As the hurricane bears down on the East Coast, here in Virginia Beach the rain and wind have considerably picked up. This, of course, meant grilled cheese and tomato soup, along with a few scary movies, so after my husband and I listened to The Exorcist audiobook when we were in Boston two weeks ago, we decided to watch the 1973 film which resulted in me being scared and jittery for the rest of the night.

Here's my thing: I've had a lot of business travel lately, and while it hasn't diminished my reading time, I'm much more interested to settle down with a show downloaded on my iPad. This week, I was in Pittsburgh and Atlanta from Wednesday through Friday for meetings, and when I had down time and wasn't catching up on emails, I just wanted to watch television. I finally had a chance to watch BBC's Sherlock, which was fantastic.

Side question: Why are British series so short?! I love Downton Abbey, but it's only ten episodes! Sherlock is only three. I want more!

So help me, wonderful readers! What should I download next?

Here's an overview of what I enjoy:

• Period dramas. Everything from Mad Men, Downton Abbey, and anything on the BBC. Ah, thank you BBC. You've given me Whitechapel, and most recently Sherlock. (Whitechapel and Sherlock aren't period dramas, but it obviously feels like it based on the subject matter.) I want more from you. I heard Copper was pretty good? Maybe Doctor Who, which would fall in the next category.
• Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Dystopia. Oh, yes, I do love this. I'm a fan of The Game of Thrones series on HBO, and Warehouse 13 and Haven, both on the SyFy network. Many of you may know that Haven is based on Stephen King's novella, The Colorado Kid. Oh! And The Walking Dead, Vampire Diaries, etc. Maybe I should download Fringe?
• Current. Necessary Roughness and Suits on the USA network. Wonder if I should watch Burn Notice?

You tell me. What movie or TV series would you recommend?

Well, in a week that saw everything from yet another pronouncement of the end of the world, Gaddafi's death which finalized the end of a 42-year reign of terror, and waking up this morning to news that sometime today, a satellite will be reentering the earth's atmosphere to crash somewhere over China (they think), I'd say it's been pretty busy.

On a more local and personal news front (and probably less exciting for you, but certain thrills for me), it's been a week of the past being discovered. I've run along and found the original Upstairs, Downstairs British TV series to while away my time, which is wonderfully fantastic, even if it is a bit dry due to the fact that it was filmed in the early 1970s, and well, we all know how some shows were written back then. There's a gazillion seasons of it, but I wanted to watch the first one or two before downloading the recent PBS remake of it featuring some pretty fantastic actors.

And to top it all off this week, I discovered (for myself, of course), Mr. Stephen King.

Silly, silly me. I read one short story from Stephen King in the early '90s, didn't like it, and wrote everything else off my entire life. I have been without for far too long, Sir Stephen, and I beg you for forgiveness.

I know I'm way behind the gravy train on this one, but I finally hunkered down and read The Colorado Kid, a novella that one of my favorite TV shows, Haven, is based on. Now, mind you, as you may have read in my review, the novella and the TV show are not tied to each other, and the ending of The Colorado Kid wasn't the most sufficient for me. It was King's Afterword, however, that made me forgive it considerably and then, with the urging of Boarding in My Forties' post on reading scary goodness, I decided to download 'Salem's Lot. I've been sufficiently creeped out this week and enjoying every second of it.

So while I'd love to chit chat away with you all, I need to get back to reading Mr. King and finishing The Lantern for the RIP read-along. I leave you with this picture of a truck in Virginia and I ask that you add whatever word needs to be added to make it a complete sentence. While hunting may be this random girl's "thing," the proper usage of "to" and "too" certainly isn't... (I mean, if you're going to put it on a bumper sticker, you should probably do the double- and triple-checking thing, right?)

Girls Hunt To...Please? Oh, you meant "too!"

