Ugh...

Still on the sick end of the spectrum. I'm feeling better than I did on Friday, and am well enough (at least marginally) to be in the office.

I did manage to watch all three of the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movies over the weekend, though. They're good for lounging on the couch while feeling sick. I also worked on a few things for my Etsy shop, because fuzzy headed and complicated figuring out of crochet stuff don't go well together. So I had to set aside one of my custom projects until I am back to thinking straight. The other one requires more yarn, and I haven't managed to haul myself to the craft store yet. Soon, I hope!

Media consumption!

I've managed to watch a bit more stuff lately than I normally do, so here's a couple of notes on those things.

1) Tangled: Yes, the Disney movie. It was pretty good, but it's just NOT a Disney movie like the ones that came out when I was a teenager. Songs from The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast still stick with me. I think that maybe if I was willing to watch Tangled a few more times, I might get some of those songs stuck in my head more, but I doubt I'd watch the movie again. It wasn't at all bad, it was just not quite what I hoped for. Though it was PRETTY. :)

2) Doctor Who: In anticipation of the newest episode, I went back and watched "A Good Man Goes to War" (which I keep wanting to call "Demons Run") and "The Doctor's Wife." The weird thing about watching these two in that order was that I caught something in "The Doctor's Wife" that I had dismissed the first time I heard it, but that made a whole lot more sense right on the heels of the later episode. This got me thinking that maybe I should watch the first half of season 6 in reverse order to see if there's more of that... because River's timeline is backwards in comparison to the Doctor's... hmmm. :)

Anyway, like I said, this was in anticipation of "Let's Kill Hitler," which turned out to be maddening and lovely all at the same time. Only five more episodes left this season, which seems far too short for my liking! (And yeah, 13 episodes is normal, but it just REALLY seems short this season.)

3) Buffy: We're up to season 3 of Buffy currently, about halfway through. And I've discovered that I can't pick up anything that Joss Whedon has a hand in presently as I will stumble across more spoilers. This time, it was an issue of the Dollhouse comic, which talked about what was going on in terms of Buffy "season 9," which is a forthcoming comic (they already did season 8 as comics). As it turns out, it wasn't a TV show spoiler, but a season 8 spoiler. Nonetheless, ugh.

4) Captain America: We finally made it out to see Captain America last weekend, and enjoyed it thoroughly. It still breaks my brain a little that Johnny Storm is playing Cap now. I might like Cap as much as I disliked Johnny. :) And the trailer for the Avengers movie, though quite vague, still makes me excited to see it! :)

Ah, Pirates!

I realized tonight that apparently I can't get enough of the Pirates of the Caribbean series. We went to see the fourth movie (On Stranger Tides) last month, and a day or two later, I rewatched the third movie (At World's End). Tonight, I flipped on the TV in my hotel, and discovered that they were showing At World's End on SyFy, so I had to watch.

Mostly, it's on as background noise for now. I have a REALLY hard time watching anything when I don't have yarn and a crochet hook in hand. And oddly, I don't often bring my crochet with me on trips, mostly because I'd have to fill most of my backpack with different colors of yarn to have enough projects to keep me busy. :)

There's other things I could be doing tonight. Reading more books (I've gotten through five already this week, which means I only have two left for my flights home tomorrow) or writing some stories (I've got three partially done stories that I should be working on) would be better options. But Pirates sucks me in every time. :)

Starting on the Harry Potter movies!

I came late to the Harry Potter phenomenon out of obstinacy. I didn't want to read the books when everyone else was, precisely because they were popular. But I let myself get sucked in last year, and found that I really enjoyed the books!

I didn't watch any of the movies as they were coming out either. And now that the final movie is out, we've finally begun watching them. This will likely take a while, as our movie watching time is limited, and those movies are LONG!

But what surprised me the most, in watching it, is just how much they had to trim the novel to make it fit into the 2 1/2 hour time length. We watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone last night. I was expecting a bit more Quidditch and a bit more of the time spent with the Dursleys on Privet Drive, among other things. (In the end, cutting both of those back wasn't entirely bad.)

Jeremy laughed at me while we were watching it, because at one point, I said "ooh, I gotta write that down!" See, I run one-shot Harry Potter games at some of the gaming conventions we go to, and there was actually a bit in the first movie that will fit perfectly into my next game. Of course, then my notebook was out, so I also wrote down something Ron said to Hermione: "You're a little scary sometimes, you know that? Brilliant, but scary."

