5 Fandom Friday (25)

(New Graphic by Darling Stewie)

5 Fandom Friday is a geek-blogger community building project started and hosted by The Nerdy Girlie and SuperSpaceChick. Every Friday, post a top 5 list based on a predetermined topic that can be found on this master post - you can also find more info on the project there. Participate as frequently or infrequently as you like, and if a topic doesn't especially appeal to you, feel free to put your own twist on it.

Also, tweet at @superspacechick or @thenerdygirlie on Friday with your post (and they'll RT) and use the #Fandom5 hashtag so we can all connect!

This week's theme: Favorite Halloween Episodes of TV Shows

I'm actually terrible at remembering stuff like this, so instead, I'm just going to share 5 episodes of SUPERNATURAL that are particularly good for Halloween (since it's basically always Halloween on SPN).

1) It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester - Let's start with an actual Halloween episode. While this isn't one of the scariest episodes from the series, it's a great mix of the things that make the show so fun. You have Dean facing off with a kid dressed as an astronaut, classic SPN urban legend-based deaths and scares (razor blades in candy, anyone?), witches, demons, and a side of angels.

2) Bloody Mary - Maybe it's just because Bloody Mary was one of the scariest things I ever found out about in elementary school, but I still think this episode from Season 1 is one of SPN's scariest. Creepy woman-in-white-type angry spirit living in mirrors and gouging people's eyes out? Um, no.

3) Monster Movie - This is one of SPN's "fun" themed episodes, and it's great for Halloween because it features a bunch of classic horror movie monsters - Dracula, the Mummy, Wolf-Man. Fitting in with the theme, the episode is also completely in black & white, and we get a little more development from the monster-side of the story.

4) Everybody Loves a Clown - I'm mixing in fun and terrifying episodes of SPN. Again, this episode might only be terrifying to me because the clown they use is downright frightening. This was from Season 2 (the 1st 2 seasons have the scariest episodes), and not only features the clown, it also has a carnival and a chase through a Funhouse because OF COURSE.

(I was going to post a pic/gif of the clown here, but after looking at it for 2 seconds, I decided for my own sanity and for my great concern for you, I wasn't going to do it.)

5) Ghostfacers - This time of year, there are tons of ghost-hunting type shows playing on TV. The Sister and I love watching them, and so it was such a treat when SPN brought the format to their own show. It's great when SPN changes things up, and Ghostfacers was delightful because it perfectly spoofed ghost-hunting type shows while also giving us one of the scarier episodes of Supernatural. The endless birthday party in the basement? Nope!

What are your favorite Halloween (or Supernatural!) episodes?

What's Up Wednesday (2)

It's time for What's Up Wednesday!

"What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme started by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk geared toward readers and writers, allowing us to touch base with blog friends and let them know what's up." Jamie and Erin will have a link widget at the end of their What's Up Wednesday posts for those who want to join and link up.


WHAT I'M READING
I'm currently reading Melina Marchetta's FROI OF THE EXILES, Book 2 of her very excellent Lumatere Chronicles. I absolutely adored the first book, FINNIKIN OF THE ROCK. It's a great, sweeping fantasy with danger and romance and really complex themes. Here's my goodreads review if you're interested in hearing me gush some more: Finnikin review.

Before that though, I blasted through Rick Yancey's THE 5TH WAVE, which is pretty much lives up to the hype. It was thrilling and touching and had these lovely themes and literary motifs (I am a sucker for good themes and good use of literary devices). I cannot wait until the next one! I'll probably review Book 1 soon.


WHAT I'M WRITING
I'm still not writing much, but I did #twtpoem some more. (The current theme is lens, by the way, if any of you want to participate!) I'm also toying around with some ideas - mostly trying to figure out a plot. I suck at plot, guys. I like characters, themes, relationship stuff, personal arcs, and cool settings/world-building - so I think my brain just tends to focus on that stuff first? Not that I don't like cool plots; I'm just terrible at working them out first. :P

I've also been helping someone else toy with a Shiny New Idea, which is much easier for me. I just get to make ridiculous (and not so ridic) suggestions, and they decide what they want to go with.


WHAT INSPIRES ME RIGHT NOW
The weather. It is all sunshine and blue skies and toasty summer-y heat. I thrive in this kind of daylight.

WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN UP TO
Other than watching a ton of movies, the Sister and I (as well as my friends) have been super looking forward to the new season of Arrested Development. One of my fellow bridesmaids is throwing a themed party on the premiere date, but also exciting is the Arrested Development promo tour. Lucky us, the LA area tends to play host to these sorts of things, so we did some tour stop hopping.

Last Saturday, we found the Bluth Company (stair) Car at Hollywood & Highland!

You're gonna get hop-ons!

Then yesterday, we made a date with friends at the Bluth Frozen Banana Stand. Alas, we barely made it in time for pictures before closing, so they were all out of frozen bananas. The line was also HUGE, and it's possible threats were made about burning down the banana stand and "cornballing the heck" out of it if we didn't get pics...

There's always money in the banana stand!

Both of these visits resulted in a lot of swag too. Posters, notes (so you can always leave a note!), Mr. Manager stickers. You can call Sheepy, Mr. Manager.



Q4U: What are you up to this Wednesday? Are you excited for the return of Arrested Development?

When We Watch TV

Krispy, her sister, and I watch a lot of TV together.  We are calm, mature individuals who conduct ourselves creditably in any situation.*


*We reserve the right to define "creditably" and "any situation".

Note the composure with which we stand in the portrait above, the modest smiles, the direct gaze, the air of serenity.  This is what we never always look like.  We are paragons of decorum.

Last night, we watched the Victoria's Secret 2012 Fashion Show.

This is what we looked like:

This post is brought to you by the fact that we were too busy watching models with skyscraper legs dressed in sparkly underwear and didn't have time to write a real post.

In other news, I've been feeling doodle-y lately.  Got a doodle request?  Book-related, a magical animal, or something totally random?  Request away!  If there are any requests, I'll post 'em on Friday.  No guarantees of accuracy/quality are 100% guaranteed!

Randomosity on Fridays: TV/Movies We're Excited About!

It's that most happy of weekdays again, Friday! It's predicted to rain all weekend hereabouts, which means it'll be a great time for me to catch up on reading, writing, and my 50/50 challenge!

In the mean time, I'm RIDIC excited for the following 5 things!

1. Game of Thrones Season 2 starts in April! SO EXCITED. I'm endeavoring to get Alz caught up before it starts, but I probably made a misstep when I got her hooked on an older HBO show, ROME. Game of Thrones S2 trailer below; it goes without saying, beware possible spoilers.




2. The air date for THE LEGEND OF KORRA, a sequel series of sorts to Avatar: The Last Airbender, was FINALLY announced! Totally badass woman of color fighting crime in an Asian influenced steampunk-esque metropolis? YES PLEASE.

This gif is relevant to how I feel (appropriately from the original Avatar: The Last Airbender):

Check out Korra Nation for the trailer, and help possibly move the premiere air date from APRIL 14th to MARCH 24th!


3. Speaking of kickass women, we're also RIDIC excited for Pixar's BRAVE. Summer can't come soon enough!




4. Oh, and we can't forget THE AVENGERS movie out in May. Not gonna lie, we're mostly excited to see more of our favorite trickster, Loki!




5. AND this needs no introduction, but of course, we couldn't help but get a little swept up in all the hype for this little movie, opening this coming week.

So, what upcoming shows/movies are YOU excited for?


P.S. Also, I've started a new Tumblr with two of my high school friends. It's called CUPS AHOY! We're sharing our love of cups and mugs, and if you love them too, we hope you stop by! :)

Randomosity on Fridays

We will seriously have more interesting posts next week. But this week, have a dose of true randomness. February has been busy, busy for us!

Friday Five

1. On Super Bowl Sunday, the sister and I waited outside of a Target before it opened at 8AM with about 40 other girls. Why? We wanted a shot at the super adorable and coveted Jason Wu for Target line. We can say our excursion was a resounding success as we now own a number of these pieces.

2. Also on Super Bowl Sunday, one of my fave bands premiered their new music video. You might have seen a preview for it as a Chevy Sonic commercial. The real thing is wildly creative as only videos by OK Go can be. If you liked the Rube Goldberg machinery of "This Too Shall Pass," you'll totally dig the vid for "Needing/Getting."




3. Wednesday night, the sister and I and our cousin went to see THE WANTED. They're a British boy band that has recently gotten quite a bit of press, making them quite a bit more popular than they were when my sister first stumbled upon them sometime last year. We went for kicks (because we think they're kinda hilarious / and they've got some catchy tunes), and it was pretty fun. I am WAY TOO OLD to be around that many teenaged fangirls though. Don't have the energy needed to keep up. SCHNEIZELEFFORT.

