Smashup Fun and Squirels

Yesterday i watched the Axe Murders of Villisca. I had planned to a review but I’m tired, so I’ll do it tomorrow.

Today I was thankful for game time with hubby and the bro. We played Smashup, a fun game Jonathan introduced us to:

I had Ninja Dinosaurs, which while effective did not have the cards I wanted. (The game is played by choosing two factions such as Zombies and Robots, and smashing them up – hence the name – so you have Zombots. Or in my case, Ninjasaurs.)

Anyway, I was in a bad mood today (I had several rants on FB even) so hubby let me win. Of course he can’t admit he let me or it takes away from it, but I’m pretty sure he did.

In other news the squirrels were crazy here. I should have come in and got my Nikon but I had no idea it was going to last so long. They were busy chasing each other and I got super close to them.

They were making a ton of noise. if you’ve never heard squirrels, here’s your chance:

 

I tried to live stream in the middle but the quality was low, so I switched back:

And now I am headed to bed.

Have a winning game kinda day!

Jo 🙂

 

Thankfulness #117: Beta Round One

Today I am grateful for round one betas (Mom, Penny, and the bro) whose suggestions and corrections have hopefully made this mess readable for round two. Yeah, I am still up. I’m adding in a prologue before I send it to the other betas later today. I had a flashback scene that covers the space between books, but the consensus was it needed to be expanded so I just did a prologue instead. We’ll see what round two thinks.

Let’s see. It rained. I didn’t get to go pokemoning. But I did get to watch Jonathan live:

Oh, and hubby made something fun at work. He couldn’t bring t home, but he put a pic on Facebook, so hey, that counts.

And now I need sleep. Have a Beta kinda day!

Jo 🙂

80s Covers

I made it home alive. I even have some fun photos of Tablerock Lake and kittens to share if I get them taken off. Might not be until tomorrow though. I did get the short story finished I have been working on – it clocks in at 9,700+ words. Yeesh. Is it any good? I don’t know. It may well be very boring, but I’ve sent it to my two betas (doesn’t that make it sound professional? That really means Mom and the brother, but hey, why ruin the illusion?) and I’ll see what they say.

In the meantime Lotte Kestner’s version of Mr. Blue (originally by Yazoo in the 80s) has been driving me insane. Over and over again.

The lyrics to this song are amazing – especially the first and last verse:

“The winter sound is crying, like an old man slowly dying,
and the only sound: the wind that fills the trees
Even colder comes the moon
and though it never comes too soon,
the sudden stillness as the rainfall starts to freeze”

**

 

“I come to you at night
when all the world is sleeping tight
and lie beside you til the early morning dew
you can’t see me, you can’t hear me
but you feel me when you read the folded letter, she left addressed to you.”

The sad thing is that the original version, while having the same lyrics, loses the feel of them with synthesizers:

But the 80s did that. There’s a bunch of songs that have beautiful, melancholy lyrics smooshesd under synthesizers. Mad World is a prime example.

Here’s the cover:

and here is the original:

Another good example is Running up that Hill by Kate Bush and then Placebo – thankfully – got ahold of it (A lot of people actually redid it, but I think Placebo’s is the best).

Anyway, if you can’t guess I’ve been in a melancholy mood. I mentioned it a couple weeks ago, and it’s still hanging on. (Someone else has written a far better post than me about this condition,) I don’t know. At least I got the story written. Now to get book 8 going…

Have a good one!

Jo 🙂

Indy Can Be Fun

For the most part it was a boring day where little of worth got accomplished, so I’ll skip all that boring stuff (except to say my baskets came for the bathroom – yay! Finally! Pics coming later) and go straight to the two movies we watched.

We have a Roku and have added several of those odd ball free channels. My dad loves them, and so we often get some weird movies. Today’s selection included “To Know a Jedi” and “Star Wreck”.

To Know a Jedi was made in the early 2000s and is a fan film. The premise is that in normal town USA a science geek college kid, home for the summer, sees Star Wars Episode II with his friend and decides to create a real working light saber. No one thinks he can but – surprise! – despite allusions to his past failed experiments, he manages to do it. However, that leads him to wonder, if light sabers are real, what about the force?

The first fifteen minutes were not particularly gripping (and full of foul language if that bothers you). We had actually given up and exited out to the menu, but I wanted to see if they got blown up (because of all the references to a past explosion), so we went back to it with the intention of fast forwarding it. Luckily it picked up and we never actually fast forwarded it. In fact, after he starts using the force, it got so intriguing that I put the laptop down.

I won’t say the acting is amazing, or that the dialog is award winning, but the effects are good for what it is, and it’s fun. The director/writer/producer… film maker was apparently killed in an accident so they have released the film into public domain and you can find it at various places for download or watch it on youtube (warning – the youtube comments say the audio is out of sync. The version i saw on TV was fine, so it’s a youtube thing). I’d say skip the beginning, but it’s necessary for character development, so just stick through it.

As for Star Wreck, I’ve actually seen it before. It’s a Finnish spoof of Star Trek and Babylon 5 that ends in an epic space battle. Captain Pirk ends up back in time on modern day Earth (I don’t know that it ever tell you how – I missed the first few minutes this time [they started it without me] and don’t remember from last time) with some aliens called the Vulgar (who wind up hanging out with a rock star), his Klingon-like tactical officer Dwarf and his android Info. They need to get back to their own time, without messing up the timelines, only something has gone wrong and rather than building the P-fleet of the future, the earthlings cancel the space program. Pirk determines that he will make sure the fleet is created, and decides that the best way to do that is to become emperor of the world – with Russia’s help.

The movie is in Finnish with subtitles but it is friggin’ hilarious. Or at least *I* think it is. It’s by the same people who brought us the classic Iron Cross (I’ll be honest, I don’t remember if I liked that one or not. There were two Nazi on the Moon movies that we watched back to back, and one was good and one was awful, but it’s been a couple of years and I don’t know which one it was. Oh well.)

Anyway, Star Wreck is not on youtube, but they do sometimes sell it on DVD at their website. (mostly they seem focused on Iron Cross and Iron Cross 2 since those are their newer movies)

So, two indy movies, and both were fun. And speaking of indy fun, I have been working away on the Amaranthine Handbook. I’m on page 47, which is a J. (In fact, it’s Jesslynn). So I thought I’d share a couple of the previous pages:

And now I am going to my five hours of sleep. Yay me.

Have a good one!

Jo 🙂

Love is in the Air!

From sweet to steamy, but always romantic! Why not get in the mood for love with IAU? Stop by and Read some romantic excerpts!