Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Game of Thrones, Bates Motel, and Working....

Hey, hey...I hope you guys have been having a good week...I'm doing alright, still super busy with everything...but, no one wants to hear me going on and on about work, so I'll skip that...

What did you think about the latest episode of Game of Thrones?

I thought that the episode was pretty good...there are a few story developments that I thought were a bit unexpected:

- I don't know why, but I was genuinely surprised that Littlefinger arranged for Sansa to marry Ramsay Bolton. I mean, come on!! Ramsay is a freakin' BOLTON!! The family responsible for that little thing we call the Red Wedding!!! I know that Ramsay 'gave his word' to Littlefinger that he would never hurt Sansa, but I don't think that even means anything...I mean, the only one that might be less 'worth his word' in all of Westeros than a Bolton wold be Littlefinger. Geez. Poor Sansa...

Margaery + Tommen = 4 - Eva!
- I wasn't expecting the wedding of Tommen and Margaery to come quite as quickly as it did. Maybe I didn't think it was in the works yet because of the blatant lack of fanfare...though, I don't know if it would even be possible to top all of the fanfare of the previous royal wedding. And I'm pretty sure I can't be the only one that found the whole 'wedding night' scene to be more than a touch creepy...I'm not exactly sure how old TV show Tommen is supposed to be, but I know that book Tommen is rather young...like, not even a teenager young! Soooooo, congratulations to Margaery for marrying a man-child with such, umm, natural prowess....but, it's still creepy.

- I'm seriously confused by the things going on with Arya while she's in the House of Black and White...not sure if all the secrecy is part of her padawan training, but we aren't given much to work with at all. I don't know whether I should be afraid for her character or if I should be anticipating a make-over of bad ass proportions...

- How about Jon Snow seriously manning up?!? Seriously! I've always more or less liked his character, so I'm glad to see that he's striving to be a man that's worth his word...


Other than GoT, I've been watching the latest season of Bates Motel...

Bates is on it's third season...I watched the first one on a Netflix binge-watching spree. I really liked it...but when I tried to watch the second season as it aired, I found it rather, 'meh.' So, I just waited until the entire second season was available on Netflix and then binge-watched the whole thing...

I thought that the third season would be the same way, but I'm pleasantly surprised to find that it isn't! It's one of the few shows that I make an effort to watch each episode as it airs. [Or I'll watch the newest episode on the A&E website...but I've been watching each episode before the next one airs! Progress, I tell ya...]

It's a really good show...It's supposed to be chronicling the life of Norman Bates 'pre-Psycho.' I've never seen the movie, so I'm not really sure at what point all of the build-up is supposed to end...but I'm a fan, so far! The story is just darkly-twisted enough to keep me intrigued...it's like...a small town that really tries to be the picturesque, white picket fence town that it portrays itself to be, but there's always an undeniable trace of some menacing evil working just beneath the surface...It's good!!

Alrighty...I've got to get back to work...hope to post again soon!

Friday, April 24, 2015

Loot Crate, Atonement, Classic Books, and More!

Just a few, quick updates:

- Been way overwhelmed with work this week...me no likey :(

- Serving as a transportation shuttle to a hospital that's almost an hour away is exhausting!

- I pulled a literal all-nighter earlier this week...my body is still punishing me for it...

- I've entered back into the 'hate' phase of my love/hate relationship with eBay.

- No longer obsessed with My Little Pony collecting...it was shorter lived that I anticipated...

- This month's Loot Crate was amazing!

- I watched the movie Atonement for the first time...so good! Also, where has Jame McAvoy been all my life?

- I've got to decide if I want to renew my lease...I have no idea what I'm going to do...

- Somehow, I've managed to lose some weight over the last month...now, I'm at that pesky stage where I'm between pant sizes...it's also a love/hate situation.

- I've been actively working to stave off an oncoming bout of depression...so far, so good, but today has left me far less optimistic...

- I've changed the way I put on eyeliner...I'm trying out winged tight-lining...not sure if it's worth the extra time and aggravation...

- I need to make friends. But I hate meeting new people. It's a vicious cycle.

- Started reading George Orwell's 1984...I'm impressed with how much I actually enjoy it...yay books!

- I miss having time to post...

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Game of Thrones - Season 5 Opener...Wasn't My Favorite /shrug

After finally being able to watch the season 5 premiere of Game of Thrones, I'm still not exactly sure if I'm very excited about this upcoming season...

***SPOILERS...if you haven't seen the episode yet, you may wanna skip this post***

Okay, so the blonde hair should have
made it obvious...
The episode starts off with two girls walking through a really creepy forest...there isn't an introduction of the girls, so I spent the first several minutes trying to figure out who they where and what terrible thing was about to happen to them [the last episode I remember starting with an unnamed girl in the woods was 'The Lion and the Rose' from season 4...it didn't end well for the poor girl. Not at all].

