Following my food post, I want to talk about all the fun and games to be had.
Friday: We went for a walk around the neighborhood before dinner and got to show our friends life in suburbia, which is exactly like they thought it was.
Saturday: I took our friends to Main and Centennial campus, and it was a gorgeous day for it. We tried out the Wolf Ears and took in all the beautiful views while social distancing from others and wearing our masks. We took another walk before dinner. In the evening we played many games. Labyrinth, Takenoko, and two rounds of Munchkin Apocalypse.
Four of a kind? Nope… I have a FIVE of a kind.
Sunday: Woke up and watched Rashomon, took an afternoon nap after finishing the sauce, had one more walk before dinner, and then played quite a few round of Gang of Four… one of my absolute favorite card games.
It was an absolutely wonderful long weekend. I forgot how much I need social interaction and how fantastic it is to play games with people you care about.
Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Get tested. Be smart and safe. Then, come over to be fed and play games 🙂
After a negative Covid test and weeks of being extra-super careful, we had some friends over for a long weekend. Let me tell you about all of the food I made and you’ll see why I was absent for a few days and am publishing this after the fact:
Thursday: I baked a 13 lb. turkey and accompanied it with Parmesan green beans, bread stuffing, and turkey gravy. We had homemade brownies with Howling Cow ice cream for dessert.
Friday: I made homemade blueberry muffins from my favorite muffin cookbook. Lunch was rice ball casserole. Dinner was made-from-scratch vegetable lo mein, Mongolian beef in the crock-pot, and homemade crab rangoons. Dessert was lemon cupcakes with strawberry frosting.
Saturday: Brunch was a sausage, egg, bacon, and cheese casserole with sweet potato biscuits. We ate the rest of the rangoons and had some fruit as a snack. Dinner was crispy chicken leg quarters with asparagus fries. Dessert was homemade chocolate cake with my version of cannoli cream (sans chocolate chips).
Sunday: Lunch was turkey and cheese sliders with the leftover turkey meat from Thursday. Dinner was lasagna with sweet Italian sausage inside, a double batch of Grandpa’s meatball recipe (55 meatballs!!), garlic bread, and it was all topped off with my giant vat of homemade sauce. Dessert was creme de menthe squares, which are super complicated to make but super delicious to eat.
Monday: Our company left and we sent them with a ton of leftovers. We also have a ton of leftovers. I show my love through food but I also forgot how much I absolutely love hosting and feeding people. Can’t wait to do it again.
Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Get tested. Be smart and safe. Then, come over to be fed 🙂
Musical Accompaniment: YouTube is still not behaving, so it’s the Ironman soundtrack for me.
Interstellar News: Today I had a wonderful egg bagel with veggie cream cheese for breakfast, rice ball casserole for lunch, and homemade crab rangoons, vegetable lo mein, and Mongolian beef at dinner. I ended the evening with lemon cupcakes with strawberry frosting… lots of yum.
TL;DR: Voyager rescues three Ilarians from a disabled vehicle, two men and a woman. One of the men dies, the other is a doctor, and the woman is now a widow. Kes begins to act strangely and wants to take a break from dating Neelix. A representative of the Autarch beams aboard but Kes fires a phaser, they knock out Janeway, and beam down to the surface. It’s made clear that Kes has been taken over by the dead man, Tieran, who wants to be the Autarch again. The Autarch’s oldest son wants Voyager’s help but Janeway wants him to exhaust all peaceful solutions first. Kes tries to fight against Tieran, but he’s very strong. All the while everyone sees only Kes but she’s acting like a mad warlord. Tuvok tries to infiltrate, and is caught, but eventually Voyager does help and Kes is recovered.
Favorite Quote:
Kes: Everything seems so different now. My thoughts and perceptions, even my relationships with my closest friends. You, the Doctor, Neelix. How can I go back to my normal life as if nothing ever happened?
Tuvok: You cannot. This experience will force you to adapt. You are no longer the same person, and the course of your life will change as a result. Where that new course leads is up to you.
Tuvok is the best mentor on the ship, and possibly one of the best in the universe. Though he has nothing on my work mom.
What I imagine Kes says to Neelix when she tells him about her escapes with Nori and Ameron.
“I love plants, flowers, anything that grows.”: Kes is beautiful here, she completely owns being this megalomaniac man, and her, and some combination of them. I still can’t stop laughing about the “I love plants” line. The few scenes on the holodeck were okay, but Torres looks fantastic in a bathing suit, I wish I looked that awesome in a one piece… but alas I have almost no torso. This was a fantastic episode with a little bit of awesome technobabble and a sprinkle of polyamory in there. When Tieran-as-Kes suggests that his wife and Ameron become a triad, I almost spit my water out. I thought it would have been more difficult for Tieran to accept being in a woman’s body, but my assumptions were completely wrong. What I don’t understand is why he would sacrifice his concentration, and his doctor, just for some of Kes’s mind abilities? I mean she’s only going to live a few more years, I would have thought he would want a more durable and long-lasting body, as well as a doctor who can help him stay jumping from body to body. I don’t really have a lot bad to say about this episode, 8 cupcakes with LOTSA frosting for this one.
