Twilight

Cover of Twilight (Twilight, Book 1)

I started writing this as my review of Twilight under my LivingSocial book collection, but realized it was getting a little too in-depth, so I figured I'd better do a blog post on it instead.

I read Stephenie Meyer's Twilight over Wednesday and Thursday, and I have to say that I enjoyed it thoroughly, but was fairly disappointed on several fronts.

First and foremost, I wish I hadn't seen the movie first, because it was EXACTLY THE SAME. Boo. Minus the bad acting, but to be honest, the bad acting may have accurately portrayed the level of writing that this book had.

When I started reading this, I was expecting more plot and character development than the movie had, since that is usually the way that book-to-the-big-screen works. (except with Stardust by Neil Gaiman, which I think actually had more going on in the movie.)

Worst of all, I really felt that Meyer was doing a lot of "telling" and hardly any "showing," which is what makes books so engaging and imaginative. It seemed like every other paragraph was essentially saying, "no, really. Like, these people are, like, SO HOT. They're like models, ohmygosh!" Which, needless to say, really broke the mood for me. Good books are written so that you fall in love with the characters without being told to do so. I could make this same complaint about many of the books I've read (and am currently reading), so it's not like this is big news or anything.

I just was expecting more from the huge hype. I guess I should have known though, considering that it is all the rage with the "tween" crowd: not exactly the hardest audience to impress. "The hot guy digs the awkard new girl? AND it's forbidden love? Sign me up!"

With all that in mind, I'm not gonna lie: It was definitely an entertaining read. I was hooked, and, thanks to the huge print and the fact that I already knew what was happening since I saw the movie, it only took me a handful of hours to get through.

I'll definitely be getting New Moon from the library as soon as it's available (I've placed my hold already) and I expect that as soon as I start reading that one, I'll place my hold on the next one too.

Oh brother.

Weekend!

Yey for three day weekend!!! ...even though I don't really have a normal work week or anything hahaha. At least Patrick is home for an extra day.

Me and my friends from school are trying to find a time to hang out since we're not all in the same classes this summer. Everyone is super busy though and it has been almost impossible to find a time when we can all meet up together. So instead, we're pretty much just going to hang out with whoever whenever we can, so Friday I had Katie (or KT, as her license plate says) over and we ate some Moby Dick's House of Kabob, and watched Twilight, which we got from Netflix. It was good times, even though we pretty much just made fun of the movie the whole time. Seriously, that kid who plays the main dude is such a terrible terrible actor, we couldn't help but laugh at him the whole time. Honestly though, I could tell that I would probably like the books, even though I'm not really into the whole vampire thing. I've got so many other books and seriezi to read though, so it'll have to wait.

Yesterday we met up with Patrick's aunt and uncle from New Mexico who are in town for a couple of days. We drove up to where Patrick's parents' new house is (they're moving from California over here to Virginia) and checked it out. We hadn't been up there yet, and the house looks really nice! Then we visited the Air and Space Museum - Hazy Center, which is near the Dulles Airport, which is really close to us. We like that museum a lot, and even though I've already been there, it was fun to walk through it again. They've got a crap ton of planes. My favorite is this Boeing 707:

From Air and Space Museum- Hazy Center

Then we went to the Cheesecake Factory and I got some crazy good pasta with five cheeses or something. I lurve ricotta.

Today we're going to head into DC, possibly hit up some museums, then see a concert on the steps of the Capitol. Patrick's friend back from his old job at Chempoint, Brian, is also in the area visiting people and he's gonna come over and stay at our place tonight.

All in all, a pretty sweet weekend.

Thanksgiving

Welp, it was a pretty good Thanksgiving, despite the no dinner with family thing. Patrick and I did a darn good job of making dinner. First, I made a pumpkin pie, which I was very excited about cause I love pie.
The crust turned out particularly good, but for some reason I am just good at making crusts. They always seem to turn out well, or maybe it's just because I'm comparing it mostly to store bought crusts, which are... horrible. The actual filling I need to work on it seems. Kind of bland... Oh well. Will work on a new one later. Then we did the actual dinner: Patrick made the turkey and gravy, and I made the mashed potatoes and dressing. We used a boat load of rosemary, thyme, and garlic in everything. We actually bought that Costco tub of garlic cloves a while back- where they are all nicely peeled and everything- and it has been amazing. They are finally starting to go south, and we are about half through it. But we've used like at least 8 cloves per dish since we've bought it. And we used like 20 cloves in Thanksgiving dinner. Highly recommend the giant tub o' garlic cloves from Costco.
The mashed potatoes were half homemade, half potato flakes in a bag, which turned out great actually. We had two leftover potatoes that we needed to use, but didn't really want to buy more for Thanksgiving mash, so I just made those two and added two packs of the instant mash, a ton of garlic, and rosemary and thyme. Pretty darn good, cause it still tasted homemade with a chunk of real potato every now and then, but super easy. The dressing was also packaged, but we made it extra special by making it with chicken stock rather than water, and of course adding all the leftover garlic, rosemary, and thyme... trend? hhaha. But it tasted awesome. That chicken stock really made that taste great. Oh ya, we used a lot of half and half in stuff like the mash and the gravy, cause we bought a whole pint of it, when I only needed about a cup for the pie. So, overall, a highly fattening, artery clogging Thanksgiving success.

We ate our scrumptious dinner and watched our Seahawks lose... I was even wearing an XL Seahawks sweater in their honor. (a free band sweatshirt is a free band sweatshirt- no complaints.) Then we watched our Netflix movie, which was the 2005 version of The Producers. Disappointing. Gene Wilder is just so much better at Leopold Bloom than Matthew Broderick. Got nothin against Broderick, but he is no Wilder. I think we gave it 2 stars on the Netflix rating...

Hope everyone had a great Turkey Day!!!!