Jeremy has decided that I really am Hermione. :)

Stuff and nonsense

1) I'm working on an epically awesome crochet project of epic awesomeness. If the initial epic awesomeness works out, there will be spawn of epic awesomeness as well. (This is all suitably vague, dontcha think? There will be a picture in a couple of weeks. :) )

2) I have somehow slated myself to write four stories by the end of the year. Not sure what I was thinking with that, since I have pretty much NO writing time when derby starts back up next week.

3) Derbyderbyderbyderbyderby. :) I think I'm going to be going to practices 3 days a week starting in September. Maybe 4 days a week, once Booty Camp starts. Yeah. Eat breathe sleep derby. :)

4) We watched Whip It last night. Jeremy has decided that he shouldn't watch derby movies with a ref. I couldn't help but comment on legality and illegality of some of the stuff they did. I guess that means I'm picking some things up. :)

5) I'm currently working my way through The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, who Jeremy met in Kansas (and introduced me to as well). This mainly entails reading about 4 pages each night, while Jeremy is feeding Delilah and I am already in bed. Not the most productive way to read, but I'll take what I can manage. (This is, at least partially, a bit of research for one of the short stories I plan to write.)

6) My mom will be visiting Seattle for the first time EVER. She arrives on Saturday, we whisk her off to Portland for a couple of days (where she has also never been), bring her back for one night, and then put her on a cruise to Alaska. I have no idea what we will be doing for large chunks of the time. We have spa appointments, plans to do a wine tasting, and a place to sleep. Oh, and Powells is a given, even if Jeremy and I REALLY do not need to buy more books. :)

Wow...

Kids take a TON out of you. We picked everyone up at the airport around 11 a.m., and dropped them off at their hotel a touch before 6, and we were beat. Now, granted, I had been to the gym in the morning, and there was a REALLY big flight of steps that Peter begged to be carried up. And since his mom had Lila and his dad had all of their stuff, I carried him up a couple of flights, and Jeremy carried him the rest of the way. My legs are STILL feeling those stairs. :(

But we did have a blast. The light rail train and aquarium were HUGE hits with Peter, and I think Lila enjoyed seeing some of the fish. She's still just at the single word stage of things, so it was a lot of "Look!" and other babbling. The real great hit with her was actually the lavender pillow. It was soft and smelled good, and so she snuggled it immediately. I also like to think that she loved it a lot because it was made from a T-shirt that used to belong to her good buddy Jeremy (or, as my sister's husband dubbed him, "Friend Jeremy," since he isn't their uncle). :)

After that we managed to drag ourselves to a night of fiction reading (by other people, not us) at the Wayward, and then zonked out. We were SO grateful for the lazy Sunday we had planned. We spent a bit of time sifting through some books to ease the strain on a couple of bookcases, and then headed to the Cinebarre for Iron Man II. I am now totally in love with that theater. Mid-afternoon on a Sunday seems to be a great time to go, as it wasn't too crowded. So we got our snacks and drinks delivered to our seats relatively quickly, and got to enjoy the movie in a mostly quiet theater. Plus, I had sangria to drink. Jeremy got a $5 milkshake. :) I love it!

Came home to make somewhat disastrous giant burritos (the structural integrity of Jeremy's collapsed midway through, and mine decided that sour cream was a good addition to my shirt), but then we got to watch two more episodes of Doctor Who. Though they were probably not my favorites of this season (episode 1 is holding that honor at the moment), even though they're all about the Weeping Angels, there were still good moments. And we're caught up in terms of what's available thus far! :)

In other news, Trader Joe's has blue cheese slices! It's technically blue cheese blended with Monterey Jack, but whatever. They're yummy. My sandwich today is ham and blue cheese with tomato and mayo on a big soft baguette thingie. Delicious! :)

It's almost Christmas!

Today is my last day in the office until Monday. That's right, I get a whole four day weekend! It's a far cry from the days when I had the week between Christmas and New Years off (and then some), but I'll make do with what I've got.