That aside, the show was originally supposed to be at another theater, but due to overwhelming demand + sold out-ness, it was moved to THE EL REY - also known as the THEATER WHERE THE SISTER WORKS. So, it was sweet for my schneizeleffort self because I didn't have to wait in line. It was sweet for the Sister because she was working there during sound check and got to see gorgeous DAVID BECKHAM in REAL LIFE.

She also took this picture (aka met these guys):

The El Rey takes a mugshot of all the artists that play there.

So yeah. Good times. I was half-deaf at the end of that show. Brought back memories of my own boy band, teenybopper days.

4. (This is now Alz sneak-blogging under Krispy's name) I made this manatee recently:

And then I listened to my inner 5-year-old and attacked him with appropriate embellishments:

5. I recently started (re-)watching Samurai Jack since I acquired the first two seasons on DVD.  I remember being largely unimpressed when I watched the first episode premiere, and the following episodes were meh.  So I didn't bother to watch the show except for the time I randomly tuned in to an episode where Jack was chained to a Scotsman with bad teeth and a machine gun for a peg leg.  That episode was awesome.

This was, of course, over a decade ago (omg ten years), and when I caught a couple of random episodes last year when Cartoon Network started airing the show again, I was like, Hey, that was actually pretty good.  And it does seem that the later seasons are much better than the first since I've now watched the first eight episodes of season one and my opinion stands: the episodes are very artistic, but the stylized action scenes frequently go on for too long and the episodes are often very short on plot and/or story.

But the episodes do pick up.  And the Scotsman returns in later seasons.  That's what I'm really looking forward to.

Shopping, fashion, music, TV, manatees!  My, a randomosity post that doesn't mention books or writing at all.  We will try to remedy that next week.  In the meantime, how's your fashion/TV/music taste lately?

Wordless Wednesday: Our Past Week

Here's what Krispy and I have been up to lately:

Krispy: This is a ridiculously addictive game.
I JUST WANT TO KILL THE FRUIT. WHY DO YOU TAUNT MEEEEE.
Hey, wait, are you blogging this? NOOOO!

Yum.

Percy is a total bamf.

We're both hard at work. Krispy needs to write more though or I will crush her like a cranberry.



We've given it two eps so far.  Krispy is ambivalent whereas I don't like it.



We both like Grimm though!

In other words, Krispy and I imbibe great quantities of hot sweet beverages, watch a lot of TV, play stupid games, and then write furiously for the latter half of the evening.  What do you think of Grimm and/or Once Upon a Time?  How goes your nanoing?

Joust, Criminal Minds, Pumpkin Carving

Today's post is brought to you by Alz's ancient Wacom tablet, Krispy's suggestions, and Lydia's request for stick figure drawings with crazy eyes.

First off, a visual summary/mini-review of a non-YA fantasy book by a prolific and popular author whom I used to love from third grade through high school and then—well, her books started going downhill much the same way boulders, avalanches, and wingless ducks go downhill.

Yes, I'm talking about Joust by Mercedes Lackey, a book about a young boy enslaved and enserfed into serving his enemies, the dragon-riding Jousters who are at war with his own country. Young Vetch seeks to raise his own dragon and return to his homeland to teach his country's Jousters the secret of raising tame dragons as opposed to capturing wild ones.

The book is nowhere near as exciting as that.  It's pretty much the daily grind of being a dragonboy, Vetch angsting, and Vetch's circumstances becoming a saga of boring and incredibly convenient coincidences. I shall show you what Vetch is like throughout the book:

Everything falls into Vetch's hands like ripe fruit, for conflict? There is none. He just worries about stuff but gets away with absolutely everything without ever being caught. Nobody ever hurts him or bothers him throughout the entire book. His master is a sickeningly "good" man who understands that serfdom and slavery are wrong, drinks only moderately, and is modest and unbecoming and noble and heroic and the repeated iterations of Vetch's relief that Master Ari is just brotherly and not a pedophile really did not help.

