There are tentative plans for us to dogsit for Mason's parents this winter when they go away on vacation for a couple of weeks. In very advance preparation for temporarily have a dog in our home, I thought it would be best that before we introduce the pup to our house, we should introduce him to our cat.

I can't really say it went good or bad, since after only sixty seconds of skirting around the edges of the living room with his hair standing on end, Iroh dove underneath the sofa and refused to have anything at all to do with Arnie the happy schnauzer pup. Couldn't get him out until after the dog had left, and the entire time he was in hiding he made these long, pitiful little growling noises. =_=; I don't honestly think Arnie would hurt the cat, but at the same time I can't have Iroh reduced to cowering under the couch for two whole weeks.

A second cat-dog introduction may have to be arranged, but we will have the foresight to block off entry to under any furniture this time.

*Kitty growls can be heard from the next room*

I've been lazy with blogging over the last week or two, so I'll try to keep these all short and sweet!

• Edmonton Pride Parade
  
  Awesome! Went with Sister and friend and walked in the parade along with the Grant MacEwan GLBT group. I was originally assigned the task of enthusiastically giving out temporary tattoos to the crowd, but I'm too shy and am not a huge people person so that fell flat pretty quick; so instead I got to blow bubbles~ X3 Much more fun. By the end of that parade I had some proper bubble blowing technique down, I tell you. *Smug*
  
  It was a great turn out for both the parade parties and the crowds watching. This was the first time I've ever actually walked in the parade, and only the second time I'd ever been to it at all. Every year I mean to go, and then something always comes up and it's always the same old "okay, well maybe next year." I enjoy going out and showing my support, and I really love the atmosphere and watching all of the different people laughing and smiling and just being with each other -- some unfortunately whom I'm sure don't usually feel the same easy comfort in walking hand-in-hand down the street any other day as they probably do during pride day. I wish everyone could feel as confident, open, and happy all the time as some of the people I saw today. What a thought.


• Homeland by R. A. Salvatore
  
  A race of dark elves called the Drow live underground and are feared by all for their vicousness and single-minded drive for power no matter the cost, least of all when it comes to killing their own, which is practically encouraged. The newborn Drizzt is born and grows up to be not quite as malicious as his family and culture would prefer him to be...
  
  I don't know what to think about this book. I guess it was okay, I made it through to the end fast enough, but it was just too... evil? As in a complete over-abundance of. Usually I'm a sucker for the villain. I have a long, sordid history of always rooting for the bad guy, and almost every one of my favorite characters from any fandom has been the the villain; but my biff is that evil is not interesting unless it's dished out with some good alongside for the ride. All this story had was Evil Smiles and Evil Plotting and Evil Ambitions, where mothers kill sons and sisters kill mothers and brothers want to kill sisters and all it is is a giant clusterfuck of hate and assassination and EVIL. It made the villainous aspect of any potentially interesting character really boring and redundant. I think Homeland had potential, but fell flat.


• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
  
  A boy with Asperger's finds his neighbor's dog dead, impaled with a garden fork in the yard; despite his father's demands otherwise, brilliant young Christopher begins his own super-sleuth story to discover who killed the dog and ends up finding out more than he bargained for.
  
  This one's been on my to-read list for a while, and I was more eager to read it after finishing off House Rules recently by Jodi Picoult. The Curious Incident (etc) itself was good and an interesting read. The thing that struck me the most between this book and Picoult's was how very different the first-person PoV narrative was. Picoult's character is very aware of his Asperger's and why and how it affects aspects of his life and those around him the way it does; yet his inner dialogue was for the most part precise, articulate, thought out and -- for lack of a better word -- "normal." Haddon's character, on the other hand, is a whirlwind of thoughts and stories and descriptions and feelings, served up by the way of simplified language, many run-on sentences and topic derailments. It made it a bit exhausting to follow what the character was thinking some times, but in a way I think that's the point. Different books with different takes, though both very interesting in separate ways.


• Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
  
  This one was a light read with lots of laughs. Think Bridget Jones but for teens. Basically it chronicles diary-style a school year in the life of fourteen-year-old Georgia Nicolson, and predictably all manner of teenage girl drama and hyjinks ensue. There were some pretty funny bits, mostly because I remembered thinking some of the same things and using the same ridiculously silly logic at points back in my teenage days; and also because the narrator is British and uses lots of fabulously amusing English slang, terms like "nuddy-pants" and "jimjams" which are automatically hilarious to anyone who is not British.