Just concluding its second season on the SyFy Channel, Haven has developed a strong and loyal group of fans who are transfixed each Friday to their TVs. Some are former X-Files fans who have been hopping around from show to show and finally feel they have something that is rockin' their paranormal socks off like Mulder and Scully did in the 1990s. While Haven is no X-Files, I proudly claim myself a fan. I've heard I might be missing out on Fringe or Eureka, but Haven is the odd, creepy, and humorous show that grabbed me from the start.

Audrey Parker is an FBI agent with a questionable past who arrives in Haven, a small town in New England, on a random case and comes across a photograph from twenty or thirty years before featuring an unnamed woman who looks a lot like her. Obviously it's the mother she's never known and Audrey decides to remain in town to uncover this mystery. She soon learns that the town has its own secret with "The Troubles," which are paranormal events that crop up every few years, tormenting those who are afflicted. With Nathan, the town cop, to Duke the shady criminal slowly getting away from his own past, and Vince and Dave, two crotchety old curmudgeons that seem to have a little bit of insight into everything, the town's "troubles" slowly come to light and become the very "thing" they have to battle. While other people may be affected by The Troubles, Audrey is the only one who isn't and it's this immunity that helps to fight and/or cure those who are afflicted.

The show is loosely based on Stephen King's short story, The Colorado Kid. And after finishing the story last night, loosely based is exactly how to describe its association with the TV show. In fact, I have no idea how that book led to the TV show at all. I'm glad it did, but I am scratching my head and still wondering how it all came about.

With The Colorado Kid, Stephen King's novella takes place in Moose Lookit Island off the coast of Maine. Steffi, a young intern who is spending the summer working at the town newspaper (run by Vince and Dave, who are the only two characters in the story that are on the show), is having lunch with them at The Grey Gull (okay, that's also in the show) along with a reporter from the Boston Globe. The Globe reporter is trying to get a series of feature stories to run in anticipation of the spooky Halloween season and is disappointed that the stories he hears from Vince and Dave are ones he's already heard before. But it's when he leaves that Steffi probes more with the two old guys and finally gets them to tell her a story that has, twenty-five years later, still haunted them.

A mystery it is, but a full story, it isn't. A dead guy on a beach, a Russian coin, and a pack of smokes is all that's on him. He's a John Doe for sixteen months before he gets identified but no one understands why this guy from Colorado is found dead in Maine. No business or personal reason brought him out there, nor do any financial transactions show how he got there. He's just dead on a beach and that's all there is to it.

However, let's face it, Stephen King is usually a pretty good storyteller and through the voices of Vince and Dave, he doesn't really fail on this one. I write really because some will definitely argue that there isn't a story with this one, and they might be right. If you're looking for that literary bow to tie this one all up and give you that a-ha moment, it's not going to happen. It's, as King writes it in his afterword, more about the fact that all of us enjoy a good mystery in life, whether we end up finding the answer or not. And isn't that true? No one really knows if UFOs are either piloted by little green men or if the military is having a good ole chuckle every time they test new spacecraft, but either way, we thrive off these "what ifs." We like to toss our theories around and see what feels right. That's what The Colorado Kid does. It's a simple reminder that sometimes we just like to be told a good story, even if the ending is whatever we make it out to be.

But if you're a Haven fan looking to see how the TV show came about, forget it. Save for two characters, a bar, and a closed off town to outsiders, there's really nothing to tie one to the other.

After deciding he would get nothing of interest from the two old men who comprised the entire staff of The Weekly Islander, the feature writer from the Boston Globe took a look at his watch, remarked that he could just make the one-thirty ferry back to the mainland if he hurried, thanked them for their time, dropped some money on the tablecloth, weighted it down with the salt shaker so the stiffish onshore breeze wouldn't blow it away, and hurried down the stone steps from The Grey Gull's patio dining area toward Bay Street and the little town below. Other than a few cursory gleeps at her breasts, he hardly noticed the young woman sitting between the two old men at all.

First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly feature hosted byBibliophile by the Sea. To participate, share your selection from the book you're reading.