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Veronica Mars’ premiere was darn good as well, with plenty of the familair snark and cleverness alongside some genuinely intense moments. I do think that the whole Keith-Mars-is-in-jeopardy-again schtick is getting a bit old and the Dick Casablancas subplot was… well, I think it was all a set up so he can be the red herring in the campus rapist case but I thought his character was utterly disposable from the very beginning so anytime he gets screentime over, say, Weevil or Keith/Veronica is something of a drag to me. Still, the new characters (Piz and Parker) are interesting enough (I’m seeing another love triangle with Piz/Veronica/Logan forming) and so far the move to college hasn’t dampened the spirit of the show so I’m pretty hopeful for this season.

I did manage to miss The Nine though so that was kind of a bummer.

Tunes

A couple of new albums have come out that I was waiting for: The Decemberists finally released their follow-up to the brilliant Picaresque, entitled The Crane Wife. I picked it up today at lunch and listened to it as I ate in my car. I usually don’t trust first listens of albums because I rarely like anything the first time I hear it, but this album is different. I already love at least two of the six or so songs I heard and like the rest of them quite a bit. I’m thinking this may be my favorite album of the year unless something comes along that is really spectacular in the next twleve weeks.

The Killers also released a much-anticipated follow-up album this week called Sam’s Town which Nik and I listened to on the way to work today. She actually bought it last night and listened to it on the way home while I was still sick. Her initial impression was less than favorable and I think she’s still unhappy at what a departure it is from Hot Fuss even after a second listen. My first time through I thought the first few tracks were pretty mediocre but it picked up steam toward the middle and I heard a couple of songs in there I liked quite a bit so I’m interested to give it a few more listens.

I also decided to get Nik some audio gear as a birthday present for her car including a new head unit, Sirius satellite radio (which, as a digression, I’m not-so-secretly pretty excited about myself, primarily because of the NHL network which, as I understand it, broadcasts pretty much any hockey game you could ever want to hear) and an iPod connector so that she can plug in her Nano (or my 4g iPod I suppose) and control it through the head unit instead of having to resort to some clunky mounted solution or something. I got all that from a mail-order place called Crutchfield and I was very impressed all around with that place. Not only did I get a lot of gear for about $70-75 cheaper than it would have cost me to get from a place like Best Buy, but they threw in a free mounting bracket specific to our car model and included free installation instructions also specific to our car model in—get this—plain English.

The installation is happening on Saturday I believe over at HB‘s place to be followed by a trip to the newly opened Texas Roadhouse restaurant here in town and then back to our place for some games. It should be fun birthday for her, even if a little low-key (although we did invite quite a few folks to dinner/game night so we’ll see how many show up). I figure we can go all out next year when she does the 30 year old thing.

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