My Cookie, It Crumbled...

WEEKLY STARGATE REMINDER:

Don't forget to watch tonight's new episode of Stargate Universe on Syfy at 8 pm (CST)!!

Sigh.  Well, the Giants won the world series.  I am sure my sister is very happy.  But still, the Rangers did something this season that they have never done before.  Not only did they make it to the post-season, they made it all the way to the World Series.  They are still the 2010 American League champions and no one will ever be able to take that away from them.  All in all it was a damn good season for the Rangers.  Hopefully they can maintain the momentum into next year and have another awesome go in the 2011 season.  Regardless, I am proud of them.  Well done Rangers, well done.

And congratulations, Giants.  You played some pretty good ball out there.  If you hadn't beaten my team, I'd be a lot happier for you, but still, I tip my hat in your direction.

Monday was a pretty good day of progress.  I finished my last have-to crochet project (aside from my monthly swap squares, of course).  The pattern called for two balls of yarn though, and only used one, so I might make a quick one-skein accessory to go with it though.  I was thinking of setting aside all crochet for the rest of the month so I can focus on my writing--but I'm kidding myself if I think I am not going to need the release of a good crochet project to work on, or that I won't watch any television this month.  So my projects might take a bit longer, but I am no longer in any sort of rush to get any of them done, so that works out.

Speaking of writing, National Novel Writing Month has officially begun!  I made a decent start yesterday and can hopefully keep up the momentum.  I am currently at 3,842 words, out of 50,000.  That works out to just over six pages in MS Word.  I had a brief moment of panic when I started writing yesterday afternoon that my story might not end up being long enough.  By which I mean, I might write the whole thing and find out that the word count falls short.  Of course, the two and a half pages I got written yesterday were all just one of my main characters running around the woods by herself.  Not a lot of dialogue there--and nothing eats up a page like dialogue.  So hopefully it will get better once the characters all start interacting and actually doing stuff.  Worst case scenario, if I finish and it is too short, I should be ahead of schedule at least (as long as I stick to my self-imposed six pages a day requirement) and be able to go back and flesh things out, hopefully rounding out the count.  We shall see.

I am still going to plan to get my Monday-Friday blog posts in here, but they might be a bit erratic, so I apologize in advance for that.  Sadly, it does look like the writing is going to cut heavily into my reading, and I've only made it through chapter ten of The Gathering Storm.  I am still plowing through it (there are a few times a day when I read pretty much no matter what), but it will probably take me a while to get through it, which means I've relinquished dibs on Towers of Midnight to my husband.  I am a little bummed out about this, but if I can write a whole novel this month, it will be worth it.  I will still do a happy dance when the book shows up today, I guarantee you that.

And lastly, Red:  Werewolf Hunter premiered this weekend.  I mostly enjoyed it despite the completely cheesy SFX and some rather stilted dialogue.  I do think the actors all did a really excellent job with the material they had to work with, to be certain.  Though a friend of mine said he thought Felicia's Day acting was not quite up to snuff.  I will admit, as much as I love Felicia Day, I may have been too distracted by the awesomeness of Kavan Smith to notice.  As far as I am concerned there is never enough Kavan Smith on my television screen.  I mean, how can you not be distracted by this?

Nice ink, Mr. Smith. 

Sigh.  Um...where was I?  Oh!  Right.  The movie.  Like I said, I thought all of the actors did a pretty good job with the crappy script they were given--so I am willing to forgive Felicia Day a lot.  But I must agree with the Onion's AV Club review--the scene where she initiates a kiss with her guy was just plain terrifying.  Please, Felicia, never ever make that face again!  That was kind of weird in itself, though, because I've seen her have romantic chemistry in Dr. Horrible and on The Guild, and that went off just fine.  Maybe when she's trying to be a badass she can't pull off romantic as well or something.  I don't really know.


But despite a super silly script, and the aforementioned cheesy SFX, this really was a mostly enjoyable flick.  It is definitely in the top tier of Syfy's Saturday monster movies to be certain.  It had a decent mythology, and a fairly solid premise overall.  The action scenes were pulled off pretty well.  Plus, lots of big harpoon guns and silver arrows.

My, what big guns you have.

My only real problem with the movie was the ending.  Highlight the text below for my thoughts on that.

