Saw The Village this weekend. If my LiveJournal Friends List is to be believed, I'm in the extreme minority of having liked it. A lot. But I suspect that a lot of the dislike I'm seeing reported is rebellion against the hype over M. Night Shyamalan. And maybe some (understandable) disappointment that the movie is nothing at all like what the trailers were selling. At any rate, I thought it was a good movie. I had a couple of contentions with the story, but nothing that ruined the whole movie for me or kept me from enjoying it. It was mostly things that made me pissed off at some of the characters. And I've never understood the assumption that when a character does something boneheaded or that you disagree with, then it's bad writing. Because maybe you're supposed to find their actions disagreeable. This is something I never got while reading various reviews of various Buffy episodes, and it's something I don't get reading reviews of this movie. But then I'm generally easier to please and have an easier time letting go of analytic thought and just immersing myself in the story than most people I know. So maybe that has something to do with it. But I liked it, as I've liked all of his movies. Yes, even The Sixth Sense. So sue me.

After the movie we went to the grand opening of Cold Stone. That's right, chillun: Tulsa finally got itself a Cold Stone. That's some good stuff. A little on the pricey side, though, and it's so easy to go overboard with the toppings and mix-ins and really pile on the calories, so I probably won't be going there very often. But it makes me happy to know that it's there.

I also read Astonishing X-Men #3. Excuse me for going all fangirl in the place reserved for my non-fangirlish side, but holy shit, does this comic kick ass. Whedon knows these characters so well, and he obviously has deep affection for them, and it shows. And what's interesting to me is that you can see traces of his own characters in his X-Men, but I think it's because he drew so much inspiration from the X-Men when creating his characters (deliberately patterning Willow after Kitty Pryde, for example--at least in the beginning). For instance, in this issue, Wolverine is totally Jayne (Adam Baldwin's character from Firefly, for those of you not in the know), while still remaining 100% Logan, and it completely works and is hella fun to read.

So that was my big weekend fun. Yesterday was mostly spent sewing liners for a couple of purses I knitted. I won't bore you with those details. I'll just leave you with this thought: POCKETS!

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I have BIG GOALS for this week, that include but are not limited to:

Finishing chapter 9 (and hopefully also 10)

Prepping all my eBay crap to take to the UPS Store

Deciding what to do with my adoption article and doing it (or at least getting a good start on it) (btw, if anybody from WWNK happens to read this, your server keeps bouncing back my e-mail)

Fleshing out an idea I have for a short story so I can take a break from the novel and write it when chapter 10 is done

Getting all of the above done ASAP so that I can go and procure myself a copy of Jim Butcher's new Dresden novel and sit on my ass long enough to read it all in one sitting.

So, busy week, over the course of which I probably won't be saying much. At least not in this space.

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Zapthepram has informed me that he is an Anony-Man, not an anonymouse. So sorry for the confusion. ;-) He also asked me a good question about beta readers that I will get around to answering as soon as I get some more free time.