Moving on! Krispy suggested I doodle something related to the TV we've been watching lately. This is what happens when Krispy and I watch Criminal Minds:

Lastly, over the weekend we threw together a Halloween-themed surprise birthday party for our friend. There was Chantilly cake and red velvet cupcakes and candy and truffle cheese and baguettes and cute monster sodas, and the evening culminated in Krispy's sister carving her first ever pumpkin. It was a beautiful heartwarming scene forever immortalized in the portrait I sketched alongside the master carver:

And that, my friends, is all for today. Have you carved your pumpkins yet?

Randomosity on Fridays: Random Whatever Edition

Krispy is writing because I am a TASKMASTER!! and she needs to write more. And because we were distracted by various things, including boba and ice cream and cheese—not all at once, mind you, and over the course of the week—we didn't give much time or thought to today's post until, uh, kind of late the night before. So here's a random Friday Five for you!

1. Krispy has been a bookmonster of late and acquired many new books, though as of yet she hasn't had a chance to crack open most of them. These books include:

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Possess, Breverton's Phantasmagoria, Night Circus

I've perused the first chapters of all except Possess, and I like what I've seen so far.

2. I finally saw X-Men: First Class. The bromance was epic. I enjoyed it though I don't like it enough to buy it, unless it was like $5 and I was feeling extravagant. Then again, with $5 I could buy—

3. Italian truffle cheese from Trader Joe's. Pricey deliciousness at $11.99/lb, I nevertheless found a petite wedge to taste-test. Since Krispy and I were attending a small going-away par-taaaaay for our mutual medical student friend, I acquired this cheese, found it to be delicious, and intended to bring it to the get-together. Krispy picked me up and on the way there, I told her about this amazing truffle cheese and how ineffably delectable it was, all creamy smoothness and firm texture with the luxurious truffle flavor making for an experience of sheer decadence.

I forgot to bring the cheese.

The recriminations were, I assure you, both grievous and fierce. I'm still sorely wounded from them; poke me and I shall yet bleed.  Krispy will never let me live it down even though I brought her a piece of it the next day and she ate the whole thing practically in one sitting, literally just kicking back and gnawing on a chunk of cheese while we watched TV. Which leads me to our next random thing—

4. Television shows. I haven't watched anything much lately, except for random stuff when I'm bored. But lately Krispy has somehow managed to hook me on watching Criminal Minds, Law & Order: SVU, Supernatural, Clone Wars, and Young Justice, the latter two of which are cartoons. I'm absolutely certain this mix of criminal psychology, law, paranormal, scifi/fantasy, and superhero shows will have an effect upon my writing. Whether or not it is a disastrous effect remains to be seen.

5. Lastly, Krispy needs your input: For Halloween at work, should she be a hippie or a pirate? Or a hippie pirate, though she says this might be hard? I think she should be a pirate because pirates are pirates and hippies are hippies, but she does have a point when she says a hippie costume is easier to put together and more comfortable. But when was Halloween ever about ease and comfort?

That's all from us for this week, folks.  Got any cheese or TV recommendations?

Randomosity on Fridays: Asians in the Media Edition

It's Friday!!! I had to stop myself just now from continuing with the lyrics to that awful song. Speaking of which, did you know there's Chinese cover of it? The cover basically proves that the song is ridiculous ACROSS LANGUAGES.

Ahem, this is actually a nice segue into today's Asian/Pacific Islander American themed Randomosity! Let's talk about Asians in popular media because it's kind of been a good year for them - as in, hey! more APA musicians getting airplay (like Bruno Mars) and more APA faces on TV (Jenna Ushkowitz on Glee and Maggie Q starring in Nikita)!

Here's a few you might have seen/heard (either recently or not so recently), and if you haven't, maybe check them out? ;)


1. Zee Avi - She's a Malaysian singer-songwriter with a cute folksy-pop sound. Her songs have been featured on the shows Private Practice and Parenthood.




2. Priscilla Ahn - Another folksy singer-songwriter, she has had songs featured on TV shows, commercials, and movie soundtracks.




3. Far East Movement - You've probably heard their song "Like a G6" all over radio in late 2010, early 2011, and you've probably heard this one too. This Asian-Am group originated close to my slice of SoCal - Los Angeles.




4. Rachael Yamagata - Another lady singer-songwriter from Virginia, she's got an Indie, bluesy sound, and her songs have been featured in TV shows and movie soundtracks. She also did a musical cameo (as it were) on (one of my favorite musicians ever) Jason Mraz's song "Did You Get My Message?" on his Mr. A-Z album.




