Unicorns

When I was very young, my Uncle Steve gave me my very first unicorn.

She was small, maybe two and a half inches long, in a resting position with one foreleg curled back and the other in front, her tail swept up along the same side as her back-turned leg. She was white in color, with light brown highlights along her mane and tail, and she was rough, not smooth. It wasn’t long before her horn broke off–I don’t remember how–and I glued it back on, ineptly, a gop of glue squishing out around the break. I managed to keep her safe after that, until she was lost with all my other possessions in the apartment fire of 2005.

By then I had other unicorns. I’d taken to exploring the gift shop area of Nicholasville’s Dish Barn whenever Mom took us by, searching for them. I also found statuettes of ladies in beautiful dress and cute animals and furniture for my doll house. I bought my treasures with my allowance, or sometimes received them as birthday or Christmas gifts. My newer unicorns were all larger than the first. One was tall, reared back on its hind legs, with a smooth finish and a blue tint to its mane and tail. One wound up and played music–I also loved music boxes, though I was somewhat particular about them. I had a statue of a mother and child unicorn, both with reddish mane and tail. All my unicorns were lost in the fire, of course, but I still remember them as they were for years, lined up nearly (though packed in tight) on my dresser beneath my bookshelf in my room at my parents’ house.

I had other kinds of unicorns as well. Uncle Steve gave me unicorn stickers, in the flashy, hologram style that was popular in the 80’s. And a teacher I loved in the first grade gave me an absolute treasure: my first book about a unicorn. (It may have been Misty Morgan. I do remember that book, and the lesson it taught me about selfishness and respect for others.) We had The Last Unicorn on VHS and I loved to watch it. I was terrified by the Red Bull and I found the butterfly tiresome, but the prince was brave and good and the unicorn was heartbreakingly beautiful, even as a lady.

I loved unicorns; I loved the magic of them. I loved the idea that they might have existed, that their horns might have had special powers, that they might not really be gone, but just hiding somewhere. I wanted to meet one, to know one. I wanted my unicorns to come to life.

Sometimes it feels as if unicorns have gone out of style, that now they’re something to be mocked rather than adored. I wonder what sort of magic my niece Daphne will grow up believing in and loving? If not unicorns, then maybe dragons…those seem to be enjoying quite the resurgence in popularity. Whatever it is, I hope Daphne wishes some wonderful wishes and dreams some wonderful dreams. And I hope I can contribute to her fun, like Uncle Steve contributed to mine.

そして誰もいなくなればいい

Some time ago, I attempted a fan translation of the bland anime-original Detective Conan episode 439, そして誰もいなくなればいい. Work went slowly because I found the story so boring. Not being a 推理オタク (mystery geek), I didn’t even realize the plot was a blatant rip-off of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None until a friend pointed it out later, so when I submitted my translation, I had a title like “And It’d Be Great If Everyone Disappeared”. While this works as a fairly literal translation, it’s obviously not what the writers were going for with the title. They very clearly meant to refer to Christie’s work.

そして誰もいなくなった is the Japanese title of And Then There Were None. Changing the verb ending to なれば makes it conditional, and then adding いい indicates that the preceding is the desired situation. This results in something like:

If (And Then There Were None), Good!

So, how to reference Christie’s title while keeping the conditional intact and using English that doesn’t sound ridiculous? Obviously “It’d Be Great If and Then There Were None” is out. But that was the best I could come up with for months and months. This morning, lying sleeplessly in a bed hundreds of miles from home, a solution finally occurred to me. Here are some variations.

And Then There Were None? That’d Be Great!
And Then There Were None? That’s My Preference
And Then There Were None? If Only

The question mark handles the conditional and maintains the flow of the original title. Then it’s up to the following phrase to drive home the murderous point.

I think I like the last one best.

Ready to go

All my pre-op tests and clearances are out of the way, and my weight loss surgery date is set. Due to various privacy concerns, I won’t get into exactly when and where I’m having it done, but I at least wanted to let you know things were moving along quickly.

Now that I’m to this stage, the excitement has been shifting to nervousness. I’m thinking about all the arrangements I need to make beforehand and all the immediate changes there will be to my lifestyle. Last night I dreamed I went to the surgery location only to discover I was completely unprepared, and while I was considering going back home to prep, my car was stolen out from under my nose. Pretty obvious dream symbolism, eh?

