Check in Thursdays: Week 43

Jennifer:
Watching... How am I already behind in TV? The only shows it seems I'm really keeping up with this season are The Amazing Race, Parks and Recreation, How I Met Your Mother, The Vampire Diaries, The Mindy Project, and Ben & Kate. My good intentions for others have not panned out. I am slowly finishing up Bunheads though, for some reason...
Listening... Potential marathon training has me running 4 days a week and the audiobook for How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr has been totally key in getting me through it. I'm actually kind of bummed that I'm getting near the end of the book.
Reading... Re-reading The Great Gatsby. Also getting back into The Art of Racing in the Rain.


Mira:
Watching... picked up Arrow this past week and we rather like it.  It's very much like Batman.
Listening... Obsessed with a song, and listening to it on repeat with 3 other songs: "Demons" by Imagine Dragons.
Reading... Catching up on episodes of Hart of Dixie and Vampire Diaries over recap websites like www.tvovermind.com.

Check in Thursdays: Week 42

Jennifer:
Watching... Rather liked Nashville, even though country music is so not my thing AT ALL. Connie Britton is of course amazing and there's a few different storylines to keep things interesting. The only problem--Hayden Panettiere is annoying, which makes her kind of perfect for the role but not any more watchable...
Listening... Ben Gibbard's solo album, Former Lives.
Reading... Finally finished A Clash of Kings! Yes, it took me almost a year to read, not because it wasn't good, but because it's just...dense? And like the first book, it doesn't really get going until the second half. Anyway, the book left me kind of depressed. I mean, you don't really read these kinds of epic fantasy series expecting a lot of happiness but man, George R. R. Martin is not afraid to kill off characters and completely change the game (no pun intended). How many books is this series supposed to be? Seven? Not sure if I'm going to dive right into the next one or take my time, considering it seems to take Martin like 5 years to write each book.

Mira:
Watching... Jenn and I saw The Perks of Being a Wallflower last Friday! I hadn't read the book but really enjoyed the movie.  She had read the book and liked the movie better, I think.
Listening... Bought The Lumineers' album, but haven't listened to all the songs yet.
Reading... nothing worth mentioning. :)

Check in Thursdays: Week 41

Mira:
Watching... Playoff baseball -- mostly the O's vs. Yankees series.  Really, it's the husband that's watching while I read on my Kindle...
Reading... What am I reading? Junk. Cuz when I read on my Kindle, that's all I read.
Listening... One of my favorite songs on the radio right now is "Ho Hey" by The Lumineers. Trying to decide if I like it enough to buy the CD on Amazon, though.

Jennifer:
Watching... New season of Amazing Race. Want to check out Nashville and Arrow and this PBS series Call the Midwife...maybe this weekend.
Reading... Same as it's been for weeks. Notes from a Small Island and A Clash of Kings. Also re-reading The Great Gatsby because it's been years and I don't remember it at all really.
Listening... Really enjoying my latest audiobook, How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr. It has a lot of cliched teenage stuff in it but is written really well.

Check in Thursdays: Week 40

Jennifer:
Watching... Surprisingly I really liked the pilot of Last Resort, even though the premise is rather preposterous. Andre Braugher is always amazing and there are some nice surprises in the cast, like Scott Speedman (Ben from Felicity!), Dichen Lachman (Sierra from Dollhouse), and Autumn Reeser. The story gets spread out among quite a lot of characters and settings but the pilot juggled them pretty well. I have no clue where this can all go but it was interesting enough for me to want to check it out again.
Listening... New Matt & Kim album! It's Alright and Let's Go among others. Also, starting a new audiobook: How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr.
Reading... Same as it's been for weeks now: A Clash of Kings and From a Small Island. I may abandon them for awhile to re-read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for the umpteenth time though...an article at NPR gave me the itch!

Mira:
Watching... Excited that Revenge is back! I know it's super soapy, but it's just so... twisty and exciting and fun in all the right ways.
Listening... So I had been actively not posting about "Gangnam Style" by Psy, but now it's turning up on the local radio stations, too! And a surprisingly large number of my coworkers have no idea what it is -- internet sensation, tv sensation, iTunes chart sensation and all!
Reading... Finished the Condie books and trying to get myself to finish The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.

Check in Thursdays: Week 39

Mira:

Watching... Surprisingly enjoyed The Mindy Project, and realized how much I don't particularly enjoy The New Girl. Not sure if I'll pick up The Mindy Project, but The New Girl is off my DVR record list. Also dropped Switched at Birth. 

Reading... Ally Condie's sequel to Matched, Crossed.  Finished Crossed in the past week and it was enjoyable so I'm reading the next in the series.  I think I mentioned them in a post weeks/months ago. :)

Listening... Not sure how I feel about the new Mumford & Son's single, "I Will Wait."  But I am interested in hearing the rest of the CD sometime soon...