Soon the girls are barging into a ramshackle hut and the blonde one starts demanding that the 'witch' that lives there tell her of her future...the witch tells the girl that she will marry the king and become queen, for a time...then there will be a younger, more beautiful girl that will overthrow her and take her place. She also says that the girl and the king will have children...that the king will have 20 and she will have 3. [Right about now is when I realized that I knew the girl's name] Ominously, the witch says that the girl's three children will have crowns of gold...which will then become their shrouds. Have you guessed who the girl is supposed to be yet? Yep! We are looking at a young Cersei and learning that she had some fore-warning of the tragedy that would play out in her life [seaons 1 -4]. Not really sure what this scene is supposed to do for the audience...other than offer additional insight on why Cersei hates Margery as much as she does.

Lancel Lannister reappears in this episode, and he seems to have been given quite a makeover...remember him?

Lancel had a sort of minor, recurring role in seasons 1 and 2 before he more or less disappears after Cersei punches him in the arrow wound he received during the Battle of the Blackwater.

During the fist couple seasons, Lancel joined the ranks of Cersei's puppets. You know...the ones she got to do her bidding because she was sleeping with them. [Cersei: keeping it in the family. Always.]

Cersei runs into the made-over rendition of Lancel during some sort of gathering for honoring/mourning the late Tywin Lannister [died at the hand of Tyrion...while taking a poop. Hilarious!]. In the dialogue between Cersei and Lancel, we're reminded of their 'taboo relations' and some of the deeds Lancel did at her bidding...namely, his involvement in boar hunting accident that killed King Robert. We also learn that Lancel has joined some sort of religious group that call themselves 'The Sparrows.'

My guess is that The Sparrows end up having some sort of role in the latest chapter of King's Landing drama...maybe.

Umm...what else happened?

Oh! I remember that they briefly show Brienne and Podrick...Brienne is pretty aggravated that she's pledged to protect any remaining Starks [Arya and Sansa, as far as Brienne knows], but Arya flat-out denied her offered assistance/protection. While venting some of her frustrations, Brienne tries [again] to dismiss Podrick, reminding him that he can't be actually be a squire if he continues to assist her...after all, Brienne is not actually a knight. Because he's the good guy that he is, Podrick waves these comments off [again] and insists that he will continue to aid Brienne. In a cruel bit of dramatic irony, we see a carriage pass by Brienne and Podrick...and Sansa is in the carriage!!!! /facepalm!

Speaking of Sansa...

We see Sansa and Littlefinger dropping Robin off at some sort of training facility. Robin is being taught to sword fight and he suuuuuuuuucks! Robin's safety is assured [though his capacity to learn manly things is not] and Sansa and Littlefinger head out in a carriage. I know that Littlefinger tells Sansa that he lied about their destination, but I can't actually remember where they're headed...yeah...this bit wasn't exactly my favorite.

We also get kind of caught up on Daenerys...she's still hanging out in her pyramid and everything around the pyramid is still chaos. An unsullied gets murdered while he's snuggling with a prostitute and that prompts Daenerys to flex her 'I'm the badass mother of dragons!' muscles...a little. After a little prodding from a very nude Daario Naharis, Dany goes to visit her two dragons that she had locked away at the end of the last season. I'm not sure exactly how long these two have been locked away, but they certainly did not seem happy to see their mother! Sooooo, unless there are some drastic changes, I don't know how much longer Dany can call herself the 'mother of dragons.'

Quite honestly, I've been trying to write this stupid post for three days now, and I've gotten tired of it...[gotta love chaos...which my life seems to have in endless supplies!] so, I'm going to wrap this episode up rather quickly...

We see Jon Snow, still at Castle Black, and Stannis is telling Jon that he wants Mance Rayder to pledge his loyalty to him and enlist all of the wildlings to fight in Sannis's army. Jon relays the message to Mance, Mance predictably says 'hell no.' Stannis then sentences Mance to die by fire...just...ugh, I really hate Stannis. During the execution, Jon Snow does one of the most honorable things seen in the show to date [just a rough estimate...I may look into the accuracy of this statement later], and he shoots an arrow in Mance's chest. A much swifter, more humane [by comparison] death than being burned alive. So....yeah. Yay, Jon Snow!

I know that I'm skipping over the bits about Tyrion and Varys [and probably more], my apologies...to me, it really seemed like a whole lot of scaffolding for future episodes and story arcs. Not terribly interesting right now. In fact, that's really my overall impression of the entire episode... it just wasn't terribly interesting.

Here's to hoping that the season gets better!


Sunday, April 12, 2015

Season 5 is...Finally Here! [Game of Thrones]

It's finally here!!!