• Sex and the City 2
  
  Awful. :c It started off well enough for the first half hour or so and geared up by introducing the new life hurdles that were going to be addressed for each character -- and then they all promptly jumped on a plane to Abu Dhabi and the remaining hour and half of the whole movie was a giant boring vacation slide show. Look, here we are on a camel! Look, here we are sipping cocktails by the pool! Look, here we are singing karaoke! What? Plot, where did you go? Did you accidentally miss the plane to the Middle East that your leading ladies were on? *Story plot sits sadly alone, abandoned completely in airport waiting lounge* So very very disappointing. My sad face was very sad indeed.


• Splice
  
  I have no words for this movie. We all left the theatre exchanging equal WTF expressions of "Ngggwha...?" Seriously. Here's the movie: Scientist couple create crazy human/mult-animal hybrid creature. Man wants to kill it, woman wants to raise it like a adorable monster-like puppy. Man is weary, woman loves it as a daughter. Man loves it like a daughter, woman preforms crazy mutilating experiments on it in the name of science. Man mates with it, woman is horrified and hates man. Man confronts woman. Woman loves creature! Woman hates creature! Man hates creature! Man loves creature! Man and woman go to kill creature! Creature dies, man and woman love creature, cry over loss of creature! Creature rises from the dead and swaps gender, so now she's a he who kills everything! Man and woman hate creature! Creature rapes woman and kills man! Creature is killed and woman is left impregnated with creature's own incesty, double-hybrid spawn.
  
  Potential sequel...? I hope not. o_O

In other news, I'm a horrible kitty mother and I forgot that everything including pet stores close freakishly early on Saturdays and now I have no breakfast for Iroh tomorrow morning. Bugger. I fear much drama and kitty woe (of the loud, especially obnoxious variety) shall occur when he notices the complete lack of tasty kibble in his bowl. :x

...was pretty awesome. :B I agree with the general opinion that it wasn't as great as the first movie, but as far as sequels go it was pretty sweet. Robert Downey Jr. is smoking hot even in a bowtie or when he's pale and sickly with palladium poisoning, and props to Ms. Johansson who's completely bombshelly whether in a little black skirt or skin-tight denim leather. Marvel provides fan service for everyone!

One thing I did leave the theatre disappointed about (and apparently I seem to be the only one thinking so) is that I really thought they were going to touch upon Stark's drinking problem in the sequel and they didn't, not really. Yes, people point out that we see him with a drink in his hand through a good number of both films scenes, but that's a pretty common sight in any media when a character is snotty, powerful, and rich.

I just keep hearing about how this great hurdle in Tony Stark's life is dealing with his bout(s) of alcoholism, but I'm not seeing it and I really think we should. Currently Hollywood's version of Iron Man doesn't have any skeletons in his closet. Every other hero does. Bruce Wayne constantly dealing with the loss of his parents. Peter Parker wracked with guilt over being the round-about cause of his uncle's death. Bruce Banner being forced to live apart from society to keep his big green alter ego in check. Et cetera. Establishing Stark's struggle with drinking would give him a much needed venerability and weakness, and I think he would prove a more complex and interesting character from it. I'm not saying to make the addiction the entire primary plot for the whole movie (because as it has been earnestly pointed out to me, when would they have time for all of the action and EXPLOSIONS?), but use it. Alcoholism is not a minor aspect of an individual's life -- alcoholism affects everything, and I think they need to develop a story that can reflect what it affects in Tony Stark's every day life of being rich and fabulous and doing the superhero thing.

I'll cross my fingers for Iron Man 3. Until then, drunk or not, Robert Downey Jr. is still all sorts of sexy.

Being an avid, long time lover of hugs myself and one who is of the strong opinion that there can never be too many hugs in the world, I've compiled my own Hug Bucket. A Hug Bucket, I have been enlightened to learn from one of the recent Vlogbrother videos, is similar to a "bucket list" (ie. things you'd like to do before you kick the proverbial bucket) only in this case equate "things"="people" and "do"="hug the bejeezus out of."