5. Harry Shum, Jr. - If you watch Glee, he plays the dude with the smooth dance moves, Mike Chang. He's also in the web series The LXD, which features a huge cast of amazing dancers.



That's it for this randomosity feature, and thanks for your enthusiasm in my last post! Some of you gave me post ideas (Connie, sharing recipes is a brilliant idea!), so thanks!

Got any music/media recs for me? People I should look out for? Is there anything in particular you'd like to read more about during APA month here?


Have a bright, beautiful weekend!


P.S. Randomly, I realized that I should make more use of my Tumblr's "Ask" function. So if you have any questions (doesn't have to be related to APA month) for me or Loquacious Luce, but you don't want to email or leave a comment here, feel free to ask at my Tumblr (no, you don't have to have a Tumblr and yes, it can be anonymous), and I'll answer here or there.

TUMBLR: Scribbles from Wonderland / Ask

Books to TV/Movie

I feel it has been a while since we have had a substance-y sort of post. Part of this is due to Real Life sneaking up on me and Alz with a vengeance, but we will persevere! Maybe!

In the mean time, please bear with us and our short and/or random posts, which brings me to today's topic.

BOOKS TO TV/MOVIE

I bring this topic up because I'm trying out HBO's TV series adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series, Game of Thrones. There's enough intrigue to keep me interested, and it's prompted me to want to check out the books (I've heard of the series before but never really knew what it was about).

This is a bit of a reverse in that usually, people talk about how they've read a book/book series and how they're excited to see the adaptation. In my case, there's been quite a few adaptations recently that have piqued my interest in the book(s).

I don't actually have anything insightful to say here, except that I think I generally enjoy TV/movie adaptations. It's fun to see worlds and characters really come alive, so to speak, and I think with the crazy advances we've had in movie-magic technology, it can be a real treat to see works of fantasy and sci-fi especially translated to the screen.

Of course, the ones I can immediately think of are the good ones, and we all know there are bad book adaptations. Oh goodness, how we know.

It's tough, after all, to satisfy everyone when book worlds and characters are so near and dear to their fans. And as anyone who has had to summarize a story knows, it's REALLY HARD to condense plots and characters and events and still get the same sort of punch originally delivered in the book.

It also matters how the people translating the book to other media view/treat the original work. I think when the people doing the adaptation have respect and love for the source text and aren't thinking about it in terms of the money-making (franchising) side, it shows through in the translation.

There's also that in-between place where the show/movie is really different from the book, but is somehow still good - just in a different way. Usually, it's because it still captures the spirit of the novel. I have a few of those on my list.

These are my somewhat random thoughts on the subject.

Here's what I'd like to ask you:

What do you think about book-to-whatever adaptations?

What are your favorite / least favorite show or film adaptations of books? Have any recommendations for me?

Anyone else watching Game of Thrones? If you've read the books, how does it compare so far?

See you all Friday either for Randomosity or Drooling over Book Covers. I've yet to decide. :)

Randomsity on Fridays

December is rushing by really fast. Christmas is coming up fast, and I'm still trying to figure out what presents to get people.

I also realized it's been a long time since I did a goals/resolutions progress report. Oops? This will be remedied before year end! I'm afraid of how many resolutions I broke, but on the other hand, I did keep some up!

Let's get to it. Friday 5.

1. We did the White Elephant thing at work this week. While it is fun, it always stresses me out a little, what with the stealing of other people's things and/or getting something you want stolen. I mean, it's a little against the Christmas spirit, isn't it? What are your opinions on this?

2. Speaking of the holiday spirit, have you heard about this? Google's Chrome for a Cause extension keeps track of how many tabs you open when you're browsing, and each tab you open helps raise money for a charity. Pretty cool, right? Easy too! Plus, I'm a huge fan of tabs and tab a lot, so it's nice to know it all adds up to something!

3. While I was weirded out by the 80 degree weather we had last weekend, I'm starting to kind of miss it. I know, I have no right to talk, considering the snow storm that hit the Midwest, but it's cold again here and mostly I hate getting up in the mornings when it's cold.

4. Season 3 of Avatar: The Last Airbender is probably my favorite. It's hilarious. I'm watching it again with my friends since they haven't seen it. The sister's favorite episode is episode 2 because she loves Aang's "crazy dance" during music class. I thought it was just something she found particularly funny, but no, my friends think so too.

5. There are a bunch of movies I want to see: Dawn Treader, TRON, The King's Speech, and Black Swan. Has anyone seen any of these? Recs?