Tonight, we're headed over to see what amounts to Jeremy's family in the Seattle area for Christmas. Not sure exactly what we'll be doing, but I know there will be dinner and probably either pool or video games, depending on his brother's preference. :)

Tomorrow, we're sleeping late, heading to the zoo for part of the afternoon, having a snack-y dinner and then snack-y treats as we observe a Christmas tradition that does not seem to have any presence on the internet. Must check with Jeremy and determine the origins of this tradition before I try to explain it. :)

Friday, we're also sleeping late, opening Christmas presents, lounging about aimlessly, and then going out for Chinese food and to see Sherlock Holmes. I have to say that the opening Christmas presents part of the event intrigues me greatly. We finally wrapped presents last night, and Jeremy commented on how heavy mine is. As I was getting my boots on this morning, one of my gifts to Jeremy fell off of the "mantle" (read: the top of our entertainment center), and I realized that his gift to me seemed to be sliding the Rock Band drum set over slowly, so I picked up the gift to move it to a more secure location. It is HEAVY. And solid. And I have no idea what it is, unless it's a slab of rock. Seriously.

Saturday, I have claimed to spend the day in my studio, taking pictures of all of the stuff I've made in recent weeks, working on a serious destash of the supplies I will never use (keep an eye on Counting Stars if you want to see what I'm getting rid of!), and maybe even getting some sewing in. I know, shocking! :) And then we've got D&D in the evening.

Sunday will be a day to get all of the usual chores done, but other than that, a lazy day.

Sometime in there, I need to work on my Vampire game, and I'm chomping at the bit to work more on Jeremy's family genealogy. I'm getting somewhere with the German side of his dad's family, which seems to have arrived in America and stayed in one place (Minnesota), until they eventually made their way to California. This was very thoughtful of them. :) It makes my life a lot easier. :)

Star Wars in Concert!

So last night we had tickets to go see Star Wars in Concert. Our seats were up in the nosebleed section, because the other tickets were a bit more money than I wanted to spend to see this. I imagine the view from the floor seats was spectacular, but with the big screen projection behind the orchestra, we could see just fine.

The whole premise is that an orchestra plays the music live, while they project excerpts from the movies on a big screen. Essentially, they used that to tell a more chronological story of the two trilogies, putting the newer movies before the older movies. However, that wasn't always the case... there were a lot of times when they mixed older (original trilogy) stuff into the early events, and newer (second trilogy) stuff into the later events. For example, in just about any sequence that involved showing space battles, there was a mixing of old and new. It was pretty obvious, too, because of the differences in CG technology between the late 1970s-early 1980s and the late 1990s-early 2000s. They also used clips from the re-releases of the original trilogy, and I am not a fan of the re-releases.

The highlight for me was that Anthony Daniels, who played C-3P0 in all six movies, was the "narrator." When I went to Dragon*Con in 2006, he emceed the Dawn costume competition, so I knew how much fun it would be to have him narrating the story. I was not at all disappointed in that.

Generally speaking, it was worth going to see. Jeremy and I both had fun with it. There were a lot of fidgety kids around us, though. Cute costumes, not so good at sitting still quietly. Ah well. :)

Movie review: Bridget Jones's Diary

Continuing on our kick of all things Jane Austen, we watched Bridget Jones's Diary last night. For those who aren't aware of the connection, the plot is loosely (oh, SO loosely) based on the plot of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

For starters, I knew that the movie starred Renee Zellweger, but I had no idea she'd be doing a British accent. The opening voice-over was painful, but either her accent got better or I got sucked into the story well enough that I stopped paying attention.

I'm discovering an unreasonable love for Colin Firth, and he just does make a fabulous Mr. Darcy, no matter what era he's playing. :) But my true excitement in watching this was discovering that James Callis (a.k.a. Dr. Gaius Baltar of BSG) was in the movie. Literally, I was squeeing. :)

We've been coming up with lots of silly reference to Jane Austen stuff, and we pretty much mock the characters whenever we watch a movie based on one of her books. Because the characters are pretty laughable. We also like to make connections between the actors and actresses and other stuff they've done. But on the heels of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and factoring in the actors in Bridget Jones's Diary, Jeremy came up with another good one...

Pride and Prejudice and Cylons

Because seriously? Lady Catherine de Bourgh is totally a Cylon. :) Cylons just ruin everything.

(Cylon Plushie Keychain by lizstaley.etsy.com)

Catching up at the end of the week...

I have more topics that I wish to cover than I have blog posts left before these topics slip my mind. Therefore:

1) Push was a pretty good movie. Of course, as soon as it ended, I turned to Jeremy to ask him his top choice for a game system to simulate the way the movie worked. He picked Mage. I picked Aberrant. He agreed that Mage needed a lot of tweaking to work, though. We are unrepentant geeks who turn all slightly geeky movies into a potential game. :)

2) The weather in Seattle has turned cool enough that I had to wear a long sleeved shirt AND a jacket this morning. This makes me very happy. However, the forecast says this won't last long, so I guess we'd better enjoy it while we can.

