Time for the Strike to end

I'm finally back. We got busy with Christmas, we went out of town and when we came back, we were all sick (one at a time). Though I think I was sick the longest. My youngest had it for 1 day and then gave it to me and I had it for a week. Yuck!

I've decided that the TV writer's strike has gone on long enough. I want more new episodes of NCIS and Chuck and Bones and I think The Bionic Woman has been dismantled and put back in the box she's been in since the 70's. I guess they've still got a few new episodes of ER and CSI Miami.

Here's a couple of suggestions of things you can do while you're waiting for new episodes to come back:

• Join Netflix. Netflix is a great and convenient way to get DVDs. But they're not just a replacement for your local video rental store, because they're likely to have a much bigger selection of DVDs than your local store. In addition to any movie you are likely to have ever heard of, they have the series DVDs for most TV shows that have ever been produced on DVD. Some of my personal suggestions: NCIS (they have the first 4 seasons), Monk, NYPD Blue, and MacGuyver. They have all of the seasons of MacGuyver, what a great idea! And here's a Netflix tip: if you see a commercial for a movie that's in the theaters now, and it's a movie that looks interesting but you don't want to go see it in the theaters, you can almost always save it to your Netflix queue right now. It will have a yellow "save" box instead of a read "add to queue" box and when you click that, it puts it on a special list at the bottom of your queue, and it will move up to the real queue when it comes out on DVD.
  
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• Watch TV on the internet. NBC.com has full episodes of many shows up. On Saturday, I found out that I'd missed the first episode of Celebrity Apprentice (it started last Thursday), so I watched it Sunday night while my husband was watching a football game. a neat hint for those of you who have the TV and the computer in the same room: headphones. That way one can watch something on the TV and the other can listen to the computer without disturbing the TV viewer. Another site that has TV shows is OPENhulu.com. Some networks also sell their shows on iTunes, which is especially good if you have a video iPod. And TVSquad has a list of lots of other places you can look. Time to catch up on all those shows you never watched before or can't wait to see again.