I'm done with Twilight...what now?

This is kind of a review, I guess - but mostly it's just me sharing my all-consuming enthusiasm for the Twilight series. For the past three and a half weeks, I have done nothing with my down time (little that I have) but read these books. I know I'm very late to the game on this; the first book came out in 2005, I think, and the fourth and final one came out a few months ago. I kept holding off because I didn't think I had time to read them, and I wasn't sure if I even wanted to read them, but two of my friends - my age - highly recommended them so I finally went for it. I'm actually really glad I didn't start reading them till now, because I could just go straight through all four books without stopping, or having to wait in suspense while I wondered what was going to happen next. I just had to close one and open the next one, and keep right on going.

These are the first books I've been REALLY into since Harry Potter. It was so fun to be so excited about a book series again! Although, I admit, I was a little embarrassed for being so wild about books that are essentially about teenage vampires and werewolves. I confess that I didn't make eye contact with the salespeople at the bookstores where I bought the books. If I'd been thinking, I would have gotten gift receipts so it would've looked like I was buying them for a little sister or a niece or something.

But now, whatever. I loved these books and I don't care who knows it!

One of my friends asked me what the appeal was...and I couldn't really explain it. The mythology in the books is really intriguing, but I can't really come up with some high-sounding literary reason why I was so completely absorbed in the story. I just loved the characters, loved the love story, and loved the idea of something so imaginative being set in someplace so ordinary. The idea of a super-hot vampire being completely devoted to you for eternity isn't bad, either. I think, though, that what really did it for me was kind of remembering what it was like to be in high school and fall in love for the first time (for me, the only time!), even though there were no vampires at my high school (to my knowledge).

I finished the fourth book, Breaking Dawn, late last night, and I have to say I was very satisfied. It wasn't even like when I read the last Harry Potter book and felt sad that I was never going to read more about Harry. With the ending of the Twilight series, I just felt like I'd read the whole story, the ending was nicely tied up, and I could now go on with my life knowing what happened to all these characters. I don't particularly feel like I need to read more about them, because I'm not really sure what else is left to say. I'm also a bit glad to be done because I've been living on very little sleep while I've been reading these books (staying up till past midnight on more than one occasion, even during the week), so it will be nice to be able to turn off my brain and go to bed at a decent hour again. And when I have finally gotten some sleep, I have been having a lot of dreams about vampires, so it's not particularly restful. Some of them have been combined with work dreams, which is very weird, but oh well. :) Still, I love books, and I can't say enough about books that make me want to sacrifice sleeping to read them.

I won't say that the books were all perfect; there were definitely times when the main character, Bella, annoyed the heck out of me with her dramatic behavior, but then I remembered that teenage girls are just dramatic, so it was probably an unavoidable part of the story. Overall, though, they are the best books I've read in a very long time - worth the hype, and worth staying up too late and trying to cram in chapters over breakfast before work.

I'm now waiting on one of my friends at work to finish reading the series (I just loaned her New Moon, and I'm taking her Eclipse and Breaking Dawn on Monday) so I have someone nearby to talk about the books with!!

Slumdog Millionaire Review

We took a half day of vacation from work yesterday to go on a date for Valentine's Day, since the likelihood of going on a date on the actual day is never good for us. (We have no convenient neighborhood teenager to babysit, and no family nearby.) So, we went to lunch at Stir Crazy (where I tried something new, even though I didn't know what half the ingredients were, and it was delightful) and then went to see Slumdog Millionaire.

I know it's been out for awhile and already won a Golden Globe, so I will keep this short.

1) Go. See. It.
2) It is fantastic.
3) I now have a crush on the guy who plays Jamal, and I am resisting looking him up on imdb because I think he might be like 10 years younger than I am, and I just don't need that.
4) I laughed, I cried, I hid my eyes during a few uncomfortable parts. It had basically everything you need in a movie experience.
5) Go. See. It.

The Dark Knight according to a clown-phobe

I did it. I went to see The Dark Knight. I know I said I wasn't going to see it in the theater, but a few factors were at play here. One was, we had babysitters available on Saturday night and we wanted to take advantage of that. Another was, just about everyone I know has seen the movie and I was really starting to feel left out. And the last one was, Brock told me he thought I could handle it, and that he didn't think my clown phobia was necessarily as debilitating as I might portray. (It's true that I don't generally run screaming from clowns, but they do freak me out pretty severely; still, he thought I would be okay and promised to warn me as much as possible about parts where I might want to cover my eyes.)

