Sarah Connor, where are you?

I miss my show so fucking bad.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles needs your vote! TV.com's The Best of 2009 poll includes TSCC in the Best Show Axed Before it's Time category against Pushing Daisies and Life on Mars. Yeah, I loved Pushing Daisies too, but I think you know where my loyalties lie... with SARAH CONNOR.

So go get in there and support our show. Cast a vote some votes (the Vote button changes to Vote Again after you've voted, so multiple voting is, of course, encouraged).

Oh and in case anyone is wondering, there is no news on the WB front yet. Terminator rights being auctioned is no doubt slowing things down, but our fight continues. No fate.

Summer Glau made an appearance in one of my dreams recently... I walked into my bedroom and there she was putting away the man's laundry. What's up with that? The man was out in the living room completely unaware, so I went and told him. Next thing you know, he and Summer are chatting away in our bedroom and she's pointing out which of his shirts is her favorite. I don't think I need a shrink to analyze this one for me.... Hey Summer Glau! Get the hell out of my bedroom!

I'm fully expecting Felicia Day to be folding the man's jeans or something in dream soon. Since we've been watching The Guild, he's suggested to me (on more than one occasion) that I should dye my hair red again. Can't imagine why. I did, though. I got my hair colored today and I went red. It's much darker than a Felicia Day red, but the man was pleased anyway.

Because I am still a huge nerd/dork/geek when it comes to The Sarah Connor Chronicles (and because I needed something to keep my mind off smoking), I made a diagram of the season 2 house. I think it's self-explanatory enough, but if you're confused by any of it, let me know. And if you want it, you can download a 700x940 PNG or 900x1208 PNG.



I discovered some Connor house bathroom shenanigans while doing this. The bathroom that Riley slits her wrists in is actually the one adjoining John and Cameron's rooms. But for the bathroom exterior, they used a door across the hall from John's room (a door to a room we've never actually seen the inside of). Also, when Sarah smashes the bathroom mirror at the end of Strange Things Happen at the One Two Point, it's not really her bathroom that she does it in (it's probably just a set). We see her actual bathroom when she's packing at the beginning of To the Lighthouse and it looks nothing like the mirror-smashing one.

One other funny thing I noticed: At the beginning of Goodbye to All That, Sarah looks out the kitchen window at Cameron (who's at eye level). Well, I guess cyborgs can levitate because there's no porch outside those windows and it's pretty high off the ground. Or maybe they set up a platform for that shot. I like the levitation explanation better, though ;)

If you missed it last year, I did a layout of the season 1 Connor house. I'm still annoyed that they relocated the hot water heater and stuck some stairs in its place in between What He Beheld and Samson & Delilah!

I'm feeling more like myself today. I started out kind of down (this incredibly gloomy, chilly day didn't help), but then got hit with a bit of anxiety that actually snapped me out of the funk. I never thought I'd welcome anxiety, but when given the choice between that and the downward stare of despair, I say bring on the excess adrenaline!

Nothing about this has been even remotely what I expected. Being a smoker makes you very familiar with the symptoms of withdrawal because you experience them frequently (for short periods of time). So I naturally assumed that quitting would mean I'd be dealing with what I already know, just on a grander scale. I was wrong. So wrong. Couldn't have been more wrong.

They say what happens when you quit smoking is different for everyone. Well, for me it seems to be all about dealing with my head — the anxiety/depression roller coaster, the loss of a sense of self, and the inability to write or do anything that requires more than three minutes of focus. What about this post? You wrote that. Yeah, but I started it hours ago and have been continually distracted by snow globes and vibrating cell phones.

Six days. No fate.

No anxiety today. Instead, I cried uncontrollably for about two hours. Oh yay. I wasn't upset or sad; I just cried for absolutely no reason. I really don't understand what's happening to me. And I think I'm becoming a total head case.

Physically, I still feel awful. My nose is stuffed up, food tastes terrible, I have massive sinus pressure and a headache (and I keep getting a migraine in addition to the regular headache), my stomach is acidic and my muscles are tense. I look terrible too. I swear I've aged about 10 years in the past few days.

How many more days until it gets better?

Okay that might be a bit of an exaggeration in hindsight, but it's how I felt yesterday. I didn't expect the euphoria I'd experienced after 24 hours or so of not smoking to continue, but I was completely unprepared for the downturn that followed to be as brutal as it was. That was fucking rough. I still didn't smoke, though. go me

The e-cig seems to be a good enough nicotine delivery system to keep me from having strong cravings and to keep me from reaching for a real cigarette. It's damn impressive. Certainly better than the Nicorette lozenges I've tried before. The bad day I had yesterday wasn't because I was jonesing for a cigarette, it was mainly from dealing with anxiety. That's been an issue every day so far, but yesterday was the worst and for a few hours there, I didn't think I'd make it. I'm hoping this is a temporary thing while my brain chemistry rearranges itself. Since I've had anxiety problems all my life, I have no reason to believe it'll be substantially better or worse from quitting smoking. So I think it's just the adjustment period that's difficult.

