Category Archives: comics

June? Seriously?

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Mind you, I’m not complaining. For one, it seems that the weather is finally starting to cooperate, at least somewhat. For another, it means only 11 1/2 days more of *classes* to go (they still have exams after that, but my life will be much easier).

By the way, it turns out that I’m going to be at this job until the official end of the school year. As long as they’re paying me, I can’t complain. 😉

I just don’t know where the time has gone is all. Finally, the fact that it is June 2 means that THERE ARE ONLY 40 DAYS LEFT UNTIL THE WEDDING.

40 DAYS!

I am excited beyond words. I am also mildly panicking about the things still left to do. I’ll post more about the to-do list over at the wedding blog…

I also need to do the TC newsletter, which I always, always without fail, put off until the last moment. Ah, procrastination.

We had a nice weekend, which those of you who follow me on Twitter already know included seeing Iron Man. I loved it! I also watched the Lost finale, which I thought was very good. (One scene in particular had me weeping tears of joy. Those of you who watched it know which one!)

Slowly but surely, we are ridding the new place of boxes and putting things away. It feels really good…

And that is all. One more class to go for me, and I’m outta here. Enjoy the rest of your Monday! 🙂

Friday photo

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keith knight calendar

For the past couple of years, Rand has been buying this calendar from Keith Knight’s website. Keith Knight is an awesome cartoonist–he does two weekly strips, The K Chronicles and (Th)ink. We got to meet Keith in Cleveland a couple of years ago, and he’s incredibly cool. Anyway, this year, when Rand ordered the calendar, he wrote to Keith and asked him to include a couple of special surprises for me:

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How cool is that? Yeah, I’m a pretty lucky girl. 😉

Thanks Rand, and thanks Keith!

Reading, watching, listening

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Reading: Pride of Baghdad, and Ex Machina, vol. 6, both by Brian K. Vaughn. I have an issue of Buffy sitting here for me to read, and I might get to that today sometime.

Watching:  Finished watching Ed Wood, which was good, but really kind of sad. Poor Ed just had this relentless optimism that he was going to be the next Orson Welles. Martin Landau was amazing, and his Oscar for his portrayal of Bela Lugosi was well deserved.

Bender’s Big Score, the Futurama movie. I adore Futurama, and the movie had its moments, but it was nowhere near as good as the show.

The finale of Heroes. Gasp! Ack! Any speculation about what’s going to happen next?

And by the way, I am so sick of Sylar. I want him to go away and be, like, dead for good.

Rand and I are also slowly catching up on season 2 of My Name is Earl courtesy of Netflix, while also watching the current season. I’m happy that this week’s episode got Earl out of prison. I was really tired of that story.

Listening: I finally broke out the Christmas tunes this past week. I need to once again pimp the Hawksley Workman album Almost a Full Moon. (available at Amazon, Maple Music, and on iTunes)

I was listening to my Christmas playlist and “Merry Christmas, I Love You” came on, and that one always makes me a little bit weepy…

Immediately following that one, “O Holy Night” came on. Sigh.

And of course,  we had the Lowest of the Low show last night. More on that to come. I hope you’re all having a lovely weekend!

Reading, watching, listening

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Reading: I actually read a book this week! It was Girl’s Guide to Witchcraft by Mindy Klasky, a Red Dress Ink title. I love chick lit. I love paranormal chick lit. And as is typically the case, I finished the book wondering why I’m not writing paranormal chick lit. Sigh.

It was a fun book. Very entertaining. It is the first book in a series, though. It seems like no one just writes a novel any more. It has to be a series.

I also read the most recent issue of the Buffy comic. Still enjoying it, even if I don’t particularly like the artwork.

I have a whole pile of things to read here, which I will get to eventually…I have Monday off, so hopefully I’ll get some more reading in!