But despite my nervousness, “cold feet” or whatever you might want to call the feeling you get before a major life change, I know this is the best thing I can do for myself and my family. I’ll live longer. I’ll be able to do more. I’ll have more energy. It’s going to be awesome.

So I’ll allow myself to be a little scared, for now, as I say goodbye to my former self. Very soon I’ll have the help I need to become even better than I already am. ;)

Plans

All that’s left for my prescreening for weight loss surgery is an echocardiogram (a stress echo was deemed unnecessary), which I’ll have on Monday. Then, once all test results are in to the surgeon, the date will be set and I’ll be off to change my life!

I’ve been thinking about plans, both short term and long. In the long term, I’m looking forward to all the things I’ll be able to do, or do more easily, once I’m no longer obese. I can’t assume I’ll ever get down to an ideal weight; I’ll probably still be a little overweight once I’m done losing. But I should get close, like to 140 or so. That will give me the freedom to wear more clothes styles, to feel better about myself in a swimsuit, and to do things like go horseback riding and on zipline adventures. I expect I’ll have even better endurance for hiking, which will be awesome, because I love exploring the outdoors. And without all the extra weight to stress my joints, I should be able to run again, and hopefully faster and for a longer period of time than an hour. Maybe I’ll even break a half an hour 5K, which back at the peak of my running seemed like an impossible dream.

I’m sure people judge me, consciously or subconsciously, for being obese. Once I’m down to a more reasonable weight, I expect I’ll do better in face-to-face interviews. I’ll also have more self-confidence…but I haven’t been sitting around waiting for weight loss to give me that. I’ve learned a lot in the past several years about personal interactions, and I think I’ve done pretty well. Losing the weight will just give me an extra advantage.

One of my dreams is to travel more, and once I’ve lost weight, I’ll be more physically able to handle a lot of travel. My back and knees won’t suffer from long walks through new cities, and I’ll have so much more energy.

There’s also the hope and promise of motherhood. It’s possible, though a long shot, that losing weight will help me to become pregnant. But even if not, once this is done, I will be healthy enough to raise a child. If we can’t conceive naturally, Sean and I plan to adopt.

The weight loss will help my health in other ways. It should stop the pseudotumor cerebri, the intracranial pressure behind my eyes that is threatening to blind me. My sleep apnea should end. My heart should do a lot better without the extra strain of carrying so much weight all the time. The changes to my diet and nutrient absoption will help my blood pressure and cholesterol.

Some of the health changes will happen fast. The rest of these dreams (and more) lie waiting for me about two years from now, after I’ve had the surgery and gone through the rapid weight loss that follows. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me to get there.

First will be the actual surgery itself. It’s laparoscopic, meaning they go in using long, skinny surgical implements rather than cutting you completely open. With this kind of surgery, recovery time is much shorter…but that doesn’t mean it’ll be a cakewalk. I’ll still be in pain and discomfort for a couple weeks afterward.

I’ll also have the immediate change in my digestive system to deal with. My stomach will be reduced to a tiny pouch, so I won’t be able to eat much at all. I’ll have to switch to eating a bite here and there rather than a full meal. Unlike the lap band, the duodenal switch does curb hunger, but it will still be an adjustment. It’s possible my attitude toward food will change and I won’t want to eat at all, in which case I’ll have to force myself to get the nutrients I need. The most important thing will be protein…in the beginning I’ll be eating a lot of meat. Long term, I will probably need to take a lot of vitamin pills, and I may end up drinking protein shakes too.

Just a couple days after surgery, they’ll want me to be up and walking. I know I won’t feel like it, but this will be important to my recovery and to maintaining my muscle mass. I’ll need to keep moving around during recovery and maintain a good exercise routine afterward. That will continue not just during the rapid weight loss, but for the rest of my life. My plan is to always keep walking and hiking, since I enjoy those activities, and then rotate in other activities like running or biking or a workout video when the mood hits me. I also plan to develop some sort of weight lifting routine, enough to stay toned, but not bulk up.

Finally, I’ll need to see a doctor yearly for the rest of my life to make sure everything is okay. (I see doctors at least that often already, and you should see how many pills I take daily…so this isn’t really a big deal.)

So yeah, I wasn’t kidding when I said this surgery would change my life. It’s not a quick fix or a miracle cure or magic. It’s a lot of work. But it will help me achieve a healthy weight and lifestyle, allow me to be happier and more active, and hopefully extend my life. I’m really excited for my future.