So, here is my review of The Dark Knight, from a clown-hater's perspective:

• Heath Ledger is the best Joker ever. And he really didn't frighten me much from a clown perspective - partially because I just kept telling myself it was Heath Ledger under all that makeup. Also, he was just a scary character, and would have been whether or not he was in creepy makeup. That was one really bad Bad Guy - the scariest kind of bad guy, who's not motivated by anything other than wanting to create chaos.
• I did spend a LOT of time hiding from clown masks, though. (There are three things I'm really afraid of: clowns, masks and storms. This movie had two out of three.) I felt like I missed a lot of the movie because of it. Brock was really good about warning me when I might not want to watch, but I felt like that happened pretty often.
  
• Two-Face actually freaked me out more than anything in the movie. And since he figures prominently in the last quarter of the movie, I didn't watch a lot of it. I listened to it, at least.
• I thought the film, overall, was really excellent. It didn't feel like a comic book movie at all. It just felt like a scary movie about Good vs. Evil and Order vs. Chaos. So I can see why people are saying it's one of the best movies ever. The story was really good, and there was a lot of suspense, and the chase scene through Lower Wacker (called Lower Fifth in the movie) was awesome.
• Speaking of Lower Wacker, it was cool watching the movie and recognizing all the stuff in Chicago.
• The "disappearing pencil trick" was amusing. Disturbing, but amusing.
• Maggie Gyllenhaal was way better as Rachel Dawes than Katie Holmes was. Sorry, Katie.
• Christian Bale is hot.
• It should have an R rating. Brock and I were talking about this, and we're sure it got a PG-13 because there's virtually no bad language and you really don't see a lot of blood or anything. But it's pretty intense and scary. I don't see how anything with that many bombs and fire and scary stuff can NOT be rated R.
  

Overall, I'm glad I saw it. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it entirely, but I did get to see what all the fuss was about and agree that it was deserved. I don't think I need to see it again anytime soon...or maybe ever...because there were just a lot of parts that made me really uncomfortable. But that's just because of my own personal phobias and has nothing to do with the movie. *chuckle* If you don't have a problem with clowns or clown masks, and you're one of the five people on the planet who hasn't seen the movie yet, then you should totally go see it.

If you do have a problem with clowns, just get it on DVD and watch it with someone who's already seen it so they can tell you when to cover your eyes. :)

Review of Acura RDX

I was inspired by Brock's review of Assassin's Creed to actually try to use my blog to convey something that might be useful. :) Since we just bought a new Acura RDX about three weeks ago, I thought I would provide some insight on this car.

First, let me say that this is my first foreign car. I refer to myself as "GM spawn" in that I am from a GM family - Dad's retired from the factory, Mom works at a GM dealership. I've only ever had Chevys. I had to work very hard to get over my GM bias to even think about buying an Acura. It helps that it looks cool and has tons of great features. Also, this model is built in Ohio; thus, I am calling it my Japanese-American car. It eases some of the genetically encoded guilt.

Anyway, on with the review. The model we bought is the 2008 Acura RDX with Technology Package, so everything I'm about to say is based on that.

What I LOVE:

• The headlights. If you said, "Hey, nice headlights" to me as I was driving my Acura RDX, I wouldn't be offended as long as you were talking about the ones on the car. They are Xenon High Intensity Discharge (HID) headlights, and they rock. The beam focus is really tight, so that when you turn on the headlights you can see a perfectly straight line of light ahead of you. I don't have great night vision (bad eyes to begin with, plus contacts give all the lights that "halo effect") and I can see much, much better with these lights than any other headlights I've ever had. I am more comfortable driving at night because of them.
• The navigation system. I have a bad sense of direction. Actually, no sense of the direction. The nav system has an excellent sense of direction, and together, we make a great team. I confess I used it to find my way out of the mall parking lot one day. It's pathetic, I know, but it's great for me. Also, if you keep the subscription to XM radio after your three-month trial expires, you get updated traffic information in several major cities. Which brings me to...
• XM radio. I'm still in the free trial and I have become quickly addicted. I'm not proud of this; I always thought satellite radio seemed frivolous. But it is really nice being able to listen to actual music anytime you want, without being at the mercy of talking DJs all the time. And yes, I know I could just load up the 6-disc CD changer or plug in my iPod and listen to those instead. I didn't say it was rational.
• The rearview camera. When the car is in reverse, the nav screen shows you the view of what's right behind you, but too low to see through your back window - the scary blind spot in any SUV. This is one of the features that actually sold me on this car. I've always thought it would be so easy to hit something backing out of the driveway, because there's that spot that you absolutely can't see...without a handy rearview camera. And because lots of kids walk past our house to the school bus stop, I think this is an extra-good feature. It's also really nice when you're backing out of a parking space.
  
