Coffee

I love coffee.
I didn't actually become a coffee drinker until I was in my early 20s. Growing up I thought I hated the smell, and therefore would hate the taste. It turned out that back then, before I'd even had a single cup, I was already a coffee snob. I just didn't like the smell of the instant coffee my mother drinks.

I don't remember the exact year I had my first cup of coffee ('99 or '00 I think), but I do remember that it was May 9th.
I was in the city with The Mysterious N, and we were heading in the general direction of a relatively new Hudsons Coffee. We then proceeded to have this conversation:

N: I wonder what the Hudsons Coffee coffee is like
Me: Did you know today is Hudson Leick's birthday?*
N: That's probably some kind of sign. Now we have to try it.
Me: You know I don't drink coffee.
N: Come on, it's totally a sign. Hudson, birthday, Hudsons Coffee...
Me: Yeah, why not.

So I had a latte and loved it. All these years later, I now drink multiple cups a day, and while I will branch out to other coffee places (the Donut King coffee is very nice), Hudsons is still my favourite.
The two reasons I now drink coffee:

                                                          Hudsons Coffee

Hudson Leick

*yes I am a Xena fan, and Callisto (Hudson, pictured above), is my favourite character. I do prefer early seasons evil Callisto to season 5 angel Callisto.

Movie Review: Red Riding Hood

    I had been looking forward to Red Riding Hood since it was in pre-production. I love the older darker versions of fairytales and this seemed like it would be sufficiently creepy, I love werewolf movies (with the exception of anything Twilight. Hate the books, won't see the movies), and Michael Shanks is in it. For those of you who don't know this is Michael Shanks:

He was Daniel Jackson on Stargate and I'll pretty much watch him in anything. Really. I even own a copy of MegaSnake. (Not porn, I swear, might have been better if it was).

On with the review. First the bad:
     Sometimes the direction was a bit off, mostly with the background players who would be standing around aimlessly until suddenly moving, like someone off camera had just noticed they were doing nothing and ordered them to move. I like my background stuff to blend seamlessly or it takes me out of the moment. Every now and again the main characters seemed like the actors weren't entirely sure what they were supposed to be doing either. It didn't happen a lot, but the few times it did, it was noticable, and again it took me out of the moment.
     There were some tell-not-show moments, where one character would tell another character something, and I would be thinking "this is a movie, I would rather be seeing this happen than be hearing about it.
     The next three things are personal issues which may be issues only I have. Firstly, I was not entirely on board with the male love interest. He has that kind of face where he always looks like he's smirking arrogantly, and I just don't find that attractive or interesting.
     Secondly SPOILER they kill Michael Shanks's character far too early in the film for my liking.
     Thirdly, everytime they called Red by her name, Valerie, I got the Naya Rivera/Glee version of Valerie in my head, imagined the wolf doing a musical number and laughed to myself. This probably won't happen to any of you. Unless I put the song in your head before you see the movie, so I won't be alone in my insanity.

      Now for the good:
      It really was creepy and a little dark, just as I had been hoping.
      They did a good job keeping it hidden who the werewolf was. I didn't guess until just before it was revealed, and it really was a guess, N had said she thought it was someone, I said how I'd been thinking it was someone who had just been killed, so it wasn't them and then I was all, "oh maybe it's ..... because {my reason}, and i just happened to be right.
      There were some great action and death scenes. I'm not a girly girl, and I like a good bit of violence and gore in my movies.
      The scenery was gorgeous. Some of it was really, really breathtaking.
      All up I'd rate it about 3 stars out of 5.

     And because I'm sure you're all wondering, the cover art for MegaSnake

Shirtless Adventures In Mystery Land, Part 2

previously on SAIML: "Is this Narnia?"
or here's the full post http://nothingbyno-one.blogspot.com/2011/03/shirtless-adventures-in-mystery-land.html
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    Tinkly laughter filled the air. The sound was strange, putting Joshua in mind of silver and glitter.
    "He thinks he's in Narnia," one of the sparkly creatures said. "There's no faeries in Narnia!"

     Joshua heaved himself shirtlessly to his feet, still staring slackjawed at the naked women calling themselves faeries.
     "I thought faeries were little, Tinkerbell sized..." he trailed off.
     "Television," one of the faeries shook her head in disgust, "it gets everything wrong."
     "Tinkebell started in a book," said another of the faeries, "but that was wrong too."
     "Come on Man," the first faerie grabbed Joshua's arm. "It's time to start your quest.

     Joshua shook her off and backed shirtlessly away. Normally he enjoyed being touched by beautiful naked women, but nothing about this was even close to normal.
     "Look, Faerie, my name is Joshua, not Man, and what quest? I was in a hotel and I'm in this weird place, I don't even have a shirt, and can you please put some clothes on, it's distracting."

     The first faerie gave the other faeries a look. "He's not taking this well at all," she whispered at them, "we'd better cover overselves before we try to explain."
     Turning to Joshua, she sighed audibly before adding, "and we have names too."
    
     Dresses magically appeared on the faeries, one red, one blue, one purple, and one by one they introduced themselves. The red faerie calling herself Calla, the blue Alyssum and the purple Hosta. Joshua hoped he would remember the odd names. The red one seemed like she might have a temper.

     Alyssum floated forward and took Joshua's right hand. "Now about this quest of yours..."
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Once again, to be continued at some point, when I figure out the quest.

Once more unto the breach...