Icky

Feeling icky today, due to my (TMI)period(/TMI). Yes, it’s back. Haven’t had one since March; back then it coincided with our move to Atlanta. Mom surmises that stress sets them off, and that maybe once I’ve lost all the weight, they’ll be regular again. If the latter happens, I just hope they don’t last seven days, like they do now. Ugh.

I don’t share this just to be gross, but also because the menstrual cycle is (obviously) connected to fertility, and that’s been a big issue for me since chemotherapy damaged my ovaries. I take any change in this area as a sign of hope, though it may be folly. That’s me for ya.

Anyway, I talked with the neurologist’s office today, and it turned out they hadn’t received my fax, so I had it sent again, and they have it now. I also called the psychologist about setting up that appointment, but I had to leave a message and I haven’t heard back about that yet. I’m sort of leery of undergoing such a session during this “time of the month” (to use a wholly inaccurate euphemism), but I am in a hurry, so if that’s how it’s gotta be, that’s how it’s gotta be.

I’ve been thinking about the cardiology appointment set for Friday, and wondering how the stress echocardiogram is going to be. The last (and first, actually) time I had one, my heart was so weak they didn’t want to risk putting me on a treadmill, so they gave me medicine to simulate exercise. This time I expect I will have no problems with the treadmill :) So that will be a new experience.

Many steps down…

…and many to go.

I’ve seen my PCP and he’s agreed to send in a letter of clearance for bariatric surgery. We also completed the required labs and chest X-ray. I now have an appointment for Friday with a cardiologist to get those tests and clearance out of the way. The next step is the psychological clearance, which I should hopefully be able to knock out this week as well.

Taking charge of my health has been pretty empowering. I like the feeling of knowing what I want and how to go about getting it. Pretty cool.

Nervous

My sleep schedule has been off for quite some time. Yesterday I didn’t get out of bed until 4pm. Knowing I had a doctor’s appointment this morning, I forced myself to sleep at 11:30. This worked arguably well, except that around 5:30 or so I had a very unsettling dream that woke me up. I got out of bed and futzed around online and watched some Cheers on Netflix and organized my notes for today’s appointment.

I am hoping to knock out most, if not all, of the clearances and tests required for bariatric surgery today/this week. A lot of it will be handled with this morning’s appointment; my PCP will do a full physical and bloodwork and I’ll ask him to request some additional required tests. My neurologist has already seen me and said he will provide clearance for surgery; I’m just waiting to confirm that he has in fact done so. The main variable is a cardiologist; I don’t know if my PCP is qualified to give a cardiac evaluation and clearance, or if I’ll have a separate appointment for that (likely). I need a cardiologist here anyway, so it’ll be good to go ahead and find one.

Then I’ll do a psychological interview and (presumably) get clearance there, and all my required pre-screening will be done. Then it’ll be on to the surgery that will change my life for the better. I’m trying to get to that point as fast as I can.

Nurturing old habits

This weekend I’ve been doing a lot of chatting on IRC and AIM, something I haven’t done in years. I pretty much stopped chatting when I started working in TV news. I stopped doing a lot of things when I started working in TV news. But now that situation is over, and I can sort of feel that I’m coming back to myself in various ways. I am also trying to blog more, as you may have noticed.

I’m getting ready to have weight loss surgery, which will change my life. I can’t wait for the results, but I know it’ll be a lot of work. To that end, I’ve been thinking about healthy habits I used to enjoy, and how to re-incorporate them into my life. For a time in the 2008 era, back when I lost the mythical 50 pounds, I used Wii Fit to interject some fun and interest into my workout routine.  Today I decided to revisit it, and it’s been really rather good. The yoga and strength training exercises vary in intensity enough that I can ease in and then get a pretty decent workout–at least right now. Eventually I hope to be in good enough shape that I’ll be beyond the exercises in the game.

When I got to the aerobics section, I was completely shocked to discover that the two running activities, which I had only tried once and never really cared for, are locations seen in Wii Sports Resort! I’ve been playing Resort a lot lately, especially Island Flyover, and I know that fictional island like the back of my hand now. It totally blew my mind to see The Candle and Summerstone Falls in the icons for the running activities in Wii Fit. A quick Wikipedia search informs me that Wii Fit is Wuhu Island’s original appearance. Neat!