Jennifer:
Watching... The Great Food Truck Race on Food Network. There always seems to be an Asian team that kicks butt. This season it's Seoul Sausage from LA. Finale this week.
Reading... Still working on Notes from a Small Island and STILL on A Clash of Kings. Why is this book taking me a year to read?
Listening... I started this audiobook, Chime, but it hasn't really been holding my attention...

Check in Thursdays: Week 38

Jennifer:
Watching... New fall TV is starting? Trying to make time to check out Revolution and The Mob Doctor.
Reading... Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson. I'd always wanted to read more of his books (loved A Walk in the Woods) and mentioned this to my boyfriend's roommate, who promptly ran to his room and fetched a copy of this for me. I'm a big Anglophile to begin with, so of course I'm loving it!

Mira:
Watching... Behind in a lot of TV right now, but currently catching up on Covert Affairs. This show belongs in the same category as Nikita for me; always surprising how much the storylines, crazy as they may be, keep me entertained!
Reading... Silly books on Netflix instead of the library books due in a week...

Both:
Listening... Seeing Street Corner Symphony (from The Sing-Off) live tonight!

Jennifer's Fall TV Grid

My TV schedule for this fall is relatively light compared to years past -- most of the new shows (in pink) I included are ones that I'm planning to check out at least once but I expect that I won't keep most of them. There are also quite a few shows that I still need to finish the last season of (in yellow)...

Check in Thursdays: Week 37

Jennifer:
Watching... Catching up on So You Think You Can Dance. I'm rooting for Eliana and Chehon for the win, although I haven't really been that into this season. I think they did the best they could with the format change, but it was still a bit of a bummer. Fall TV is starting soon and I'm all discombobulated and totally unprepared -- I never really got around to catching up with various shows from last season! But hopefully this weekend I can get my TV schedule organized. I'm planning to downgrade my cable to the minimum and rely mostly on Hulu Plus in the near future though which may make things interesting.
Listening... PTX Volume 1 - Debut EP from Pentatonix!
Reading... Getting back into A Clash of Kings. Man, I haven't been to the library in weeks. It's bad.

Mira: [A day late because of me... apparently I remember Thursdays better when I'm traveling overseas!]
Watching... MasterChef! I don't think I've blogged about this show before, but my husband has been watching the season and I started off by listening to the episodes while reading and then slowly got drawn into the competition.  Premise is home cooks with no training or no professional kitchen experience competing for a chance to win a cookbook deal and $100K (presumably to open their own restaurants). My favorite was Christine Ha, a Vietnamese-American creative writing grad student who also happens to be blind. She was phenomenal and truly inspiring.
Listening... Still just Fun. cuz that's the only CD on my iPhone right now.
Reading... Have 4 library books but am not reading any of them. Oops.

Check in Thursdays: Week 36

Burkie (filling in for Jenn):
Watching... football!  college & pro!  go 'horn!  go ravens! 
Listening... lyle lovett's latest, "Release Me."  some good stuff on there.
Reading... still working on "As You Like It" for the book club (grins), and just picked up "The Beekeeper's Apprentice" by laurie king.  it looks like my kind of thing: a mystery, putting characters (Sherlock Holmes, in this instance) from other authors/eras into a different setting, and Holmes just happens to be a beekeeper in his retirement days, which is my intended post-retirement profession :)

Mira:
Watching... Caught up on So You Think You Can Dance! I really do like a lot of the dancers this season, but don't always love the numbers. I mean they're good numbers, just few of them really capture me. Maybe it's from watching so much of the show? I have no idea.
Listening... Bought Fun.'s full album Some Nights mostly because I really like their single "Some Nights".
Reading... Uh... Not too much since I've returned home. Need to finish As You Like It, though. :)

Check in Thursdays: Week 35

Jennifer:
Watching... The pilots for The Mindy Project and Ben & Kate are available for preview on Hulu. I really liked The Mindy Project - it wasn't super groundbreaking or anything but Mindy has a unique voice and I have high hopes. Also, random reality dance show A Chance to Dance in which the BalletBoyz (recently seen as judges on So You Think You Can Dance) are tasked by Nigel Lythgoe to form a dance company in 30 days and perform at the Dizzy Feet Gala.
Listening... Japandroids - Continuous Thunder. I'm not always one to pay attention to lyrics but this one really got me. Probably one of my favorite tracks this year so far.
Reading... Uh, A Clash of Kings here and there but really not much. This has been kind of bad year for reading.

Mira:
Watching... Been catching up with season 3 of Parenthood. It's interesting because for the most part I kind of hate where so many of the storylines are heading but watching the story unravel is pretty amazing. The characters and how they interact in a way that is so realistic; I muse at the end of each episode how surprising it is to me how much I love this show.
Listening... Still got my iPod but I am starting to get rid of my alarm mix. To switch it up, I've started listening to some random Korean pop music on my iPod.
Reading... The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. This is the book that had some to do with Oprah and her book club, I think. Someone had mentioned it to me as being their favorite book ever. It's well written but in a kind of pretentious way and none of the characters are really likable. As a result, I'm having a difficult time getting into it. We will see what my final verdict is...