• The seats. Not only are they leather, which is just nice, but they are heated and they're designed so they kind of cradle you on all sides. It's hard to explain, but they're really the most comfortable car seats I've ever sat in.
• The driver controls. Okay, you can run quite a lot of this car from the steering wheel. I couldn't do that with my old car. So not only can I deal with cruise control, but I can change the radio station and adjust the volume, and flip through one of my favorite features, which is...
• The driver information center. This car will tell you, right on the dash, if your tire pressure is okay, how many miles per gallon you're getting, what your average speed is, how long you've been driving, how much power is allocated to each of the wheels (it's got all-wheel drive) and more. It is so cool. Just having the car tell you a tire is low is such a fantastic idea. I think it will also tell you when your car is due for service...or maybe that comes through the nav screen. I'm not sure, but this car is smart.
• The safety ratings. The Acura RDX has scored the highest in just about every safety test. I really, really like that.
  

What I Don't Love, but Can Totally Live With:

• The console controls. There's a lot going on in the console of this car, mainly because you have to control so many things (nav system, sound system, defroster, etc.). But some of the controls are kind of hard to reach from the driver's side, like the rear-window defroster button. And maybe when I've had it longer I'll be able to more intuitively hit the buttons, but right now I find I have to sort of search for things and really look to make sure I'm hitting the right button.
• The headlights. Not the lights themselves, which we've established I LOVE. No, what I don't love is that they aren't automatic. And this is because my last car had automatic headlights, so I got completely out of the habit of turning on the lights when it was dark. I have to really think about it now to make sure I don't drive around like an annoying person with just my running lights on. This is most likely to happen in a well-lit parking lot. It's a small thing, but with a car that does SO MANY things, it seems like they could go ahead and make the headlights come on by themselves, too.
• The rear window defroster. It just doesn't seem to have enough juice, somehow. I mean, it works, but I would appreciate some faster defrosting action.
  
• The size. While I like that it's a little smaller, and shorter, than my old SUV, I do miss being up a little bit higher while I'm driving. And while the loss of cargo space vs. the old car has not yet been an issue, I still wish it had more. However, this is totally mitigated by the fact that I'm really enjoying all the benefits of driving an SUV in an easier-to-maneuver vehicle.

What I Haven't Tried:

• The hands-free phone thingy. You can set it up so you can use your cell phone through the car's sound system. This sounds very cool, but it requires reading the instruction manual and syncing up some stuff, and I just haven't had time to do that yet. Also, it's been really, really stupid-cold here lately, and who wants to sit in the garage and set everything up when it's 2 degrees?
  
• The iPod connector thingy. I just got the cable for it, so I'll have to give it a go.
• The paddle shifters. I can't imagine I will ever use these. I don't even know what they do. But they're there, so if you're into paddle shifting, this car's for you.

Random Notes:

• There aren't that many colors to choose from in this car. Mine is "Royal Blue Pearl," which is a very pretty, very dark blue. I like it a lot. But other than that, you've got red, white, black and about three variations on gray.
• I don't see a ton of these cars on the road, at least around where I live. The MDX seems to be more common, probably because it's bigger. But I actually like that because I just traded in a Chevy Equinox...and I passed about 10 of them every single day on the way to work. And if it wasn't an Equinox, it was another GM variation on the same theme, like the Pontiac Torrent or the Saturn Vue. That got kind of annoying after awhile.
• I haven't really said anything about how the car drives, but I think it drives very nicely. And Brock had to drive it back from Indiana in blowing snow the weekend after we got it, and he said it handled fine in those conditions. It's a 4-cylinder "turbocharged" engine; I think I would still prefer a 6-cylinder, but it seems to have plenty of power. I mean, I only drive around the suburbs, anyway.
  

Overall Rating:
9.5/10

I really love my new car. :)