In any case, I’m looking forward to reconnecting with old chat friends and with myself. I’m really looking forward to what my life is going to be like once I shed this excess weight, and I want to make sure I’m ready!

Anticipation

It’s Labor Day weekend, which in the past has meant three days of blissful rest and relaxation and fun. This time, though, I’m gazing ahead at three long days of nothing with impatience. The expanse of filler days stand between me and the information I need to send in for my weight loss surgery; where many people are thrilled to have Monday off, I just wish it was Tuesday already.

This surgery has been a long time coming for me. I’ve know for years I should do it, but something always held me back. I can make excuses about circumstances, but the truth is I was more afraid of making this big change to my body that would help me fix my lifestyle and health than I was afraid of all the health risks of staying obese. Now, though, I have no more time to waffle or make excuses. I’ve got to do this, for myself, for my health, for my self-confidence, for the child Sean and I may adopt someday, for all of my family. I’ve had just the kick in the pants I needed. Everything is ready.

I just have to wait for this holiday to be over so I can get some tests done and some documentation faxed.

Argh :>

Foresight

The Associated Press has looked into the safety of U.S. nuclear power plants. Good.

Quake risk to reactors greater than thought

Okay, not so good.

The nation’s nuclear regulator believes a quarter of America’s reactors may need modifications to make them safer.

Fabulous!

I’m not particularly surprised, though. Humans are not forward-thinking. We have trouble with the big picture; it’s easier to live day to day. I’ve seen this repeatedly in my own life, in my reluctance to take chances even when they aren’t that big a risk and will almost certainly improve my situation. We’re creatures of habit. We get comfortable and we don’t want to break out of that zone. Or we do, but we feel trapped because we’re afraid. We’re more afraid of the change than of the danger of not changing.

Someday our complacency may well spell our doom.

Sometimes we fix things. Here’s a cool article from National Geographic (with wonderful NatGeo writing style) about the removal of some superfluous dams that endanger an ecosystem:

Largest U.S. Dam Removal to Restore Salmon Runs

In Washington State‘s Olympic Peninsula, members of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe still tell stories of a time when the Elwha River was so full of salmon that a person could cross from one bank to the other by walking atop the thrashing bodies of fish struggling to move upstream.

No one has attempted such a feat since two dams were built, near the mouth of the river, in the early 20th century, blocking salmon runs.

But on September 15, officials in Olympic National Park will begin the long process of dismantling the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams on the Elwha River.

The article points out that the dams weren’t built in a forward-thinking way, and it was the residents’ “fear of change” that kept them in place for four decades after it was first proposed they be removed. I’m glad it’s finally being done…but this is a far more forgiving situation than, say, nuclear power plant problems. With disasters like Fukushima, I hardly think we have 40 years to correct our mistakes.

Up until recently I was a staunch supporter of nuclear power. Even in the days and weeks after Fukushima I was an apologist. But as time passed and more and more problems surfaced, my enthusiasm faded. I still believe that nuclear power is, in theory, a good option for cleaner energy. But I’m not so sure I trust humanity to be the custodians of that power just yet. Given our tendency to let things go, to maintain the status quo, to only improve when we’re forced to, I’m not sure nuclear power is worth the risk. Knowing how humanity is likely to take care of–or not take care of, to be perfectly honest–its nuclear power plants, supporting the continuance of nuclear power is essentially rubber-stamping future deaths due to accidents like Fukushima.

I guess the question is, how many deaths, and what kinds of death, are most acceptable? It’s not like coal doesn’t kill, after all. Perhaps coal is easier to swallow because those deaths are more…containable? (I still wonder whether or not we actually comprehend all the dangers of radiation.)

How do you make these decisions, when you know that pretty much no matter what, someone’s going to die as a result of your choice?

Weight loss surgery

I’ve been a candidate for weight loss surgery for years, but due to various circumstances and my own reticence, I haven’t pursued it seriously until now. You’d think I might have done something about it in 2007, when I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and sleep apnea; but I lost just enough weight on my own to help my heart recover, and I sleep with a CPAP machine, and I got used to that state of being and didn’t worry about anything else. Even when, last year, I was told I could go blind if I didn’t lose weight, I didn’t immediately begin preparations for surgery. I talked about it a lot more, sure, but I didn’t actually do anything.

