold on the carpet and on the wall and on the backside of the bookcase was disgusting!

We had to get everything done over the weekend because my landlord is sending someone out today to take the paneling off the wall and find the crack and hopefully seal it from the inside. It's supposed to rain every freaking day this week, so they can't dig down outside to repair it until things dry out. Hopefully they'll be able to do something from the inside because we can't have this water keep coming in. And they're going to have to rip up the carpeting, which is going to be an absolute nightmare.

We were so freaking exhausted by Sunday afternoon it wasn't even funny. Though there might be a bright side to all of this. At some point when John and my landlord were in the basement they had a conversation about a possible new rental property for us, since this house is just falling apart. And not surprising since it's 40 years old and the owner won't put any money into it. Turns out that there's a 3-story end-unit townhouse coming up for rent in July that he manages. It's only two miles from where I work and was built in 2006. We saw some pics on his website and it looks fantastic. It also has more square footage than our current house. He's setting up an appointment for us to go see it this week. He's also going to keep our rent the same, even though right now the townhouse is more expensive. Just thinking about packing up the whole house and moving gives me hives, but I think this is all happening for a reason and it's a sign that we shouldn't ignore.

Keep your fingers crossed for us that the repairs get made and that we have a new home in our future.

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My important announcement for today is: I've written a new fic!

I hope to get it posted by the end of the week. I'm sure the fandom that it's in will make most of you go, "Wha…? Since when does Barb write that?" And the answer is - I never have! But if you can guess what my current actor obsession is (and has been for many months) you just might be able to figure it out. :-)

It felt so good to write something! But on the flip-side of that I've come to realize that I will probably never write another SPN fic. Too much has changed with the show and with Jensen and Jared, that I just don't have the desire or motivation to play in that sandbox again. And that makes me sad. I loved writing SPN fic.

But as long as I have an outlet for my creativity, that's what's important. And just like with my Quantum Leap fic a few months ago, it felt great to stretch my wings and try something new.

Just like with the QL story, I'm sure not many of you will read my new one, but that's okay, since I really did write both of them for myself. But if you'd like to take a gander, that would be great!

Stay tuned!

P.S. - one free virtual LJ gift to the first person who guesses what fandom my new story is in. :-)

ETA: We have a winner! cadia58 correctly guessed Star Trek: Enterprise

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