I went back. To the store having the massive closing down sale. Because I'm an idiot sometimes, and I really wanted some black pants. And $5 pants are a pretty good bargain.
It's a weekend so the store was busier than yesterday, lines much, much longer. I started to think that everyone who hadn't gone to the Aussie Bloggers Conference had headed to Harris Scarfe. I hope everyone at the conference is having a ball!
In front of me in the line were a teenage girl and her father. About 40 minutes into the wait the girl's mother joined them and I overheard this: "Mum, we were so bored we watched all the videos of the cat that I had on my phone." Her cat must be more interesting than my two. All mine do is laze around and plot my death. Still I get the boredom. I have never been so happy to have over 300 episodes of various tv shows on my (thankfully) fully charged iPod. After an episode and a half of Warehouse 13 I was finally served by a girl who was somehow still cheerful. I hope she gets a huge bonus.
In the past two days I've bought $200 worth of clothes for $20. My mother will be so proud.

Ewwwww

I'm in a store having a massive sale and lines are huge. I've been waiting for fifteen minutes and there's still 6 people ahead of me. ($10 jeans, worth the wait!)The person behind me is sniffing, loudly, constantly, clearly mucousy and breathing on me. I can feel it. Ewwwwww.

The jeans ended up going through the register at $5 per pair. Yay!

TV stuff

   Do you ever get obsessed with a TV show and then decide to track down as much of the actors other work as you can? Just me maybe?

   My current obsession is Warehouse 13. The basic plotline is that the two Secret Service agents pictured above, Pete (Eddie McClintock) and Myka (Joanne Kelly), have to go around finding artificats with destructive powers and bring them safely back to the Warehouse. They are assisted by a steampunk tech girl, Claudia (Alison Scagliotti) and their boss Artie (Saul Rubinek). It's way more interesting than I am making it sound, and if you get a chance to watch it, give it a go.


  Anyway, in my 'see all the other stuff they've been in' quest I decided to start with Canadian actress, Joanne Kelly, partly because she's had some longish range roles in stuff (making it easier to track down than the random one-off guest spots), or her guest spots were in shows I already watched and just needed to re-visit (Supernatural, Castle).  It was also partly because I have a bit of a girl-crush on Myka because she's totally kick-ass.

  So now a quick run-down on some of the things I've been seeing her in lately, and then a question at the end.

  Jeremiah (2002)

  Jeremiah was set in a post-apocalyptic world, taking place 15 years after a virus had killed almost everyone over the age of about 13, leaving all the kids to fend for themselves. It starred Luke Perry (90210), Malcolm Jamal-Warner (Theo on The Cosby Show) and, in season 2, Sean Astin and Joanne Kelly. She played Liberty, a woman who seemed nice until SPOILER she turned out to be secretly evil and had to be killed. :(


The Dresden Files (2007)

  The Dresden Files was a short lived TV series (12 episodes) about a wizard named Harry Dresden who works as a private investigator. Paul Blackthorne played Harry. Joanne was Bianca, head of the red court vampires, and sometime ally of Harry.
 The Dresden Files are based on a series of novels by author Jim Butcher, and both the show and the books are well worth a look.

Most recently (yesterday, the day before that) I was watching Vanished (2006)


  In Vanished, Joanne plays Sara Collins, a Senator's wife who was abducted, held captive, subjected to psychological torture and forced to wear the same tank top for weeks.

All good reasons not to marry a Senator.

In one of the later episodes she escapes, and while on the run realises that the reason they keep finding her is that when the  bad guys injected her with something they were placing a tracking device under the skin of her arm. So she smashes a mirror and uses the broken glass to pry the tracker out.

  Now for my question: If this was you, how long would it take to work up the courage to dig into your own arm with a piece of broken glass from public toilet mirror to remove a tracking device. Would you be able to do it, or would you take your chances with trying to keep running

Shirtless Adventures In Mystery Land

In the absence of anything else to post today, I bring you Shirtless Adventures In Mystery Land, Part 1


    The man walked slowly, and shirtlessly, down the dark street, shivering in the cold. He rubbed his well muscled arms to warm them, and wished he was wearing more than a pair of track pants slung low on his hips.

    His name was Joshua Rogers and he'd been drifting for a while now, unsure of what to do with his life. Hopping from place to place, usually staying just one night to get some rest and then moving on to the next small town.

    He'd been in this one for almost a week. A hole-in-the-wall place, hardly any population to speak of, and the people he had encountered weren't all that friendly. The type who didn't take kindly to strangers. And yet somehow, he couldn't bring himself to leave.

    Arriving back at the cheap-ass motel at which he'd been staying for the past three days, Joshua crawled shirtlessly into bed and fell into a deep dreamless sleep.


    Joshua woke slowly. Running a hand through his thick, dark hair he scanned the room, squinting in the pale dawn light, trying to figure out what exactly seemed wrong.

    That was it. There was a light glowing under the closet door. Which was really odd because the room didn't have a closet.

   Joshua climbed shirtlessly out of bed and moved toward the mysterious new closet. He was a tall man, and usually quite brave, but now he was feeling nervous. Telling himself it was probably a harmless dream, he grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.

   Joshua took a step forward and tripped into the bright light, rolling as he fell, landing on his back on what felt suspiciously like grass. In a closet, that hadn't existed.

   Propping himself up on his elbows Joshua stared in wonder at the three naked figures hovering in the air before him. Beautiful faces, long flowing hair, incandescent wings...
"Is this Narnia?"

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Part 2 to come at some later date when I know exactly where I'm heading with this. And yes, I know shirtlessly is not an actual word, it's part of an ongoing story telling joke I have with a friend.

Dreams

I have nothing much about my day to day life that I feel like talking about, but I do have a lot of odd dreams, so maybe this will be a dream thing. I have a recurring dream where I need to be somewhere on time but all my clocks say different times and when I step outside the sky is filled with storm clouds that have turned everything dark grey and I can't tell if it's day or night. The whole time I'm feeling more and more panicked that I've missed whatever I'm supposed to on time for, but I can't remember what it is.
I have no idea what that all means.