Did you know you could fly

Utter inability to sleep last night for some reason. In a way it's a good thing today is my night shift day -- I didn't have to be at work until 1:30 so I slept until noon. But I didn't *get* to sleep until around 5:30am so I still didn't get enough sleep. And when I did sleep there were way too many bad dreams about being trapped places with people who I thought were friends and family but who then turned into monsters. Dunno where that all came from.

In other news, sleep issues aside, it was a pretty decent weekend. Had a new good friend over on Friday, which was nice. Robin and Siobhán are reacting to suddenly being the only two cats left by being extremely clingy and affectionate with me and each other, which both breaks my heart and comforts me simultaneously.

The Doctor Who episode from this weekend was one of the best I've seen. Great characters, incredible plot, and several bittersweet moments that were incredibly well done. Also, the scene shown in my new icon, which was much prettier in the actual episode and which I spent about 3 hours last night clipping and compressing and messing with in order to make a .gif of it. Considering the 40K file size limit for LJ, I think I did a very good job.

So, after my whole post about patronymic naming conventions, I'm home watching West Wing on DVD. They're talking about the Icelandic ambassador. Pres. Bartlett asks for the name and Leo says "Vigdis Olafsdottir" and goes on to say "he is looking forward to meeting you". I immediately had to rewind to make sure I hadn't heard incorrectly. Nope, he definitely said "he is looking forward to meeting you."

As I posted merely hours ago, the -dottir suffix is a *feminine* patronymic. Even in countries that no longer use a patronymic system, but retain vestiges in their surnames, I've never heard of the feminine patronymic being carried forward. Moreover, Iceland *does* still use the patronymic convention, so "Vigdis Olafsdottir" would actually be the daughter of a man named Olaf. In some of the continental Nordic countries it would be possible for there to be a woman with the surname "Olafsson" as a patronymic remnant, but not in Iceland.

So they messed up! I'm surprised. West Wing usually has pretty good script editors and fact checkers. And having looked it up, it turns out that Vigdis is a feminine name as well, so it looks like they pulled an Icelandic name out of the Reykjavík phone book and didn't bother to check gender.

So I just watched the Cold Case episode from 10/26 and while it was a *very* good episode, my enjoyment of it was hindered throughout by one thing -- by my understanding, the Philly PD should never have been investigating the case at all!

The case involved the discovery of the remains of a US Marine murdered in 1951. Now, I also watch NCIS, and according to that show, NCIS has jurisdiction over all criminal cases involving Navy or Marine personnel. Just to check, I went to the real NCIS's website and found the following: "NCIS is primarily responsible for investigating actual, suspected or alleged major criminal offenses involving the U.S. Department of the Navy, or Navy or Marine Corps personnel".

Therefore, as soon a the body was identified as that of a Marine the case should have gone to NCIS, and not continued to be investigated by the Philly PD. I even checked and NCIS does have a Cold Case unit and has since 1995, so they can't even claim that Philly's Cold Case unit was more qualified to investigate an older crime.

This bugged me throughout what was otherwise an excellent and moving episode. Stuff involving soldiers always gets to me. While I may object strenuously to the war in Iraq, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for the men and women who actually serve.

Damn my nitpickyness. Expecting TV to be realistic. I should have known better.

Heroes has gotten all literary on us -- Hamlet and Yeats in one episode (and yes, not only did I recognise where the quotes were from I knew them word for word -- I'm a lit geek).

Incredible episode. Questions answered, more asked. Hmm . . . must ruminate.

Just watched the season finale of House. *sniffle* Ir was really hoping that wouldn't happen. That was a sucky place to end the season. And now I'm listening to "Passing Afternoon" by Iron and Wine on repeat.

I'm finally starting to feel a little better -- most of the fever-ish symptoms have stopped, now there's just the cough and the sore throat from all the coughing. And the being worn out easily. This one really knocked me on my butt.

I also finally decided to watch Serenity for the first time since I saw it in the theatre. I bought the DVD when it came out to show my support, but I never watched it because I couldn't bear to see a certain part happen again. Finally, now, the wound is not so fresh, and I was able to watch it again. I'd forgotten how good it was.

While watching House I come across the following scene:

House and a big shot cancer specialist are shown a patient with horribly disfiguring pustules covering his visible skin.

Big Shot Cancer Guy: *horrified* My God!
House: *impressed* Cool!