I've been drinking LOTS of water (I've never peed so much in my life!). Partly it's to help the detox by flushing out my system and partly it's just to stay hydrated. I'd read that these e-cigs dry you out. Yeah, that's an understatement. For about two days, my mouth and throat were very dry despite the water guzzling. That's gotten better, but now my skin feels incredibly dry. So dry, in fact, that my thermal face wash burned my skin yesterday. Everything was fine until I went to put moisturizer on afterwards. AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!! My whole face started stinging and I had this big pink patch on my cheek. Weird. I hope that's temporary.

Today was a much better day and I'm hoping for more. I don't ever want to smoke again; I'm finished with that life.

What a weird day. 37 hours and counting and I still haven't smoked. When I passed the 24-hour mark this little experiment went from let's see how long I can go without a cigarette to I guess I'm fucking doing this. It was strangely emotional too. I was out running errands today (driving was a little scary) and had P!nk playing on the stereo (don't judge). It made me cry.

When it’s good, then it’s good, it’s so good till it goes bad
Till you’re trying to find the you that you once had

Yeah, so, like I was saying... weird day, very up and down. Right now, I'm a non-smoker and it's no big deal — it's actually quite easy. Yet a little while ago, I was in such mental turmoil I thought I'd cave. Mostly I just have to "vape" like crazy with this e-cig and probably jack my nicotine level up higher than normal to keep from itching too badly for the thousands of other chemicals my body is apparently withdrawing from. And I believe there's a hell of a lot more than nicotine that keeps you addicted to cigarettes. Otherwise, quitting would be easy with any form of nicotine replacement. But it's not and I feel like shit.

I've had a headache all day and my stomach feels not so good. I haven't been able to eat much and coffee seems to have no affect on me. My head has been in a fog and my thoughts, while surprisingly clear (I expected to have trouble thinking), are moving in slow motion. To tops things off, my old friend anxiety showed up early in the day. I greeted it with some Xanax, which helped. I recently read that some of the chemicals in cigarettes act as MAOIs. That might explain why smoking is so calming, despite nicotine being a stimulant. It has a very positive affect on the mental condition. Since my anxiety issues have gotten way better in recent years, I'm hoping that I'll have the strength to withstand any anxiety uptick I might experience.

You know what's funny? This electronic-cigarette normally uses little lithium batteries, but I also have a USB pass-through cord to power it from my computer. So I'm sitting here listening to music through earbuds hooked to the laptop while puffing on an e-cig that's hooked to the laptop. I think I may be merging with my laptop.

Oh, I made myself laugh earlier. That was a great boost to my frame of mind. If I can laugh through this, I'll be okay. Maybe I should get the man to tickle me everyday to raise the endorphins. Or maybe there should be a lot of sex.

Actually, you know what would really help? WB announcing a TSCC DVD.

I may have accidentally quit smoking tonight. I wasn't even sure if I should mention it because I have absolutely no faith in myself to stick with it. I didn't even plan this. I was just sick of this cold and after a half hour cough-and-blow session this evening, I decided to try not to smoke for a while. That was about 14 hours ago. You might think that's nothing, but its definitely something. I cant even remember the last time I went anywhere near that long without smoking a cigarette.

This isn't some cold turkey kind of thing. I've got this electronic cigarette (actually I've got a better one now than the one in that link) that I've been puffing on. It's far from a perfect substitute, though, so every few minutes my brain keeps asking me to please light a cigarette and inhale some toxic smoke. You would totally feel soooooo much better if you had some awesome tobacco smoke in your lungs. My brain is so right. But so far I've been able to fend off those urges with the e-cig. It's kind of bothering my stomach, though.

So anyway, that's what I've been doing tonight... not smoking. I'll let you know when I fail ;)

The man's been watching the new NCIS Los Angeles and I've found myself paying more attention to it every time Chris O'Donnell is on screen. I never used to find him appealing at all, but something has clearly changed. Maybe it's the gun. He wears it well.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles season 2 DVD sold 64,966 copies.

Is that good? I really have no idea. It seems like a solid number to me even though it's 9% lower than last year's first week of season 1 sales (71,279). Season 1 only had 9 episodes so it was a lot cheaper. Also the show had a larger audience then and the DVD was released when there was another season coming to air. Considering this is now a cancelled show that had supposedly lost about 50% of its viewers, I think season 2 selling 91% of last year's first week is probably good. I wish it had been some OMG WOW number so I wouldn't have to wonder, though.