3) The end of moving is in sight! We're going to make a big push tonight to finish packing and moving the stuff in the living room that gets moved, and then all that is left is the kitchen. The kitchen can technically wait until after the movers do their work, if need be. YAY! :)

4) This is extra good because I'm off to the Olympic Peninsula next week for three days for work. Ah, I love getting over there. :)

"Wow, he does look like he's in pain!"

(a.k.a. We watched Twilight)

So Jeremy and I sat down to watch Twilight on Wednesday. More specifically, we were planning to watch a movie. I asked him what we had on Netflix. He said "Well, Twilight, and ..." And I didn't let him finish. :) Because for as cheesy as I thought the book was, I had to watch the train wreck that was the movie. (I also have to read New Moon before that movie comes out, so we can see it in the theater.)

And let me tell you. Serious train wreck. It was so bad, it kept me marginally entertained. Mostly, it was the acting that was just atrocious. I mean, I like the fact that they didn't cast any big name Hollywood stars in the movie. But at the same time, I half suspect that any big name Hollywood stars who read the script would have backed away, possibly using a cross to defend themselves.

I have to say that the best acting probably came from the guy who played Jasper, because as soon as one of the other characters said "The one who always looks like he's in pain is Jasper," I responded with "Wow, he does look like he's in pain!" Kudos to him for that magnificent acting feat. :) I wonder if he actually managed to hurt himself to make him more convincing? :)

And that's about as close as we come to End of the Work Week Wisdom this week. Short version: watch Twilight if you like laughing at bad acting. It's spectacular. :)

+++++

And in other news of the shameless plug variety, I'm offering free shipping on all of my hats until the end of August. Yeah, I know it's way too early to even think about winter wear, but if you buy now, you can get a head start on the weather AND save a bit of cash. :)

And I'm back.

So when you add a cold to a long weekend, it's still a long weekend. You just spend more of it than originally planned lounging on the couch or sleeping. As a result, we missed a birthday party and the Abney Park show, but we got a lot of movie/TV watching in. I'm sure that I don't remember everything that we watched, but I'll hit a few of the highlights.

Pride & Prejudice: Jeremy is a big fan of the novel Pride & Prejudice, which I don't recall ever having read. I tried to read it on my trip to New Mexico, but between sheer exhaustion and Jane Austen's writing style, I can't do it. Marvel has recently started publishing the classics in comic book format, so Jeremy has been sweet enough to agree to add the Pride & Prejudice comic to his pull box at The Dreaming. So I've been reading it that way, which seems to help my comprehension immeasurably. And now we've been watching the made-for-TV miniseries, with Colin Firth in it. I am now appreciating the story, without having to actually get through Jane Austen's peculiar style of writing dialogue.

(I'm a little bothered by the fact that I can't actually slog through the real book, especially because at one point I wanted to be an English major. Though I suppose, to be fair, I was going to be a linguistics-focused English major. :) )

Battlestar Galactica: Yup, I'm a heathen who had been avoiding yet another sci-fi show, of which I have now become a rabid fan. We watched the mini-series, in large part because Jeremy wants to watch the seasons he hasn't seen yet without having to wait until I'm out of town. So he has agreed to go back to the beginning, so we can watch all of it. My boyfriend is a sweetheart. :)

(As an aside, I'm doing the same thing for him with Doctor Who. We tore through season 3 while we've been sick, and the discs for season 4 start arriving soon. We also plan on watching Lost in a similar fashion, and I think I'm a season ahead of him on that one too.)

Star Trek: Wow. I had heard negative reviews from 3 people prior to going, but generally positive reviews. I have to say that I come down on the positive side as well. I grew up as a quasi-Trekkie, because my dad was totally into the original series, and I was totally into the Next Generation (because of Wesley Crusher). I have dim memories of watching the movies as a kid, particularly when they aired on TV as I got a bit older. I stopped watching all things Trek (particularly skipping the movies) as time went on, but I was pretty excited about this new movie. It was worth the wait. :) I'm not terribly thrilled with the guy they have playing Kirk, but all of the other cast members were fabulous! And holy crap, Eric Bana as the bad guy. I didn't even recognize him! And the guy who plays Chekov? Absolutely frickin' adorable. (And super young! Eek!)

