Fan of Friday: Week of 6/2/2017

This week I am a fan of the website, Shapeways. It's a 3D printing website that lets you upload your own designs and have them created in a variety of mediums. While I haven't uploaded any of my own designs yet, I have fallen in love with many things, especially DnD dice.

When we started playing DnD back at the beginning of the year, most of my group went out immediately and bought cute sets of matching dice. I couldn't find any that really spoke to me until I started looking at the custom ones on etsy. They were expensive, but oh so pretty.

I went without dice for several months, borrowing them from people. Over time, I realized two things: 1) I don't like matching sets of dice because I can't tell them apart. They all look too similar and I don't want to worry that I've picked up the wrong one, and 2) I don't really like the plastic, molded conventional dice.

I was ready to break down and buy a bunch on etsy when I stumbled across the website that produces the fancy ones, Shapeways. I probably spent more on dice than any reasonable human should (except for maybe Dan who for some reason bought thirteen sets of dice, no exaggeration), but they are so pretty that I carry them everywhere with me in my purse. Because they are 3D printed, they are great to show off to just about everyone I know, one of the perks of being a mechanical engineer.

The majority of my dice are gold colored steel. This is my six sided die, or as us nerds call it, a 'd6'.

This is my eight sided die, also in gold colored steel.

I meant to just buy one of everything, but I couldn't choose between these two ten sided die so I just bought both. My house may be a fixer upper and my car may be sixteen years old, but I make it rain when it comes to dice. This 'd10' is gold colored steel.

This 'd10' is my only die that's not gold colored steel; it's polished brass. It meant that it cost more, but it was just too pretty to pass up.

This is my gold colored 'd12'. As a Goliath fighter, I haven't had much reason to use it yet, but when I get more powerful, it'll do some damage.

This is the die that started the love affair. My beautiful 'd20' that I lusted for on etsy. I expected it to be a beast, but it's hollow so it shouldn't destroy as many tables.

And again, it was a one percenter's 'Sophie's Choice' and I couldn't choose between these two insane 'd20's. While the other one was my first love, this one wouldn't leave my heart either.

My only die that isn't from Shapeways is my 'd4'. I really wanted a rectangular 'd4', rather than the traditional triangular design. This one is hand-forged by a partner of 'Critical Role'. Again, I don't have much reason to use it, but that doesn't hinder my love for it.

I will say, for as much as I love Shapeways, I have had a miss with it. I ordered these 'd20' earrings as a gift for a friend and both arrived damaged. I have had great luck with the printed metal pieces, but these 'Black Strong and Flexible' ones did not live up to their material name.

Lastly (I've rambled a lot about my little trinkets), Shapeways is the 3D printing company that produces all the Hero Forge minis, like my beautiful Goliath.

As an engineer and designer, I'm excited to design and upload some of my own pieces in the future!

Fan of Friday: Week of 4/28/2017

The thing I'm a fan of this week is my little, hanging herb garden!

It was a gift from my in-laws several Christmases ago. I haven't had good luck with plants in the past, so it sat in our closet for a bit while I worked up the courage to try to not kill plants.

This batch of plants is actually my second attempt. Over a year ago, I tried for the first. I killed cilantro and oregano and basil and rosemary. The rosemary was the most impressive one because of how long it took me to realize that it had died. Oops...

I'm having much better luck with this crop of plants, though!

The top plant is a habanero pepper plant. When I brought it home, Dan said, "You know pepper plants get huge, right?" No, I didn't know that. It's quickly out-growing it's small container and I'll probably move it to another pot this weekend. I'm scared to move it, though, because it's got flowers so I might get some peppers out of it soon!

The middle plant is basil. The first time I stocked this little hanging herb garden, basil was the longest surviving. I don't think I watered the first attempt enough, but it still held out for several months. This second one has been living happily for about six weeks, getting plenty of water. I love having a basil plant because we eat a lot of pasta and adding fresh basil makes it instantly classier. Dried pasta from a box and sauce from a jar? Chiffonade some basil and throw it on top for an upgrade on a lazy Monday evening.