Now I’ve been to another neurologist, and he was very insistent that I lose weight, that I do whatever I have to do to lose it now, because I will go blind, and I don’t want to have shunts surgically installed in my head as a stop-gap measure that probably won’t work anyway.

So I’m doing it now. I’ll be heading out of state for the procedure. I was looking into a doctor near me, but many circumstances have changed and I’ll go to a place where I’ll be surrounded by family. It could happen very soon; I should know exactly when here in the next few days.

Right now I’m working on the ten-page questionnaire the bariatric surgeon’s office sent over. It’s slow going. I’ve partially filled out paperwork like this before, so I have some of the material I need already, but I’m stumped on questions like “When did you first become obese?” and “What did you weigh 10 years ago?”

I’ve kept track of my weight in various ways since the mid 2000’s–I didn’t have a scale until 2004–but the time before that is virtually a blank. I didn’t really start my blog until 2002, and I didn’t talk about my weight in the beginning. Back then, there were no smartphones with apps to track personal data; I didn’t even have a cell phone. Any paper records I might have had were destroyed in the apartment fire in 2005. I do know about how much I weighed in my teens thanks to some diary entries I transcribed to this blog before the fire. But that doesn’t help me with 2001, alas.

I know I was 150 by my junior year, and after I quit kung fu I ballooned. I think I may have passed the 200 mark my first year of college, but I’m not sure. The next year, I lost a lot of weight due to chemotherapy, and I managed to stay around 150 through 1999 thanks to the Atkins diet. When I stopped doing that due to misguided concerns about my kidney function, though, I ballooned again. Looking at pictures from 2000 on, I can see that I gained weight steadily thereafter. I suppose I’ll just have to find my earliest recorded weight and guesstimate, assuming a steady rate of weight gain. (I wonder if I went to any doctors in 2001? Maybe my weight for that year is recorded in my medical records somewhere…)

As for the question of when I first became obese, that would be whenever I hit about 170 lbs the first time. I’m sure that was before the leukemia, but again, I have no information from the 90s other than that I was 150 in 1992. I suppose if I had my weight at time of admission for cancer, I could guesstimate that answer as well.

Maybe I’ll try to call about my medical records in the morning. For now, I’ll check out more of the forms…then head to bed.

Rotate that underwear

I watched Frasier religiously when it was on the air, and one particular comedic moment has stuck with me since. I haven’t seen the episode in years, but I can still see it in my head (though I may not have the exact wording correct).

Daphne is preparing to move out of Frasier’s apartment so she can be with Niles, and she’s fretting over who will take care of Marty. She rattles off a list of perfectly normal things she does for him, but when she gets to one particular item, she’s met with shock and confusion.

“Rotate your underwear drawer–”

“What?”

“Oh, you know, go through and throw out your old underwear and replace it with new. Surely you didn’t think you’d been wearing the same ones all these years.”

“…I just thought I’d found a really good pack.”

Enterprise

Up until recently, I had never really watched the Star Trek series Enterprise, which tells the story of the first warp 5 vessel. When it originally aired, I was turned off by all the sexuality in the pilot, and after that I only saw two more episodes–one in season three and one in season four–because a guy I went to high school with had become one of the background ensigns and I wanted to check it out. But “Hatchery” wasn’t a good stand-alone episode, and the other episode I watched was the Orion slave girl episode…so you can see where I might not have been interested in checking out more of the series. Now, however, Enterprise is available on Netflix, so I figured I’d give it another chance, go back and watch it from the beginning. I started while Sean and I were in New York, and we just finished the four-season series last night.

I loved it. Once I got past the pilot, things started to click for me, and I devoured the first two seasons. I grew to love all the characters. Archer is awesome, of course. I really enjoyed Dr. Phlox, with his open mind and congenial personality and solid ethics. He might actually be my favorite character. And then there’s Hoshi Sato, with whom I had a love-hate relationship that I couldn’t help but try and dissect on Twitter. I wrote that I was glad to see a female character who didn’t fit the modern bad-ass chick stereotype–Hoshi was very smart, and her talents were extremely useful, but she had weaknesses too. She got scared and often started to panic and had to be talked down. Her weakness also frustrated me, of course; I wanted her to just get it done. But it was realistic. She was real. She was a person, and I appreciated that a great deal in this media universe of stock female supersoldiers (and characters of any gender who can somehow handle anything).