So for this week, we've got more Pride & Prejudice to finish, but with the both of us finally over the plague, it looks like we may return to normal levels of movie/TV watching, which tends to be minimal. Ah well, I'm sure we'll still make time for all of the series we need to catch up on. :)

More media consumption!

Although not as much as last week. We watched Brazil on Sunday, in preparation for a Paranoia game that we were going to play. The game was cancelled, but the movie still happened. And the movie hurt my brain a bit. I think I need to re-watch Time Bandits now, to see if it has a similarly totally crazy, epic ending. Cuz seriously, Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen are both so over the top, I'd be shocked if Time Bandits was not. :)

In other news, I have been ridiculously busy lately, and I don't think it stops until May, maybe. I spent all but one day of last week out of the office. I'm here for 3 days this week, then off to Rhode Island. Next week, I won't be in the office at all, though I'll still be in town. The following week, I work 2 days, and then head out on vacation. I get back from that to a 4 day work week, and then I may be traveling the last week of April. On the few and far-between days that I am in the office, there's tons for me to work on. Whee!

In the meantime, I've been working on my characters for Ambercon, which has been an interesting process. I'm used to convention games with pre-generated characters. In the 8 games that I'm in for Ambercon, I get to make the characters for 7 of the games. I'm done with 6 of those 7, and hopefully will finish the last tonight.

Of course, I also need to make a new character for Exalted, as Laine (my Night caste archer-sorceress-tomb raider) died in the game on Saturday. So I'm going to play a Lunar now, since everyone else who shows up to the game regularly plays Lunars. Laine's demise was pretty unsurprising, as I decided to have her go out in a tiny rowboat on a lake in the middle of the Temple of Elemental Evil. Yes, there are many bad decisions there. :)

Yay media consumption! :)

So just a few notes on things I've been consuming...

Movie: Casshern - This was a movie that Jeremy showed me the trailer for, and I was excited to watch. However, since it's in Japanese with English subtitles, I had to wait for a time when I wasn't crocheting while we watched it. I ended up having to split it into two halves, though, because I got way too tired watching the first half. Oddly, I was also falling asleep during the second half. But that was because I was just tired, not because the movie was not holding my attention.

The movie is alternately an awesome steampunk wonderland with over the top action sequences, and then some weird commentary on the state of society or something. The ending was just plain odd... (Jeremy's response: "It's Japanese. What did you expect?" :) ) Overall, though, I enjoyed it. Might watch it again another time if English dubbing is available, just because I feel like I missed something every time I looked away from the screen for a moment.

Book (Graphic Novel): Northlanders - This was a graphic novel that Jerome picked up and loaned to me. It's about Vikings, sorta, and who doesn't like Vikings? :) I thought it was pretty good, though not great. The art was a little sketchier than I tend to like in a comic, and I found it hard to really LIKE the main character. Which kind of makes it a little hard to care about what's going on as much as I would if I liked the main character.

Music: Gogol Bordello - GOOD stuff. It's Gypsy punk, which is way too much fun. I started ripping the CDs while I was cooking dinner, and ended up dancing back and forth between my computer and the kitchen while I listened to the music. :) Might just be what it takes to get me back into belly dancing. :)

I've got a near constant stack of Netflix, graphic novels, and CDs to get through, so expect more posts like this in the future. If you've seen/read/listened to any of this, or end up doing so, let me know! :)

Remember that chicken? Yup, still headless.

It's been one of those weeks where I'm barely in my actual office, let alone anywhere near the internet. Whee!

So the weekend was good, with an EtsyRain leadership meeting Friday, followed by gaming for the rest of it. Exalted was a short game, which worked out well since Jeremy was not feeling well, so I got him all comfortable on my couch while I worked on cleaning and such for a while. Sunday was the kids' game, and it ended up being the final game of that campaign. This means that we are now moving on to a game that I get to play in. YAY! :)

The new game will be Exalted also (oddly enough), though it will be Dragon Blooded, and it's going to be all sorts of fun. Many years ago, when Exalted was new, I wanted to play in a game where the PCs were young children, maybe 5 years old, who had already exalted as Dragon Blooded. I later found out that this didn't really work within the system. :) But the plan for Jeremy's game is for us to go through our childhood, adolescence, etc. and play out a few scenes from each. This works great with Dragon Blooded because he's going to set it up that a number of our characters are related to one another. :)

I've already worked out some of the details of my background, even though we'll probably play through some scenes that I may or may not have thought of. I suppose some of my thoughts are still subject to change, but I'm gonna have an airship and I'm gonna be a pirate. I wonder where that idea came from... :)

I've already had two research days this week, and I've got another tomorrow. It's like I have this office, but I'm never here. :) Ah well, at least I'm busy for the moment. :)

Oh (yes, I know this post is all over the place today), and we watched Muppet Treasure Island on Monday night, as I was told I needed to see Tim Curry as a "professional pirate." I approve. :) The song he sings is fabulous. :)

David Lynch is on my bad list...