Musical Accompaniment: More of my instrumental playlist
Interstellar News: My brain is feeling much better today after yesterday. Yesterday I also did at least six loads of laundry, so no wonder why I was so damn tired. Today, I am making a 13 pound turkey because I am ridiculous.
TL;DR: Earth, 1967, something lands in the Sierra mountains. Cut to present day DQ where a spatial rift forms and Captain Braxton from the 29th century who’s there to destroy Voyager in his time ship due to something they did. They both get pulled into the rift, however, and Voyager winds up in 1996. Chakotay, Paris, Tuvok (in a du-rag), and Janeway head down to explore L.A. Chakotay and Janeway find Braxton who is now an old, homeless man. His ship landed in 1967 and a man named Starling found the ship and has been using it to come out with new technological advances every few years. Rain Robinson, who works at a SETI lab for Starling, tells Starling “something’s out there” and then, against his advice, sends a welcome message that Kim (who’s got the bridge) ignores. Tuvok and Paris head for the lab, destroy her computer, and go to leave when one of Starling’s henchmen disintegrates their ride so they take Rain and her van. Chakotay and Paris confront Starling, are beamed out just in time by Kim, try to steal the time ship but instead wind up losing data and the EMH (not to be confused with Data and the EMH).
A place I have actually been to! It’s super cool!
Tuvok and Paris get Rain’s help to send a signal back to Voyager and they get a plan together. Starling figures out how to cause pain to the EMH in order to get information on the crew. Rain asks Starling to come get her, so he does and brings the EMH. Chakotay and Torres take a shuttlecraft to go rescue the boys and get the time ship, Starling thinks they’re just there to steal it. They try to beam out Starling, Rain runs away, the EMH does too, and Starling is eventually beamed but stuck in the pattern buffer… so he’s beamed onto Voyager. Torres and Chakotay crash land and are captured by two men who are doomsday preppers. Paris and Rain go to Starling’s company, the EMH and Tuvok head to Arizona, and Starling is woken up on Voyager. The driver locates Starling in the timeship and beams him back to Earth. The EMH frees Chakotay and Torres, Paris and Rain fall for a ruse, and Starling launches. Everyone gets back to Voyager, including the mobile EMH and Janeway is getting ready for a manual launch which kills Starling. Braxton comes back through, but it’s one who doesn’t know them, and there’s a temporal prime directive that means they go right back to whence they came.
Favorite Quotes:
Porter: God in heaven help us.
EMH: Divine intervention is unlikely.
EMH: Tuvok’s at the shuttle. He’s starting repairs.
Chakotay: Doctor, how?
EMH: It’s a long story, Commander. Suffice it to say, I’m making a house call.
I absolutely love this whole scene, from the invincible EMH to the reactions from Torres and Chakotay.
Janeway’s Jam: “Ensign Kim, you have an impeccable sense of timing. Not bad for your first day in the big chair.”
I was absolutely NOT this 90’s girl… AS IF! I was more like Avril Lavinge, your average punk rock girl.
“Somehow I doubt that taking a test drive is going to alter the course of the universe.”: I am absolutely a 90’s girl, though I grew up on the East Coast. So many things in the first part were fantastic including, to my surprise, Sarah Silverman (who played Rain). I’ve also been to the Griffith Observatory, over 10 years ago when I was last in L.A., and it was awesome to see a place I’ve been in an episode like that. I also liked the shout out to SETI, as it’s a thing I taught about in one of my classes. I loved, loved, loved that Janeway was a hunt-and-peck typer because by the time she was born it wasn’t a required class… much like many do not know cursive nowadays. I also thoroughly enjoyed Kes and Neelix getting sucked into a soap opera. My Grandma Mary used to love “her shows” and I remember there were certain times we weren’t supposed to call her because she would be enthralled. Instead of “a hat for Spock“, Tuvok had something more appropriate for the time he was beamed into, though I cannot imagine him in dreadlocks, ever. Kim was also pretty awesome in the captain’s chair, with a little urging from Torres. This part was a fantastic set up to the next part, but still had a lot jammed in it.
How I imagine the EMH is feeling.
“In short, I am footloose and fancy free.”: This second half really felt kind of glued together and didn’t really feel like one, cohesive piece to me. There’s a lot that happens but the absolute best parts all surround the EMH. I also think it’s ironic that Janeway began this voyage as “prime directive this” and “prime directive that” and then they can’t get put back in the AQ because of a “temporal prime directive”, which I thought was a nice touch for why their voyage didn’t get to end there. I don’t really understand why there was a reset Braxton, or what happened to the rest of the late 1990’s, but I sort of get Starling… to a point. Once he realized Voyager was from the 24th century, his wrong assumption that they were there to steal the technology for themselves was understandable. What I don’t get is why he would risk blowing up the world for more technology? He was greedy, plain and simple, and he wasn’t as altruistic as he claimed when Braxton was living on the streets. I also didn’t hate Rain and Paris, in fact Paris was not vomit-inducing and skeevy as he has been in previous episodes.
For the two-parter as a whole, I give it a 7 hour drive on Interstate-95… plus or minus a few hours.
To Boldly Go Where Everyone Has Gone Before 