I'm quite sure international sales will eventually put US sales to shame. One of the benefits of working on the TSCC campaign is that I've had the opportunity to see just how involved and motivated the worldwide fan base is. They love Sarah Connor. And I love them for that.

So to summarize, Fox lost half the viewing audience, yet WB retained a buying audience of over 90%.

I've had a cold for about 8 days, but it's actually only on my left side now. I don't mean that just the left side of my nose is stuffy, I mean my entire left side still has a cold while my entire right side it nearly back to normal. The left side of my face hurts, my left eye hurts, my left ear hurts, the left side of my throat hurts and the left side of my chest is congested. WTF?

This is just one more bit of evidence that my left side is completely defective. My left pupil is abnormal, my left ear has fluid problems, there's a lymph node on the left side of my neck that's about the size of a pea at all times (and it swells if I ever get a shot in my left arm), and I once had a different lymph node on the left side of my neck become so huge and painful that I could barely turn my head. It took 3 months of doctor visits and several courses of antibiotics to fix it (30-days of penicillin finally did the trick). Oh yeah, and any time I get a migraine (not very often, but I get them from time to time), guess where I have it? LEFT SIDE.

I think I need Doctor House.

With The Sarah Connor Chronicle's pilot set in 1999 and two years after the events of Terminator 2, it forces T2 to have taken place in 1997 instead of 1995. And the date of judgement day in T2 has to get bumped two years as well, from August 29, 1997 to August 29, 1999.

The pilot opens with Sarah having a nightmare on the morning of August 24, 1999, but wouldn't that have been way cooler if it had been five days later — on August 29? Even if she believed they'd stopped judgement day, there was no way of knowing for sure until that day came and went without the world blowing up. So what a perfect morning it would have been for Sarah to have a nightmare about John's death and the end of the world. But instead, she has that dream 5 days beforehand. Oh what a missed opportunity.

With the way this show had trouble with dates, I wonder if the story was actually supposed to kick off on the former judgement day and they just screwed it up?

ETA: Nevermind. I've apparently been under the false assumption all along that the series picked up two years after T2, not two years after j-day. So the retconning of T2 is even more screwed up than I thought since it throws out all of Arnold's dialog about j-day instead of just swapping the year. But in some ways, I guess it sort of makes the beginning of the pilot work better.

In an interview with IGN, Brian Austin Green mentions the TSCC mobile billboard and DVD movie possibility.

"The fact that people are still buying the DVDs and there's the demand for it… I know there's a billboard that's driving around Burbank saying, "Save the show. Bring it back." That's amazing. Those little things, they're all little things, but they become something bigger. And I think if enough people just kind of keep putting that energy out there, something will happen. I think we have a really good chance."

We're going to get more Sarah Connor Chronicles. Can you feel it? I can feel it. We're on the radar and we've got momentum. The Freaking Big Push continues through October, so stick with it!

I had a lucid dream this morning that the man was standing in the kitchen with a load of heavy tools in his arms and he needed me to come open the basement door for him. I tried, but it's like I wasn't really there so I couldn't open the door. It was very weird — I was in the dream and also in my bed having the dream at the same time. It's not like I've never had a lucid dream before, but this was different. My mind was in the kitchen trying to help the man, but my body was still in bed making it impossible to get that door open.

But the need to open the door was so compelling that I finally got out of bed, walked through the kitchen and reached for the basement door...

Wait. That was a dream. The man is not here waiting for me to open the door.

I don't know why, but I opened it anyway. And then went back to bed.

I do not appreciate being scented!

- Roxy

Yeah, that's definitely my favorite deleted scene. Usually it's obvious why deleted scenes are deleted scenes, but I don't why they cut that. Something that important should've been on screen. At least it's on the DVD, though. Now I can watch Derek throw dirt on old!Fisher over and over again.

If you're a Pete Loughran fan like I am, you'll love this. He's got a video for "From the Gutter":

You probably already saw the article on Scifi Wire about the mobile billboard. You might have also seen mentions on various other sci-fi blogs, like Scifi Scoop, The Sci-Fi Block, Slice of SciFi and You Bent My Wookie. But have you seen today's io9 story? TSCC executive producer James Middleton is quoted. Go read it!

We've done plenty of guerilla marketing in this campaign to save the show... bookmarks in books in the sci-fi section of the library, flyers under windshield wipers, stickers everywhere. But I like that kind of thing and I want to do more. So I'm thinking about doing a highway overpass sign for The Sarah Connor Chronicles, like this. But what should it say and how should I do it? A painted sheet? Some cardboard? Streamers woven into the fencing? Hmm...

I think I'll plot it out this weekend. I'm open to suggestions.