The first two seasons introduced the universe to the crew of the Enterprise, focusing on exploration and first contact situations. Those two seasons are my favorites; they embody the soul of the opening credits, which I’ve come to consider a love song to the space program. Faith, strength, curiosity, the need to reach the stars…that’s what Enterprise was about to me.

It was a little jarring when, all of a sudden, Enterprise turned into a show about saving the Earth from an alien Death Star.

It took me some time to adjust to season three. The probe attack on Earth and the following few episodes felt rushed; there were moments that were supposed to be evocative that simply fell flat due to the awkward pacing. I knew I should care about Trip’s sister, but I was still reeling from the abrupt change in format. If I’d been watching the episodes as they aired, I would have been very distressed–and if I’d missed even one episode from the beginning of the Xindi storyline, I would have wondered whether I was even watching the same show. The confusion and unhappiness might have caused me to stop watching. From what I hear from friends, that’s not far from what happened to the Enterprise audience.

But I wasn’t watching as it aired; I had the luxury of going straight to the next episode. I’ve found myself far more forgiving of a show’s foibles when I watch it in marathon sessions. So it wasn’t too long before I got used to season three and even started to enjoy it. I think the writers needed time to adjust as well; the story of each episode felt stronger as the season progressed. By the end, I was totally on board and thrilled to be there. It was intense and the final battle was totally epic and I loved every second of it.

And then there was a mini story arc that I wish had never been inserted, because it did nothing but deus ex the entire Temporal Cold War plotline in the silliest, sloppiest way imaginable. The episodes “Storm Front” and “Storm Front, Part II” are by far the worst episodes of Enterprise, and possibly the worst episodes in all of Star Trek. The cliffhanger that introduced these episodes was inserted into the last few seconds of the final, triumphant episode of season three; it felt like the writers were trying to ensure their survival to another season. I’ve come to abhor this tactic, as it throws real storytelling out the window in favor of audience blackmail. TV writers, I implore you: just write good stories. That’s what we want; that’s what will keep us watching. We don’t want to be coerced. We’re getting tired of it. Eventually there’s always one cliffhanger too many. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this farce lost Enterprise the viewers who had adjusted to the Xindi arc.

After the tale of the time-traveling alien Nazis is over (I told you it was terrible), season four goes right into a very strong, multi-episode arc involving Noonian Soong’s ancestor Arik and some leftover Augments (human supersoldiers). These episodes feature the wonderful Brent Spiner, and Sean and I watched them all at once. The story was wonderful and there was a cute nod at the end to cybernetics being perfected “in the next generation or two”. There are episodes like that in the first two seasons, where things that happen in other Star Trek series are foreshadowed, and it’s always fun. (There were probably many examples I didn’t recognize; I plan to continue watching the Trek series to see what I missed.)

Despite how much I enjoyed the Soong arc, though, I was starting to get a crawly premonition. Enterprise was starting to feel like a different show again. Rather than going back to the season one and two mission of exploration and discovery, or into another war like season three, season four seemed to be transitioning rather rapidly into a show about intergalactic politics and peacekeeping.

Fine, I thought. I could handle a few stories like that. It made sense. The series had to deal with everything that had happened, including new alliances and temporal agent Daniels’ promise that one day Archer would help to form the Federation. But I had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t going to be a few episodes here and there–that the series I’d come to love was lost forever. And I was right. While there were a few stand-alone episodes that evoked the first two seasons, for the most part season four was a series of long story arcs tying humanity into other species and Enterprise into other Trek series. It was good, at times great, and always interesting, but it wasn’t what I’d come to love and expect.

There was another problem with season four that really got on my nerves, and that was retconning Hoshi into a poker playing aikido black belt. There was no indication before season four that Hoshi knew martial arts (other than standard Starfleet hand-to-hand), and she didn’t seem the type to organize ethically dubious poker games and break her CO’s arm over them. I could understand Hoshi gaining confidence in herself after going through what she went through in the Xindi storyline (though honestly an emotional breakdown would have been more in-character), but making self-confidence changes and retconning badassery into her past was going a little too far. It’s possible the writers were responding to criticism of Hoshi; one reviewer apparently dubbed her the series’ “screamer”. But they should have stuck to their guns and continued delivering a believable character rather than succumbing to pressure and resorting to the military chick/Asian martial artist stereotype. (They did backpedal a little toward the end of the show by having Archer and Hoshi recall her former timidity; she admits that she’s just gotten better at hiding her fears. This felt consistent with seasons 1-3 Hoshi but not with season 4 Hoshi.)