The bottom plant is a strawberry plant. Trust me when I say it's doing better than this picture makes it look. I need to trim back some of the dead leaves and the old strawberries. You know what's hard? Determining when teeny, tiny strawberries are ready to be picked. I still haven't figured it out yet, but I will. I'll keep it alive and I'll figure it out.

So when I swap out the pepper plant, what should I put in its place? I'd like some cilantro, but I've tried to grow it several times now without any luck. Is there something easy and useful I could try? I cook a lot of tofu and rice. Is there something from the Asian palate family I should try? Or maybe something Mexican?

Fan of Friday: Week of 3/3/2017

I've mentioned in a previous 'Fan of Friday' post how I've fallen in love with the web series 'Critical Role', but what I didn't mention at that time was how that love has now manifested itself. My friends and I started a campaign and we're playing Dungeons and Dragons in real life!

Let me explain a bit. There seems to be this weird phenomenon of secrecy to people who play DnD. It's not something they usually talk about openly so you may have friends that play and you would never know. And that turned out to be the case with two of my friends.

When I started to get really into 'Critical Role', my obsession came up at our weekly trivia nights. That's when I not only found out that two of my friends actively play, but a whole bunch more wanted to try it.

Over the course of a couple of parties (Dan's birthday, Christmas), the DnD virgins convinced one of the experienced players to run a game for us, found another friend to join as our party mentor, and began setting up a game.

Dan wasn't that into the idea at first and actively tried to make things difficult. He stubbornly said that his character was a male prostitute and would only play as such. It back-fired on him, though, because once I bought the player's handbook, I found a way to make that character work. In taking his craziness seriously, he started to as well and his character, Glor Ekemon Holl, was born. He's a Tiefling Bard who team up with the elven rogue of our group to charm people out of their secrets.

My character is probably the polar opposite of Dan's. She's a Goliath Fighter. She's almost eight feet tall, young and naive but well-trained in fighting and strategy, and on the run. She's got this elaborate backstory that I haven't revealed to the other players yet. I've had so much fun coming up with her. Even her name, Brenna Sverdavbolge, was fun to come with. 'Brenna' is a Norwegian name meaning 'sword', which is what she fights with, her last name is a lose amalgamation of the Norwegian translation of 'Surge of Swords', her herd name,

I'll say the one downside of my character is that finding a figurine of a female Goliath is a pain in the ass. For those who don't know, most of Dungeons and Dragons takes place on paper, but for fights and battles, it's easier to understand what's happening by laying everything out. This is done with a gridded mat like a white board and figurines. However, almost every female Goliath figurine looks like it's from a bad 1980's hair metal music video. Sexist much?

Yeah, that's definitely not my character. In my hunt, though, I found this amazing website call Hero Forge. It lets you design a character and they 3D print it and send it to you. You have to paint it yourself, but you can make just about anyone.

See? This is much better. She wears her hair in two braids rather than one, but close enough.

And a few weeks later, here's the real deal (in terrible picture form)!

And now with Rusty Cat nose for true scale. Immediately after this picture, he bit her and tried to run off with her. The mini now lives on a high shelf away from cats.

The one flaw in this mini is that she's normal mini heights. She's as tall as I could make her, but she would still be about the same height as an elf or a human, which in actuality she should be about two feet taller. I plan on remedying this by 3D printing her a taller base that I can snap the mini into. God I love my nerd tools.

I'm loving everything about our monthly games where it's just friends and snacks and make-believe. I would highly recommend it to anyone considering trying it out.

And as a wrap up: here are some ideas and links for things I found helpful as a new player.