And so I decided it would nice to create a list of individuals I would like to hug before I die in a little Hug Buckety sand pail of my own. I think it would be pink. With perhaps, bunnies and rainbows printed on the side of it. Yes. And these are the people who would be in it:

• The Old Spice body wash guy
• Simon Cowell
• Colin Firth (as Mr. Darcy)
• Natalie Tran
• J.K. Rowling (in leu of Severus Snape not actually existing)
• Robert Downey Jr.
• Felicia Day
• John Green (sorry Hank, there wasn't room enough in the bucket for both of you)
• Alyson Hannigan
• The Doctor
• Toby Ziegler and Ainsley Hayes from West Wing
• Gregory House
• A lion
• An armful of bunnies
• Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon
• This robot
• This guy
• This girl
• Oh and this guy too
• Colin Mochrie
• A velociraptor

My Hug Bucket also obviously already has Mason and Sister and my wonderful family and friends and Iroh and Toby and Velcro-Cat already, all who thankfully I can hug any time and as hard and for as long as I want until they eventually untangle themselves from my clutches (or in the case of Iroh, bite me.) Does this mean I have to take them all out of the bucket now? I'm confused on that part still. I prefer to think of them all as extra special and infinity doomed to reside in my Hug Bucket.

I hope you all like pink. ♥

Two more books down, 130 more to go (though that number is constantly growing the more time I spend on Goodreads.)


His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

Dragons! War! Oceanic battles! Dragons! Napoleon! Did I mention, dragons? It is exactly as it sounds, and if by that you think awesome then you, sir, are correct.

Sleek and proper English navy captain, William Laurence, finds himself wrenched away from the life and career and everything he adores when his crew captures a French ship carrying a rare dragon egg. Sure enough, poor ol' Will inevitably winds up with the obligation and responsibility of said dragon (named Temeraire) and is thrust into Britain's Aerial Corps to meet the fight against Bonaparte's advancing forces in the sky.

The book wastes no time with preambles of any sort. I have to admit that I had my doubts leaping right into the plot in the first chapter, much less the first six pages, and it all felt a little rushed before we had even left the starting line, what with trying to digest the whole alternate reality dragon quirk that doesn't get explained at all before you're thrust into it head first. That aside, it's an interesting concept of taking real historic events and putting a fantasy swing on it, and you get the feel for it pretty quick. I really loved Temeraire himself and the sort of naive but insightful view he has towards everyone and everything. I also really enjoyed the relationship Novik created between the dragons and their handlers; it's very obvious that Will and Temeraire's closeness is built on mutual respect and genuine affection on the half of both parties (which is something I felt lacking from other similar series' like Eragon.) By comparison, the neglect of one of the other dragon characters, Levitas, was heart wrenching. I don't ever cry reading books, but I came fairly close in the case of his small side story. ;_;

Since His Majesty's Dragon is based in a time of soldiers and war, there are a fair amount of battle scenes. I am not an action buff and I'm not particularly interested in the details or dynamics of warfare, so the parts where the story fell short for me were some of the especially longer battle or strategy scenes. I think it's especially difficult to read action sequences since they don't come across on the page as they do watching them on a screen, but fortunately the aerial battles were easier to follow here than a lot of other novel fight scenes I could mention. What I did find pretty nifty, however, were the creative crew systems and gear setups Novik dreamt up for the dragons -- it wasn't as simple as the hero just jumping on the back of his valiant draconian steed and shouting CHARGE! It added a sense of realism -- or at least as much realism as you can create when you're talking about more or less replacing fighter planes with mythical flying beasts.

I'll most likely dip back into the series for more in the future, if anything just for the possible chance for a scene with Napoleon Bonaparte whooping around in the sky ecstatically on the bag a giant flying lizard. :D As a footnote, the author of this series was apparently a fanfiction writer/LiveJournaler who lived in Edmonton for a winter (her biography remarks upon a "truly alarming coat" she now owns from her stint here, LOL.) I'd be interested to learn which fandom(s) she wrote for.


House Rules by Jodi Picoult

Picoult's newest book is about an eighteen-year-old boy with Asperger’s Syndrome ( which is a high-functioning type of autism for those who are not familiar) and an obsession for forensic analysis, who is arrested for the murder of his social skills tutor.

My only familiarity of Asperger's up to this point had been the character of Jerry Espenson from Boston Legal, which is one of the reasons why this book initially piqued my interest. It's one of those conditions that a lot of people rarely hear about and it's always a bit fascinating getting a bit of a deeper glimpse into the day-to-day rituals, complications, and struggles an individual and family touched by something like Asperger's lives with. According to various reviews I've read, Picoult's portrayal of AS here doesn't always necessarily ring true (though who am I to say); but despite that, I greatly enjoyed House Rules, with the exception of the ending which I thought was way too sudden and failed at really tying things up. I hate the ambiguity, it leaves me sitting there forever just craving for closure! D: That, and I and every other reader figured out the "twist" ending barely before the mystery of the crime had even been established. No surprises in this one.

