“Sherlock”, the new BBC series. It was good, I enjoyed it very much. Sherlock portrayed as a sociopath with entertaining eccentricities was fun – I particularly loved when he was watching daytime tv. Watson was well-cast. Overall the move to the 21st century worked quite well.

“The Young Victoria”, the movie about young Queen Victoria. I’ve been wanting to see this for ages, so I almost leaped for joy when I saw it at Redbox. The costumes are beautiful, the actors playing Victoria and Albert both well-cast and talented, and the story was lovely. Highly enjoyable movie. Squee-worthy love scenes, in that corsets and petticoats kind of way, which I love. Lots of lovely actors: Paul Bettany (who I often recognize by his voice first, because hair and makeup often make him look so very different), Jim Broadbent, Mark Strong, Miranda Richardson, Harriet Walter. They do gloss over historical events, in the way film and tv always does, and invent one in particular, but I still really enjoyed it.

“Warehouse 13″ on the SciFi channel (I’m sorry, I refuse to use their ridiculous new misspelled name). Quite like this show. My mother is really into it, and I’ve caught a few episodes now. May have to go back and watch from the beginning.

Zahi Hawass’s “reality” show. This one cracks me up. He’s a well-known dickhead among archaeologists, and it’s hilarious to see him faking archaeology (seriously, no one believes you popped that out of the ground so easily, and by the way, you’d be wearing gloves if that were real) and yelling at fake grad students (who all have acting credits on IMDb) such gems as “You will never work for me again!” The fake grad students ask the dumbest-ass questions. The whole thing is just so very stupid that I think it’s awesome. The sheer weight of epic fail tips over into win, much like the Black Pearl righting itself to emerge from Davy Jones’ Locker.

The other thing that’s been on our tv (constantly) is the original Star Wars trilogy, which my kids are currently obsessed with, especially the AT-ATs, AT-STs, the Battle for Hoth, the Battle for Endor, exploding Death Stars, exploding AT-ATs/AT-STs, exploding X-wings, exploding speeders, and the Ewoks. They lay in their tauntaun sleeping bag (Husband’s bestie gave it to him) and watch. Over and over and over. I’m so tired of hearing about AT-ATs, y’all. And so tired of being lectured about Darth Vader. “He Luke’s dad, but now he a bad guy. He used to be a good guy, but then he was angry and did bad things, and now he on the Dark side of the Force.” There are Lego Jedi dying in my kitchen (Hoth) as we speak. Someone please make it stop.

I took a lot of pictures. Here are the ones that don’t involve other people’s face who may not want to be posted on my tiny unknown blog. Some are of Infinitus, some of the park and other Universal environs, some of our hotel (the Portofino Bay, which was totally ricockulously awesome).

I find this funny because my response to a large event is to want all-new garb, while his is to want new armor. I did make him a bit of new garb, but he’s still got quite a bit of decent garb, so I didn’t bother with much.

They’re heading out Saturday night (why? Men are so weird) and then as soon as he comes back, he’ll be going out on another out of town job. Hawaii. Wish we could pick up and move there already. One of these days I’m going to make that happen. And then I’m never leaving Hawaii again.

And a quick kid funny: The boys are building with Legos right now (they LOVE Legos) and Twin B is saying “This police car going to blow your feet off. That means it going to be very surprising. It going to knock your socks off forever.” And because they always need to top each other, Twin A responds, “Well these spaceships are going to blow your HEAD OFF.”

I read fast. And I read a lot. I’ve now read every book in my capacious library (and have the public library) at least twice. Some quite a bit more than twice *cough*Discworld*cough*. And I need some new books.

I don’t like heavy literary crap. I don’t want to read about someone else’s depressing life wherein their child was born handicapped/parent died/they were widowed young or other assorted tragedies. That’s nice if you like that stuff, but I want humor. I like humor. If it’s served with a side of Regency romance involving various invented aristocratic titles, even better.

I’ve been poking around on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books for some new authors. I think I’m going to have to branch out from Regency for a while. I did read a pair of books in Florida the other weekend that were quite cute, although not on par with my favorite Regency authors (Julia Quinn and Loretta Chase, I’m looking at you): “Just Perfect” and “Too Perfect” by Julia Ortolan, which I picked up in the library’s book trade area. The skiing one was definitely superior to the exotic-beach-island one.

I favor romance and lighter fantasy or mystery – the longer the series, the better. I’ve got every Amelia Peabody book in existence along with every Discworld book. Also everything Julia Quinn’s ever written, quite a bit of MaryJanice Davidson, all of Amanda Quick’s early stuff (I stopped liking her new stuff around 1997, but her books up to that point were excellent. “Ravished” continues to be one of my all-time favorites), quite a lot of Julie Garwood (another author who went downhill in the late 90s) and Loretta Chase.

There are two new additions to series I already have been reading which I need to pick up somehow – waiting for paperback to buy them, I think, but I might have to try to get them from the library to read straightaway – the latest in the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs (of which I own all previous books and spinoffs) and #16 in the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich.

Maybe those two will keep me busy for a few days. Maybe even a week if I stretch it out. I really need a few new authors, though.

I said, “No you’re not, go to sleep C.”

This morning when they got up, I realized they had switched shirts last night as part of their attempted deception. They cackled happily when I said “Did you guys switch shirts?” and were rather impressed that I hadn’t been fooled. “How did you know I was C?” he asked. I told him Mommy can always tell them apart. “You can’t fool me. But don’t do that to your teachers.”

"The Gronckle Book"

Page 1

Page 2

And here is the text:

Fishlegs was having fun with the Gronckle on Dragon Island. The Gronckle was not having fun. He wanted to bonk Fishlegs in the head.

So he flew and flew and flew, and knocked Fishlegs’ helmet off. And then he bonked him in the head.

The End.

(Fishlegs is one of the Viking teens in HTTYD.) We have seen this movie three times now, and it hasn’t even come to DVD yet, and they have several of the books and all the McDonald’s dragons (thanks to my mother, I didn’t even have to buy two dozen HappyMeals to get them: she found a McD’s that had all the dragons, bought up the 8 or so the boys were missing – times two, of course, one of each for each of them – and mailed them to us. The boys were ecstatic, and the dragons remain their favorite and most-played-with toys), so it isn’t surprising he should be writing about them.

I’m very proud of him, of course, and That Man and I are pretty delighted parents that Twin B wrote this little story. He’s very creative. The illustrations show he clearly had this story in mind when he was drawing it – he was very definite about the order the pages went in before I stapled them together into a “book”, and – in typical writer fashion – he had a few pages that didn’t make the cut. At first I thought he was just drawing a half dozen pictures of Gronckles, but there really is a story there. You can see Fishlegs has his horned Viking helmet on in the first scene, and his hair is showing in the second as the Gronckle knocks him in the head with its stubby tail.

There really seems to be very little purpose to this thing, though, I have to admit. It’s sort of like a game. But now I want to go somewhere, so that I can check in to local places somewhere else. I keep thinking how fun it would have been to be foursquaring while I was in Hawaii or San Diego, or up in Maine. In two weeks, I’ll be down in Florida for Infinitus, and I’m going to be checking in left and right down there. I can’t wait. In the meantime, I’m looking for somewhere interesting I can go this weekend so I can get some new check-ins. I’m almost at the 25 check-ins badge.