I've been waiting for season 5 of Game of Thrones pretty much since the day that season 4
ended...though I must admit, it's been so long that I've forgotten where the story left off..

Aaaand, I got really tired of paying about $25 extra on my cable bill for HBO [especially since I'd only subscribed so that I could watch GoT]...so I cancelled my subscription to HBO several months ago. Thankfully, AT&T is having a free HBO/MAX preview weekend and I don't have to miss the season 5 premiere! [Clever timing, HBO, clever timing indeed...]

Though, to be honest, I'm not sure if I'll be as big of a GoT fan as I had been with seasons in the past. To me, it felt like the show was kind of losing steam towards the last few episodes of season 4...I've gotten really bored with Jon Snow's story arc and with whatever is happening north of the wall. We still have no idea what's happened to Gendry [last we saw him, he was hightailing it out of Dragonstone in a row boat after admitting that he's never been in a rowboat before and doesn't know how to swim...and we don't see him at all in the 4th season!! What happened to Gendry?!??

I don't like Stannis Baratheon...the only good thing to come out of his story arc is Ser Davos. Did you catch the Monty Python reference in one of the scenes where he was learning to read? It was awesome!

I also don't like that it's taking Daenerys friggin forever to get to the other continent...forever. I expected some dragon-fire roasted goodness about a season and a half ago! Isn't at least one of the dragons big enough for her to ride on yet? She's quite the tiny thing, the dragon wouldn't even have to be fully grown yet! And what happened to her massive Dothraki army? Are they still there? After she acquired the army of Unsullied, we never see the Dothrakis. [Or maybe I just don't remember seeing them...]

Edited out the nipple because.../shudder
I am interested to see what happens to Sansa and the increasingly creepy Petyr...I'm hoping that one of them does away with Robin Arryn. That kid....just...ugh! He's a petulant, spoiled rotten brat who was still breastfeeding when he was almost 10 years old. He definitely needs to follow his mother through the moondoor.

I'm hoping that more interesting things end up happening with Arya's character...although she has gotten rather tough while running all over Westeros with The Hound, I'm not sure how she'll fare on her own...right now, I'm putting my bet on Sansa being the longest living Stark.

Well, now that I've started writing about it, I am rather excited to see this season's premiere! A post on my thoughts of the episode to come later, I'm sure...

**Update: I somehow managed to botch setting my DVR to record the new episode when it first aired...I went about putting the kiddo to bed and such anticipating to watch the newly recorded Westerosi goodness after the kiddo fell asleep, but noooooo...now I have to wait another hour to catch the next showing! Also, until I've seen the episode, I'm avoiding the internet like it's the plague! Stupid DVR. /grumblegrumblegrumble

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Hey, Hey, Hey...

Pssssst! Hey!!

It's me! I know it's been a while since I last posted, but I promise I'm still alive!

Since I've been gone, it seems like I've had a lot going on and yet nothing going on at the same time...I always felt really busy, but looking back, I'm not quite sure why I felt that way.../shrug

Over the last couple weeks, I've had quite a bit of familial distress...I've got an aunt that's going through a tremendous amount of medical complications right now. That alone is enough to make for a worrisome situation, but add in the fact that she's overseas and it suddenly gets that much worse.

Luckily, we were able to figure out a way to get my cousin [her daughter] over there...but it's still a very stressful situation. Right now, the goal is to get her well enough to fly back to the states via MedEvac...her condition has been very up-and-down over the last week, but my aunt is definitely a fighter! So, if you don't mind, please throw up a quick prayer/positive thought/good juju for my aunt and the rest of my family...it's been quite the emotional roller coaster.

A more lighthearted development is my renewed love for My Little Pony...yes, I'm a 'grown-up' who still likes MLP...I don't quite remember how it happened, exactly, but I've been really looking into collecting the original ponies.
Lost her at the last second...
curse you, eBay!!

Like most girls of the 80's, I had some of these adorable ponies...but, of course, I played with them. So now, I've been scouring eBay and Etsy like crazy!

Don't get me wrong, there are a ton of MLP toys that people are selling...it's finding a particular pony that you love and happens to be in good condition that's the challenge.

It's the G1 ponies that I'm interested in collecting...these are the ones that came out between 1982 and 1995. There are so many of them, I know it wouldn't be practical to try and collect them all...so, I've decided to start with a group that might be a little more attainable. I'm looking for G1 Rainbow Ponies, Twinkle-Eyed Ponies, and a few particular Twice-as-Fancy ponies...I know these categories probably don't mean anything to you, so click here to see which ones I'm talking about...

Sooooo, if any of you happen to have some ponies that you no longer want, please let me know!!

Alrighty, I'm off to get things to prepare for a babyshower [yay.]...