I gave up on Melrose Place for a while. I posted my Season Three review on September 30, 2011. Yeah, last year. After completing that post, I got six or seven episodes into Season Four and just stopped watching. There are a few reasons why this happened. First, I began watching Law and Order (the original) more regularly. Second, I was preoccupied with submitting poems like a crazy person and helping plan our move. And third, the most important of my reasons for stopping watching Melrose Place, was Brooke.

I complained about Kristin Davis in my Season Three review. Her Brooke is manipulative and obnoxious and screws up everything. She is the reason for the two week hiatus I took while watching Season Three, and she is the reason I took this FOUR MONTH hiatus in the middle of Season Four. I can’t stand her.

I resumed watching Melrose Place because I finished watching all of the available Law & Order seasons on Netflix streaming (all eight. Where are the other ten+??? That’s for another entry). I watched Melrose Place only out of my Law & Order heartbreak and a sense of obligation to this website, as Melrose-related keywords bring me a lot of traffic for some reason. I powered through only hoping that something could happen. Brooke made everything worse and worse. It even got to the point where none of her fellow characters liked her anymore. I disliked Billy for being a Brooke-fan; once he became a Brooke-hater, I rooted for Billy again.

And guess what, the Melrose Gods stepped in and killed her. Brooke is dead. She fell and hit her head. Then she drowned. In the pool. I have wanted a pool death forever! I have been very very careful about avoiding spoilers in all past season reviews, but I don’t even care. I hate her! She’s gone. Since she died, I was able to power through the rest of Season Four easily, watching sometimes four or five episodes in a row without a shred of anxiety or angst.

Ignoring Brooke, Season Four isn’t a bad one. Dr. Peter Burns has grown on me. Dr. Mancini is always my favorite, and he had a lot of good moments with his never-changing trio of women: Jane, Sydney, and Kimberly. I also enjoyed some of Jake’s romances this season, and he’s a character I’ve been bored with for a while. Season Four brings a few celebrity cameos (my favorites being Priscilla Presley and Denise Richards) that I wasn’t expecting (perhaps because the show was more successful by this point?), and I hope that more celebrities show up in Season Five and beyond. So now that I’ve knocked this entry out, I’m starting Season Five immediately. My love for Melrose has been restored. I’m so excited!

During our first week living here, we created tons and tons of trash. Boxes, bubble wrap, wadded up balls of tape. You just can’t help the amount you generate when you move. We couldn’t believe it when we called to set up our first trash pickup to find out our home was not eligible. Derrick and I must live a tenth of a mile outside the city limits. This was panic time. We couldn’t live in trash forever!

We knew many of our neighbors had trash pickup from private companies, but finding a private company that fit our needs seemed to be much more of a hassle than it was worth. Some required special blue bags. Some required that you own your own trash bins. We couldn’t even compare the companies and cost-effectiveness of each, because all of the requirements were so different.

The owners left us a note with helpful Hendersonville tips, and one of them was that if we took equal amounts trash and recyclables to the city dump, it was free. Still, the idea of hauling trash in my little Grand Am didn’t seem ideal. It’s different for van/truck/SUV drivers. I just imagined vegetable juice and litter spilling all over the inside of my trunk.

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I had tuna salad yesterday with a side of a tortilla. It was good, but I didn’t want the same meal again today for lunch. Inspired by my successful salmon scramble of last week, I thought I’d try bringing egg into the mix. It was a delicious success! The mayonnaise and mustard kept the inside of the omelet flavorful and moist.

Tuna Melt Omelet

2 organic cage-free brown eggs
½ can Starkist Autentico Chunk Light Tuna in Oil and Vegetables
Smart Balance Cooking Spray
Smart Balance Mayonnaise
Brown Mustard
1 handful Kraft Mexican Four Cheese Mix

Pull out two small bowls and a frying pan. Preheat frying pan to medium. Crack two eggs in one bowl and mix with fork. Put tuna in second bowl, and add your desired amount of mayonnaise and mustard. I used a small spoonful of mayonnaise and a dime-sized squirt of mustard. Mix together. You have made tuna salad.

When pan is preheated, you are ready to make your omelet. Pour in egg. Hold pan up, and swirl it slowly so egg will reach all edges of the pan in a perfect circle. Replace on burner. Cook until edges begin to curl up and you can slide a spatula under them. You do not want the top of the egg to be wet, but it can still be shiny. When it is dry, spread tuna salad on one half of omelet. Sprinkle cheese on top of the tuna.