Look, while it made sense for Virginia to kill Nathan--he had made a human kill before the wolf that bit him was killed, also the only way for Virginia to not become a wolf herself was to kill Nathan--I didn't have to like it, alright?  But, my personal preferences for keeping Kavan Smith around aside, that whole scenario could have been handled a lot differently.  The way they did it was just stilted and out of sync with the rest of the movie.  Also, that whole thing could have been avoided if Grandma Stupid hadn't skipped Nathan's tranquilizer dose in the first place.  That was just completely illogical.  It was like she was holding her long dead husband's actions against this complete stranger and basically saying she didn't want her granddaughter to have any chance at happiness at all.  What the heck?  I realize that was just a plot contrivance to get Nathan loose to bite Virginia so she'd have to kill him, but again, it was a poorly handled one.  And finally, the very ending was completely confusing.  Was that Virginia's daughter by Nathan?  By someone else who came after?  She certainly didn't look like a cross between the two--but then, why show her at all if she isn't actually related to the story at hand?  Or were they trying to say that the whole thing had been a story and show that we were back in the real world?  If so, they maybe should have showed Virginia with the little girl at the start of the story too, instead of the flashback to the olden days.  The way it was filmed was just completely confusing and left me with no idea what the filmmakers were trying to tell me had happened.  

And that's all I have to say about that.  Overall, I still give it an A- I would say.  I will definitely watch it one more time before I delete it from the DVR queue, and I do hope it gets released on DVD.  

And now, it is time to stop procrastinating and head on to that other writing I have to do...

That's Okay Rangers, You'll Do Better Tonight

Game one of the World Series has come and gone with a Giants win, sigh.  BUT, it was just game one after all.  We can still do this.  Watching the game last night I was struck by a funny realization.  I have crocheted in exactly two baseball stadiums.  And do you know which two?  That's right, the ballparks for the Rangers and the Giants.  I even have photographic evidence, see:

San Francisco Giants v. Colorado Rockies September 23, 2008

Right next to me that's my mom (knitting) and then my little sister (who lives in the bay area, which is why we were at that game).  I was making a shawl for one of my best friends for her wedding at this game.  AT&T Park really is a beautiful ballpark, especially at night.  Also, the seats in front of us had cup holders attached to the back that made a perfect yarn holder!

Of course, I have also crocheted at the Ballpark in Arlington, my home team's home:

Texas Rangers v. Boston Red Sox August 15, 2010

I was making a dish towel there.  I've done a few other crochet projects at that stadium (including my first pair of socks) but I can't find any other pictures.  It was frikkin' hot that day and we were directly in the sun, until about a third of the way into the game, after which it got much better.  This was Baby Girl's first baseball game.  You can see her on the right sitting in her daddy's lap, trying to chew her way through the cap on the Sprite bottle.

It didn't even dawn on me until I was talking with my sister on the phone today that it is both of our home teams going up against each other in this series, that's just crazy!  So naturally there's been a little bit of good-natured ribbing.  I have a feeling whichever team wins, one of us will have teasing ammunition for a while to come!  My poor mom doesn't know who to root for (though I think she's leaning towards the Giants) but my grandmother told me she's rooting for the Rangers for me.  It is possible we're a baseball family.

Adding to the blow of my team losing the opening game of the series, Syfy officially canceled Caprica last night.  Sigh.  Remember that rant from Tuesday, about how I am not too sure that Syfy actually cares about its scifi programming anymore?  Yeah.  They aired half a season, waited until the start of the next television season to air the back half, after moving it to a new night where it was up against some extremely stiff competition, and gave it four episodes before pulling the plug.  Way to show faith in your programming, Syfy.  They're not even going to burn off the remainder of the season and let us end the year with a bang.  Oh no, they're holding off the rest of the season until some unspecified time in  2011's first quarter.  Grr.  Argh.  Think happy thoughts Cori, think happy thoughts.


Hmm...happy thoughts...ooh!  I did get my new comic books for the month yesterday!

In the top photo, clockwise from the top left corner we have the newest issues of Dragon Age and Buffy Season 8, the first issue of Warlord of Mars (based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars series), and the newest issue of Angel Aftermath (a.k.a Season 6).  In the bottom photo, clockwise from the top left corner we have issues 3 and 5 of The Wheel of Time:  The Eye of the World (they sent me issue #4 last month, ah WOT comics, you are eccentric), the newest issue of The Last Unicorn, and the first issue of Star Wars Knight Errant.

Ooh, I am excited to do some comic reading!  I realize I have absolutely no credibility as a comic book geek, since all of the series I read are either adaptations of existing novels, series set in various video games or scifi franchises, and continuations of canceled television series.  But that will not stop me from getting excited about my new comics nonetheless!  Maybe I should keep the stack close by during tonight's game to read in between plays, just to keep my spirits up....