While the Terra Prime story arc felt like something out of Babylon 5, I wasn’t unhappy with it. It had a tragic but realistic ending. At that point I just wished I could watch more episodes, see Trip and T’Pol work through what had happened together. I guess they actually didn’t do that, though; if the capstone episode is to be believed, their relationship pretty much ended with that tragedy.

I didn’t have a problem with Riker and Troi (and Data’s voice, and a mention of Reg) being brought into the final episode. The Next Generation was always the most accessible Star Trek to me, optimistic and curious, so it felt almost like coming home to have them round out the show. Thinking about it, I can see where it might be something of an affront to the Enterprise cast; they weren’t allowed to finish their show by themselves, in “real time”, but were instead relegated to a holodeck program for a completely different cast. In that light it might have almost been better to just end one episode sooner. But I liked getting that feeling of continuity, of feeling that what Archer and T’Pol and Trip and Malcolm and Travis and Hoshi and Phlox did existed in the “real” timeline. I don’t want to say it gave the show credibility; I think Enterprise was pretty credible (and in many ways incredible) on its own. But it cemented Enterprise‘s place in Star Trek history, and that was nice to see.

I did sort of wish the show’s conclusion had been more open-ended, though. I’m not the type to flip to the back of a book to see how it ends, so it was a little depressing to learn how Trip dies, and when Enterprise is decommissioned and the adventure is over. The six years between the final two episodes allow room for more stories, but now that I know what ultimately happens, there doesn’t seem to be a point in hearing them. They seem futile and pointless. (Obviously, the idea of “fate” turns my soul to lead.)

I think in season four the show lost its balance; where before it foreshadowed the events of other Trek series, in its final season Enterprise almost became the other Trek series. Too much changed at once. It was almost like skipping ahead a few decades in the timeline. They were good stories, but I’m not sure they matched the people at that point in time. At the beginning of the show, humanity had only just gained the ability to travel to distant systems at a decent speed, and by the end–before the seven-year jump ahead in time–they were brokering peace agreements between species they barely knew. It just seemed a little odd that a crew so reliant on the Vulcan database would suddenly have the knowledge and expertise for the kind of missions seen in The Next Generation, and that the original mission of exploring and increasing Earth’s understanding of the universe would be so quickly bumped down the priority list.

But maybe I’m being hard on season four because I liked the earlier stories better.

In the end, I’m left loving seasons one, two, and even three despite its faltering start…and liking season four a lot, though not on the same level. I wish the show could have continued from season two into more stories about exploration, but I’m happy to have gotten what I did. Thanks to everyone involved with Enterprise: you made a great show with wonderful characters. I look forward to continuing to the other Trek series.

Too many photos

The biggest drawback of how many photos I take is how easy it is to amass a ginormous backlog. Right now I’m sitting on nearly three months of pics, including two trips home to Kentucky, my two weeks in Augusta finishing out my old job, and my recent trip to New York state…not to mention various local shops and eateries and adventures.

I’ve been taking pictures with my PowerShot these days rather than busting out the Nikon, because I don’t normally need to edit the PowerShot snaps before uploading, and that saves a lot of time. But I still need to go through, delete the pictures that didn’t turn out right, and batch rename them all (I prefer a date-based filename rather than IMG_0001.jpg). Then there’s creating galleries on SmugMug and uploading. And let’s not even get into tagging and captioning; I haven’t been doing that for months. Maybe years.

It’s kind of disheartening to think about all the photos I have left to upload, and all the uploaded photos that aren’t properly captioned and tagged. Sometimes when I take a photo I think of the caption right then, and I wish there was some way I could append it to the EXIF immediately. Maybe someday there will be a camera that has that sort of feature, via voice recognition or a slide-out keypad. Maybe one exists now, but if so, I don’t own it.

In any case, part of the reason I’ve been so lax on uploading photos is simply that I’ve been busy working and traveling. I’m finally to a point where I have plenty of free time, and I’m trying not to just fill it with watching Netflix, but it’s harder when I don’t have a set daily structure. I also have other goals, including finally getting my wall art hung up around the apartment and unpacking my various dishes and curios and finding places for them.

The pictures will get done, and hopefully soon…but I’m not sure exactly when.