Picoult's books are always a bit of a hit and miss, which is strange when you consider the plots are always the same: Family becomes entangled in a high stakes legal drama centered around a thought-provoking ethical or moral dilemma! Enlists the help of a charming lawyer who becomes emotionally entangled with his client and/or client's family! Cue some sort of angsty romance or affair thrown in for kicks that the parents use as an excuse for coping with the drama! OMG TWIST ENDING!

Despite the redundancy, I admire the way she's always almost able to make all of her characters endearing and relatable on some level, and I can't help but keep going back for more. There have been ones that I've loved such as Nineteen Minutes and My Sister's Keeper, and ones that fell flat with me like The Tenth Circle. Her upcoming 2011 novel reportedly centers around a lesbian couple and gay rights in regards to starting a family in America, which I hope will be another gooder~


Next up on my list is Homeland, the first book in the popular Dark Elf trilogy, but I got as far as the prologue and then somehow became distracted with reading my favorite General Grievous fanfic again for about the fourth or fifth time. (I keep a copy of the whole massive thing printed out that spans across two Duo-Tang because I enjoy it that much. And also, because I'm a giant nerd.) It's one of those stories that hasn't been updated in years and will probably never be completed, which makes me all sorts of sad because we all know about me and closure. :C <-- Epic sad face.

I finally finished watching the 1995 Pride and Prejudice mini-series with Jennifer Ehle and the fabulous Colin Firth. It wasn't all the fireworks and earth shattering amazing that I've heard it praised as, but it was enjoyable. Definitely something I liked to sit down to with a plate of tasty chocolate cake while watching and grinning each time they showed a closeup of Mr. Darcy. What a scowly bear. X3 I have to admit I was slightly disappointed with the infamous wet shirt scene. From all of the hype it's garnered over the years, I wound up with this when I was really expecting more of something like this. On the note of wet shirts, I never realized how many wet, white shirts Mr. Firth has actually donned over the years. I think P&P unintentionally type cast him and wet shirts everywhere. There should really be some sort of Oscar award for it all it's own.

P.S. I was dismayed to witness Jane Austen's obviously discriminatory view on red-heads. On behalf of gingers everywhere, I am hurt, Ms. Austen. Hurt and dismayed! :C

As enjoyable a time that you always have on a camping trip, as relaxing, and stress free, and wonderfully lazy and refreshing as they are, there's always this little inner breath of relief let out when you walk back in the door of your house afterward. I love camping, but I forget sometimes how much more I love indoor plumbing. Especially spider-free indoor plumbing. And the complete lack of irrational fear of being eaten by bears on your way to pee during the night. And the added bonus of a cool basement in which you can finally escape the scorching heat -- a new plus that I particularly welcomed after sweating my proverbial balls off outside all weekend.

Despite my earlier worries that my cat would disown me when we returned home after leaving him on his own for the first time, Iroh was so relieved to see us walk in the door and was so constantly underfoot that I was more afraid of accidentally stepping on him as we unpacked. The one whole day he spent alone seemed to have left him a little distraught and under the impression that he'd been abandoned, and more importantly, that he'd never be fed again (as I'm sadly sure his love for his breakfasts and dinners takes priority over both Mason and I.) Knowing him, he probably greedily gobbled down all of the extra helpings I food rations we left for him before Saturday morning even came and then spent the next twenty-four hours moping that his food bowl wasn't being refilled. In comparison, Toby is a pro at weekends alone now, he just looks up when we come in the door and is all "Oh, you're back. Splendid. Dinner time yet?"

WARNING: HOUSE SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!

Season finale of House on Monday was FABULOUS! XD For the last two minutes of the episode I was frozen in a position of wide-eyed, arm-raised, squealy triumphant rapture. It was like waiting for Josh and Donna through seven years of West Wing all over again. I'm as giddy as a school girl for the next season and what I hope will include lots of hot Huddy snogging (and oh yeah, probably some little side plot to do with Thirteen beginning her slow and sad decline with Huntington's disease as ambiguously implied at the end of the show, but I think we know which is the more enticing storyline. Or perhaps I'm just a horrible person...) In any event, depending on what they have planned it may end up being a fitting place to end the series, in my opinion.