Watching: Not in much better shape than I was last week. I did watch Heroes, and I’m feeling pretty much the same. Something had better happen soon. Peter’s current storyline is feeling very “alternate 1985” to me. (I hope there are at least a couple of people out there who get that reference!)

Also watched The Office, Scrubs and 30 Rock. I’m beginning to think that The Office can’t sustain itself too much longer (and they’re talking spinoff? Hmmm…). I adore 30 Rock. Tina Fey is full of awesome. I think it’s a good thing that Scrubs is on its way out…and I loved that the whole episode centered around everyone telling JD he needs to grow up. OMG, yes.

Depending on how long this strike goes on, I may have *lots* of time to catch up on my TV viewing.

I think the last movie Rand and I saw was Superbad, which is super sad. Any recommendations?

Listening: I just downloaded the song “Deep Inside” by Glengarry Bhoys. It was the first dance song at Rand’s cousin’s wedding, and it’s a sweet, lovely little song. I’ve also been listening to Eagles Live, although I’m kinda disputing the “live” part of that title. It’s more like Eagles Studio Recordings with Audience Noise Added. I’d forgotten how much I liked “Seven Bridges Road” and “Life’s Been Good.”

Also listening to the new Michael Franti and Spearhead. Very cool stuff. Makes me want to get up and dance!

Hope you’re all having a lovely weekend. As always, feel free to share your media with me!

Reading, watching, listening

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I’m going to try and keep this brief–there’s a lot!

Reading: Lisey’s Story by Stephen King. Loved it. My favorite King in a long time. Elsewhere (YA), which I will post on the other blog soon. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus vol. 1, My Faith in Frankie, Bloom County collected strips, Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men (not very astonished so far, Joss…). The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi (fun read). The first book in Of Darkness, Light and Fire by Tanya Huff (Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light).

This puts me at about 40 books for the year so far. I’m probably missing stuff, but moving on…

Watching: My Name is Earl, Season 1. I had watched an episode here and there, and found it amusing but didn’t quite “get” it. Watching the entire first season from the beginning, though…yeah, I get it. 🙂

Entourage, Season 1.  Oh, my. I hate these guys so much. But Ari is funny, and Eric seems like a good guy. Even Drama begins to grow on me. (Turtle, however? Needs to be slapped.)

Remember the Titans. One of those movies that teachers are fond of showing in class, so I had seen the same 40 minutes of it several times. I finally sat down and watched the whole thing. I liked it. It’s what you’d expect from a Disney sports movie. Little Hayden Panettiere was great in it!

Knocked Up. Very cute. Very funny. And I admit, I fall into the half of women who would think the empty box proposal was cute rather than lame.

We just started watching season 5 of Scrubs. We’d caught a bunch of the episodes in syndication, and are finding that a lot of really funny scenes were cut. Here’s one that made me laugh:

Carla: …and then he walked away singing Safety Dance.

Elliot: I thought you learned your lesson that time you told him the Kommissar was in town.

Hee. I know there’s more here, but again…moving on…

Listening: Seanan McGuire, Stars Fall Home. As I said, Seanan is a brilliant songwriter. I’ve been enjoying this quite a bit.

Steve Martin, Pure Drivel. If it’s an audiobook, does it count as reading or listening? Hmmm…

Jill Sobule, Pink Pearl.

My “favorites” and “walking” lists on my iPod, and my “Great Big Sea radio” station on Pandora.

Busy (but fun!) weekend

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Rand and I had another busy weekend…first, our friend Randy came into town Friday night for a wedding on Saturday morning. We took him out to one of our favorite restaurants: Woo Chon Korea House. (We refer to it as Korean barbecue)

korean barbecue

All the tables along one side of the restaurant have grills set into them, and you cook the food right on the table! We always order the same thing: bulgogi (marinated beef) and duk bulgogi (marinated chicken). They’re served with big leaves of lettuce and rice. You wrap the meat in the lettuce (with some rice, if you like) and enjoy. It’s not graceful, but it is delicious!