That's it for me, friends! Good luck with last weekend shopping! That's what I'll be doing.

Randomosity on Thursday?

Yep, you read that right, folks. I'm doing my Randomosity post a day early because TOMORROW, we at A Nudge will be participating in Elana, Alex and Jen's Great Blogging Experiment!

The topic is Writing Compelling Characters. I'm excited but also freaked because Alz and I haven't discussed what exactly we will be doing and/or writing about, and I want to watch the season premiere of Fringe tomorrow. Yes, priorities, I know. Besides, I already did most of my freaking out this weekend when I cried, "I don't even know if I do write compelling characters!!!" - to which Alz assured me I did, but she's possibly just being nice.

So SEE YOU TOMORROW HERE for Character Bloggage!

Ahem. Onwards and upwards! NYC picture-spam will be next week since I'm still uploading them.

1. Next week is Banned Books Week. I'm sure many of you have heard of the stir surrounding the modern YA classic SPEAK. Basically, some guy wants to ban it from his school district because he thinks it's pornography. Yeah, SRSLY. Read more about this here at author Laurie Halse Anderson's blog, and be sure to watch the SPEAK poem video. It's moving.

2. In that vein, I will endeavor to read a Banned Book next week since I'm finishing up with my current read. Perhaps SPEAK? Also, check out the #speakloudly hashtag on Twitter.

3. TV IS BACK! Glee on Tuesday, Criminal Minds yesterday, FRINGE tonight, Supernatural on Friday!!! AH! I need to control myself so I don't spend all my time on TV.

4. People, I am freaking out about this. The Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part 1 theatrical trailer is out!!! IT'S SO EPIC!!!

5. I'm already thinking about Halloween. Any costume ideas? I have Gail Carriger's Blameless sitting on my desk, which makes me want to go all steampunk (but mostly I want to read it!)


What's your random this week and who else is participating in the blogging experiment tomorrow?!


P.S. Yesterday was the first day of autumn, and also the Moon Festival! I'm not really a fan of moon cakes, but the Moon Festival's cool! Hope you all had a good one!

5 for Friday

You're probably glad it's Friday like I am. I mean, who isn't glad when the weekend looms so close you can taste it? Let's jump right into the post then: my 5 random things for Friday. Maybe I'll do random fun facts next Friday! What's with this thing for alliteration? Moving on...

1. Watching ice skating (Olympics and otherwise) makes me nervous because I'm always afraid they'll fall when they jump. The outfits have improved a lot over the years. The Japanese-American skater, the girl who skated last yesterday, is from near my area. W00t, represent! In men's figure skating, Stephane Lambiel does the best spins I have ever seen. His spins are like magic. I kid you not.

2. The sister and I started watching Spartacus on Friday nights since Ghost Adventures (arguably one of her favorite shows) hasn't been on. Spartacus is a bit over-the-top, which jives with its 300-esque look and style, and it is entertaining. I just feel like it's trying too hard to be edgy and artsy (while also trying to distance itself from the whole 300 thing). ROME was much better, granted the style and focus of the 2 shows are pretty different.

3. Speaking of "ghost" shows, maybe I've been watching too much Supernatural lately (trying to catch Luce up to current season) because I've started a new short story. It has creepy paintings. I hate creepy paintings. (Supernatural did a fine episode on creepy, creepy paintings in Season 1.) But I do love the look of the Victorian time period, which this story also has. That probably has to do with my finishing Libba Bray's wonderful A Great and Terrible Beauty on Wednesday. (Book reading update to come.)

4. Criminal Minds makes me paranoid, though I enjoy the show immensely. It also results in hilarious conversations with the parentals. Mostly, they say, "Hey, when are you going to make use of that Psych degree and join the FBI, so you can fly around in a private jet?" To which I reply, "Um, I think I need some sort of graduate degree first and maybe combat training. Also, I think the jet is for business use only." The private jet does NOT outweigh the facing serial killers part.

5. Pet Peeve: People who don't use their turn signals when they drive. IT'S NOT THAT HARD. It's also a matter of safety, especially if said people are going to lurch all sudden-like into my lane. I'd like a heads up, thanks. Common courtesy, people.

Since there's a lot of TV mentioned here, what have you been watching lately?

And that's it for my random 5 for Friday. Oh, and be sure to check out Alz's post below on her short story writing process. Catch you later!