Fold other half of omelet on top, so you now have a half moon shape and you’ve got the tuna salad and cheese melting yummily on the inside. Cook for one minute. Carefully flip omelet (I had some tuna want to gush out the edges), and cook the other side for one minute. Enjoy! I served with a side of tortilla chips, but a tortilla or a piece of toast would also work well.

If you finished a can of tuna, let your cat lick the can.

The Vow is coming out on Friday. Every time I see the trailer for it, I almost cry. It’s terrible. The instant I hear that the wife can no longer remember her husband and he’s going to work to bring those memories back to her and rebuild their relationship, my eyes well up uncontrollably. It’s happening right now. I can’t even stop it. And I want to see this movie so terribly. I’ve never requested a Valentine’s movie date before. Ever. But I can’t help myself.

Now let me just say that in general I am a cryer. Yes, this is my confession. I’m Rachel. I cry. Most people who have known me for a long time have seen me cry. But most people also would know that I don’t go out of my way to cry—it just happens, spontaneously (but still appropriately).

I have watched five movies this week… and four of the five made me cry. Perhaps these tears are because my movie selection this week has been a little different from the chainsaw/murder-fest I usually put on for background. Our HBO/Cinemax/Starz trial has brought me movies that wouldn’t normally show up in our DVD lineup. Maybe this is a seasonal problem/craving, brought on only by my mild obsession with The Vow. Still, not all of the movies that have made me cry have been tragic romances. I’ll stop blabbering now. Here are my little mini-reviews… Perhaps you want to cry too?

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We traded in Bridesmaids last night for an in-store movie. We took our time in the store, which was a comfortable temperature and was pretty busy for a Friday night. Derrick was recognized twice by old high school friends (this IS a small town. That would never happen to me in Greensboro!) Trying to select a Blu-Ray instead of a DVD narrowed the field a little bit, and I chose Drive Angry early on as a possible contender. I carried it around the store with me, and Derrick thought I was crazy for thinking this could be our Friday night movie. I suggested several other movies (which I won’t name in case they end up being reviewed), but I was most excited about Drive Angry.

I remember seeing the title on our theatre’s marquee last year. I don’t remember ever seeing a trailer for it. But Nic Cage hasn’t steered us wrong lately (I take that back; a few months ago, I DID shut off Season of the Witch 10 minutes in). I didn’t want to pick out a comedy—or rather a comedy that was SUPPOSED to be a comedy. I wanted something fun that we didn’t have to think about too much. I like explosions. Derrick thought I was crazy, but he skeptically went along with me.

Drive Angry is probably one of my favorite movies I’ve seen this year…I know 2012 hasn’t been around very long, but still! I don’t want to go into any specifics about plot or characters because I think the surprise worked in the movie’s favor for us. Drive Angry is an over-the-top (purposefully, mind you!) hilarious action movie originally filmed in 3D (expect some of 3D’s cheesy antics, stuff flying at the screen, etc.) There are lots of explosions (YAY!) and goon killings. Nicholas Cage is believable, both tough and compassionate. Amber Heard was a likeable female lead. Derrick’s favorite character was The Accountant, played by William Fichtner (who we know best from Entourage, Go, The Dark Knight, but he’s in a ton of stuff—you’d recognize him if you saw him).

About forty minutes into the movie, Derrick looked over at me and asked, “Do you think this movie had the wrong title?” This is a legitimate question. I don’t know what Drive Angry sets you up for, but I imagine it turns some viewers off—Derrick, for example. But ultimately, this was a movie that we both enjoyed, and I’ll end up buying to watch again.

We signed up for Dish Network. The owners left their satellite, and the price just seemed too hard to beat. Plus, since we won’t have as much vacation money this year (between the move and me temporarily jobless), we figured that we’d be using our TV a lot more than Milledgeville and deserve the investment of some channels.

An extra incentive of Dish Network was it came (we signed up a day before this promotion ended) with a year of Blockbuster rentals. We get the mailed Blu-Rays and DVDs (one at a time), as well as Blockbuster streaming. We had this Blockbuster service when we lived in Asheville. I do think it trumps Netflix with its incentive of store trade-ins—it’s a built-in bonus movie. I spent an hour the day of enrollment working on creating our queue, and I’m really excited about the lineup.

The first Blu-Ray we received was Bridesmaids, and we watched it last night. Derrick and I were just talking about this movie the other day, and, since we are coming up on our anniversary, I thought a wedding movie would be fun. I’d heard mixed things about it, but mostly bought into the hype that this was a The Hangover for girls. I like The Hangover a lot, and I’m not opposed to bawdy humor (There’s Something About Mary IS one of my favorite movies, and it’s definitely gross), so I wasn’t worried about being offended.

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