You also get a variety of side dishes:

side dishes

This usually includes several types of kimchi, and various things I can’t name. 😉 Some of them, I like…others, not so much.

Yum, yum, yum.

After dinner, we exposed Randy to the wonder that is Patton Oswalt. Patton is hilarious. His standup is fresh and original, and I never get tired of watching/listening to him.

In the morning, I made a quick run over to the new farmer’s market in Williamsville, and picked up these:

fresh berries!

Mmm…perfect for the strawberry shortcake I’d promised for Samantha’s get-together.

We went out for breakfast, and then Randy headed off to the wedding. (I don’t know if they’ll see this, but congrats to the happy couple!)

I finished reading the Buffy Omnibus that Rand brought home for me last week, then got busy cleaning strawberries and making shortcake.

Around dinnertime, we headed over to Samantha’s. It was a nice, relaxing party with good food and good music. Dinner was hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill (with various side dishes), with several dessert options. John made yummy brownies, someone brought an ice cream cake, and then there was my strawberry shortcake.

shortcake fixin's

shortcake!

It’s my opinion that “real” strawberry shortcake is made with a biscuit, not a cake. (I use Bisquick.) And I whipped the cream myself! I used to be lazy and do Cool Whip, but there’s nothing like fresh whipped cream. *drool*

You can see more photos from the party at Samantha’s blog (the post I linked above!).

Oh, and a happy (belated) Canada Day to all my friends up north. 🙂

Reading, watching, listening

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Reading: Coal Run by Tawni O’Dell. Daredevil by Brian Michael Bendis. Just finished The Amber Spyglass, will be writing about it soon. On deck: Lisey’s Story by Stephen King.

Watching: 28 Weeks Later (I wasn’t crazy about it); Thank You for Smoking (not sure how I felt about it. I didn’t love it.); Shut Up & Sing (a flawed documentary, but I enjoyed it.)

Lost, Heroes (season finale tonight!!), American Idol (I was wrong…bye bye Melinda. I was sad to see her go, but I suspect it’ll be better for her career in the long run).

I have several episodes of Veronica Mars to watch…I’m bummed about the news that it won’t be coming back next season, but not surprised.

Listening: The Dixie Chicks, Taking the Long Way. I’m not all the way through the album yet, but I’m loving it. It’s raw, emotional, powerful stuff.

Catching up

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Sometimes I feel like I’ll never be caught up. There’s always so much to do, and so little time to do it…

I’ve got papers to grade from all of my classes. That’s a lot of papers. 😛

I’m way behind on the TV watching this week. I did manage to watch both Lost and Veronica Mars last night, but there’s still Heroes, Studio 60, The Office and Scrubs to watch. Okay, I guess that’s not so bad…

A day of subbing in a classroom with a student teacher got me some time to read (when I should have been grading papers. Oops.). I also read the first issue of the Gunslinger comic. It was great, but I’m thinking of waiting until it’s collected to read the rest. It’s a little on the expensive side for a comic. At any rate, the art is fantastic, and writer Peter David did a wonderful job of capturing the voice.

Valentine’s Day was lovely. Rand and I went low-key and had a nice dinner at Taste of India (by far one of my most favorite restaurants around). This was a good choice because it was not at all busy. I liked that. It certainly beat being sick, like last year!

New X-Men

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I just finished reading the Grant Morrison run of New X-Men (3 volumes). I don’t really know much about X-Men, other than what I’ve seen in the movies. I enjoyed reading this, and I have great respect for Morrison’s writing. His creativity is amazing.

If I were back in college studying communication, I would write a thesis on how comic books in general, and the X-Men in particular, are like soap operas. X-Men is especially soapy, with all the angst and love triangles and whatnot.

Interesting sidenote…when I was just out of college, I started writing (and later abandoned) something about a group of teenagers with psychic abilities, who were attending a special school for the “gifted”. Hmmm…