One of the things that Jeremy and I have been doing since we've been together is watching "Twin Peaks." In my case, it's been watching for the very first time. In his case, well, he sometimes quotes lines before the characters say them. (It's okay, I love him anyway. :) ) It has taken quite a while, because there has rarely been enough time to sit down and watch more than a couple of episodes at a time with our crazy schedules.

We finally finished the show on Sunday, as I ended up getting up ridiculously early on the one day I could have slept till noon. (For the record, that means it took us a month and a half to get through the show.) Jeremy had been warning me from about midway through the series that I was probably going to hate him when it was all over.

However, I've decided to lay the blame squarely where it belongs. On David Lynch. Cuz seriously, I was NOT a happy camper when I finally got to the end of the series. :( Suffice it to say, worst. ending. EVAR. Only that doesn't even begin to tell you how bad the last episode was. I think I would have been infinitely happier had I never watched that episode.

Of course, I should have expected it from David Lynch. I love Blue Velvet, but it's plenty weird. Lost Highway was even weirder. I can't remember if I watched Mulholland Drive or not, which shows you how much of an impression it may or may not have made on me. And generally speaking, these movies are also maddening.

(Oh, and he did the original Dune. I might have guessed that.)

We also watched Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me last night, and at least I knew how that was going to end, so it wasn't nearly as maddening to sit through all of the weirdness. I was bummed that Audrey Horne wasn't in it at all, but it seems they chopped a bunch of the characters when they made the movie. Ah well. (And in case it wasn't apparent from yesterday's post, I <3 Audrey. :) )

Overall though, I loved the show. I just hated the ending. I'll watch it again, just never again will I sit through that last episode. UGH!

Ugh...

Well, I had a good weekend overall, but today is rather ugh.

Friday was Aine's birthday, and so we went to dinner with her and a ton of other folks at Marrakesh, which was pretty good. I actually preferred all of the other courses to my main course, but that might have just been a poor choice on the main course on my part.

Saturday, we got up early to walk around Green Lake, and then headed back to Jeremy's to watch movies. Normally it would have been an Exalted day, but the ST for that game was sick, so we actually had a free Saturday. Of course, then I started coming down with a cold, so it worked out alright that we didn't have anywhere to go. So we watched 3 or 4 movies, I cooked dinner, and went to bed early. All in all, a rather nice Valentine's Day.

Woke up on Sunday feeling a bit worse, so I slept late and tried to get to feeling well enough to help out with the kids' game. I managed to succeed, though I was feeling pretty out of it at times. I had discovered on Saturday, while Jeremy was reading some of the Great Book of Amber to me, that my brain glosses over combat entirely. Since the kids' game had a higher than normal percentage of combat, it's no real wonder that I was spacing out throughout the game. But it was still a blast, especially when I was getting EVERY plot hint that Jeremy was tossing out, while the kids ran off on random tangents. This is apparently par for the course. :)

I'm finding that I rather enjoy the co-GMing idea, though. Granted, I'm mostly only contributing little things to the plot, scooping up random unplanned NPCs, and other little helpful tasks. I've only really worked with co-GMing in LARPS prior to this, but the benefit of two table top STs with a slightly large group (there were 6 players for one session, so not HUGE, but slightly large) is apparent. Now, if I only knew the cosmology of the system a little better, I'd be set. :)

Oh, and today is ugh because the cold isn't gone yet. Everyone I know has been sick for the past week or so. I thought I was getting out of this plague easy. Not so much.

Movie review: Coraline

So as a HUGE Neil Gaiman fan, I'm always anxiously awaiting any new movies that he's involved in. And though Beowulf was somewhat disappointing and Stardust left me stomping my feet a bit, I can't complain too much. I feel pretty much the same about Coraline.

