Happy Monday, everybody!
And for once it is a pretty happy Monday, as spring has arrived with a bout of unusually sunny weather, and in their charmingly excitable way, the Great British public have responded by immediately flinging off their clothes and going to buy disposable barbecues.
I realise I haven't posted on my own DW/LJ for ages now, but that's half due to very little happening, and half because for the past few weeks I've been desperately trying to get ready for my GRE. It's taking place tomorrow morning. I'm reasonably confident I can do okay, as long as I read all the questions thoroughly and don't rush it; I'm fairly resigned to the fact I'll be lucky to get over 33% on the maths side of things, but I doubt it'll count against me too heavily as a prospective Humanities student. Still, any last-minute advice, always welcome.
I'm thinking of going to see a film that afternoon, and I'm currently torn between The Hunger Games, 21 Jump Street and The Muppets. Which one I end up seeing probably depends on which one's showing times fit best into the day, but again, if you have recommendations/criticism, I'm all ears.
Asides from that, what else have I been up to? ...not much, is the short answer. Very slowly working on various fics, none of which will probably see the light in the next month. My writing pace has been terrible this year, and I keep getting distracted by other things.
Like Round The Twist, for example. You can blame that one on
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sapper.
For those not familiar with it, it's an Australian children's TV show from the late 80s/early 90s (well, there were two series in the 00s... it's kind of confusing, it ran over about a decade, but with a very big gap between seasons 2 and 3). It was on British TV when I was a kid, but I never watched it, although I was a fan of the Paul Jennings short stories that most of the episodes are based on. Pacific fans may find it worth noting that a wee Tom Budge is in seasons 3 and 4.
Anyway - I don't quite know how it happened, I checked out a few episodes on Youtube and first wasn't sure, then slowly got drawn in. It's pretty good at balancing thoroughly ridiculous plotlines (mostly involving restless ghosts and mysterious magical items) with good characterisation and teenagers who actually act like teenagers - the kids in this remind me so much of the actual sort of people I went to school with, and the terrible outfits and special effects are giving me all kinds of warm fuzzy memories of the TV shows I did get round to watching when I was that age. (Oh man, I wonder if you can get Sabrina the Teenage Witch on DVD? That show was
awesome.)
If you're in Regions 2 or 4 it's easily available on DVD - I can't speak for Region 1, but there's quite a bit on Youtube, though not full series. I would recommend giving it a shot if you've any time to kill; it might not grab you at first, but stick with it, it grows on you.
The other other thing I've been distracted with over the past month was finally finishing The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which I was reading in fits and starts for about six months - if you can find a copy, get it, because it's possibly my idea of a perfect novel. That might just be me, as it encompasses most of my pet subjects (comic books, the 1940s, World War Two, even a smidge of gay romance), but it's a damn good read, incredibly densely detailed without being pretentious or hard to read (I honestly can't stomach much 'literary' fiction), and I enjoyed it immensely. I'd ramble on more but I don't want to give any of it away.
Next up? Well, I'm saving it so I have something to read on the flight to Berlin, but my parents got me the first three books in the Temeraire series for Christmas, so I'm looking forward to getting stuck into them.
...I've got to stop going so long between posts, that all came out in a jumble. Anyhow, f-list, how are you lot? Seen or read anything good lately?