The movie is undeniably cute, between the stop motion and the overall cuteness of the story (despite it being a little scary in places, at least for little kids). I tried really hard not to squee too loud during the They Might Be Giants song, when Coraline's father's voice suddenly and unmistakably became that of John Linnell. :)

The big issue I had with it, unfortunately, was something that Thaddeus told me about on Sunday--they added a character to the story. Normally, no big deal. Until it has the effect of lessening the main character. :( I could go into a big huge rant here, too, about girl power and such, but I don't want to ruin the story too much for those who haven't read the book or seen the movie.

Oh yeah, which reminds me. Read the book. :) The movie is wonderful, but the book is equally so, if not better. I've only read it once, and it's been a little while since I read it, but I think that you'll find the book and movie are pretty wonderfully similar. Except for that extra character. *sigh*

And a weekend recap (with some extra!)

It's gotten to the point where I really don't post nearly as often as I should. So that's why you get big recaps. :)

Friday night was the Abney Park show, which was a blast as always. We didn't stay there as late as I might have been inclined to do if we hadn't had early Saturday morning plans. But the merch booth ceased to be a zoo, so it seemed like a good time to escape. Now Jeremy has seen the madness that is working merch for Abney Park. I think we'll do it again. :)

Saturday kicked off with walking around Green Lake, which I had not done previously, despite living probably close enough to walk TO Green Lake. :) Headed to Beth's Cafe after that, which probably negated any benefits from walking around the lake. But it was tasty. :) Then it was off to run a handful of errands, including dropping off my bottle cap belts with Marlo so that they can go to Happy Delusions. Then we headed over to The Dreaming, which is Jeremy's comic shop of choice.

However, the owner was running late, which meant we ended up in a record store where I mostly behaved myself (only bought a 2-CD set of old NIN and a CD of Cure covers), and also got to check out the tattoo shop that one of Jeremy's friends recommended to me a while back. It seems like the sort of place I could deal with being tattooed at (read: not pretentious and the people there will speak to me as though I'm a human being even though I have no visible mods), and at least two of the artists seem to do work that I like.

Since we had gotten all of about 4 hours of sleep previous to walking, we decided to take a nap before going out for the evening. Someone was misinformed about when the Rat City Roller Girls bout was, but getting there early meant we got good seats. And holy crap, am I a fan of roller derby! I got a new, limited edition Krysztof shirt, and have learned how to make some sense of what's going on while they play. I'm still a little fuzzy on scoring, but it seems that's not entirely unusual, as it usually takes a bit before the score is updated. :)

Sunday would have been a lovely day for sleeping, but oh no. We'll sleep when we're dead. :) Instead, we headed to Denny's for breakfast with Jeremy's friend Darrin, who is a player in the big LARP that I briefly played. He gave me hope that I might be able to go back to the Changeling game, at least when I want something to do on the nights Jeremy has D&D. After breakfast was my turn to run One Hit Wonders, where I ran Star Wars after forgetting to really read the rules and not quite finishing my plot. :) Nonetheless, it was fun.

I spent yesterday at home, recovering both from lack of sleep and the edges of a migraine, which may, in fact, have been related. So I slept late, worked on some crochet, and did thrilling things like cancel my old cell phone and do my taxes. I also got some quality Rock Band time in before heading downtown for dinner and Coraline with Jeremy. I'll talk more about Coraline another day, but for now, I was mostly pleased with the movie. Mostly.

Movie review: Don Juan de Marco

So in pursuit of all things Johnny Depp (a constant, life-long pursuit), I finally watched Don Juan de Marco last night, and loved it. Yes, the loving it was mainly about Johnny Depp being in it, but the story is cute too. And of course, being the geeks that we are, Jeremy and I turned it into a movie about Changeling, because that just fit. :) (For the Changeling fans: Marlon Brando as a Grump Boggan who has entered Autumn, with Johnny Depp's character trying to pull him back from it. :) )

Generally speaking, it's not the sort of movie I might normally watch. It is sort of a chick flick, made doubly so with Johnny Depp being SOOOOOO cute in this movie. The scenes where he's wearing eye makeup to make him look like a woman are amazing. :) (His jawline ruins any hopes and dreams he may have had of being a drag queen, however.)

And I know that Marlon Brando is considered a great actor and such, but seriously... could the man EVER enunciate? In his life?

Bonus points for the part of the movie where they were singing the Bryan Adams movie theme in Spanish. Or some close facsimile of it, since I don't know Spanish. I just knew the melody.