• Learn about the game! There are some great youtube videos, particularly 'one-shots' where the game wraps up in one play-through, that will help you understand the mechanisms of the game. I am fond of this one. 
• Visualize your character. I found it so much easier to play once I could see my character in my mind. Find a mini, sketch it out, whatever it takes. There are some great artists out there that may have already created something similar to yours. 
• Start out with everything hand-written in pencil. It will take a while to figure out how you best want to run your character, but don't commit to any strategy too quickly. I've ended up with pencil on paper, within plastic protective sleeves, that I write on in game in wet-erase marker. Between games, I update the penciled information if necessary. Dan created a template to print his spells in business card form and he's got a sleeve of them. 
• Find online resources. The work sheet in the back of the book are great for covering all your bases, but there may be ones out there that are more helpful for your specific character. I found these ones and I'm so excited about them. 
• Lastly, don't be afraid to admit that you're learning. I will admit that the first game we played, I was a hot-mess. There are a lot of unspoken rules of DnD and I broke a lot of them. I'm trying to get better, but we are all still novices. 

Fan of Friday: Week of 1/20/2017

Just like nonograms before, I've become obsessed with another little internet puzzle game. Whether you call it 'Slither Link' or 'Puzzle Loop', it's an addicting brain exercise.

The point of the game is pretty simple: you are trying to create one continuous line throughout the space that doesn't violate any of the constraints given to you. The space contains a grid of dots and some blank and numbered squares. The numbered squares tell you how many line segments surround the numbered space. With reason and deduction (and usually a crap-ton of time), you can determine the path of the loop.

It does take a while to get the feel of it, so if it's something you are interested in, start by reading the tutorial page, slowly increasing the size and difficulty, and making notes of tricks and patterns.

Now that I've gotten the trick of them, I race myself. My goal this week was to complete one of the 20 by 20s in under 15 minutes. This was my first success.

On the gargantuan weekly puzzle, like the one below, sometimes the easiest way to solve it is to step back and do something else for a while. Fresh eyes can really help when you are stuck. And I get stuck a lot.

I mean, these puzzles aren't anything special, but they are fun, they are free, and they make me feel like my brain isn't turning into complete mush.

Fan of Friday: Week of 12/16/2016

You know how sometimes you find a great show that's been on for a while, but it's still airing new episodes, so you binge them as fast as you can so you can catch up?

Now, imagine doing that with a show that's got roughly 70 episodes.

And, oh yeah, each episode is somewhere between three to four hours.

Yeah, that fact right there is a huge reason why I am so far behind on blogging...

...but I'm caught up live on my new favorite show! Critical Role!

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Critical Role is kind of hard to explain. It airs live on Geek and Sundry's twitch channel every Thursday night. It's a group of eight friends who are largely voice actors who play Dungeons and Dragons.

On paper, it sounds so boring, but it's incredibly well done. Since everyone has an acting background, they really think through their characters' decisions and dialogue. They know each other so well that they really have a lot of fun with it. And it doesn't hurt that the stories are well thought-out and intricate. Sometimes they battle an evil demi-god dragon, other times they run around a marketplace trying to figure out if they just unknowingly participated in a drug deal.

Poor Dan had to sit there on weekends when I would just stream old episodes for hours on end. He unwillingly became sucked into it with me. He would never admit it, but he enjoys it now.

Fun little story. Since I was so behind, the merchandise advertised on the show is always long since sold out. I even looked for one of the shirts on ebay. Over time, I caught up on the show and one Thursday, which is traditionally our trivia night, I got to watch it live. That night, my first live night, they re-released the shirt I had been hunting. I ordered it so fast. And it was a good thing I did because by the next morning, it was sold out yet again. The universe loves me sometimes.

It's a great show that I've been trying to convince my friends to watch. They may not be quick to watch it, but they are showing great interest in starting our own game.

If you are interested in picking it up, this episode is the beginning of a good arc.

Or if you want to just want for a short two episode arc, this episode features some great guest stars, including my love Felecia Day.

It is amazing how quickly you can figure out the game from just watching some other people play it, so why don't you get addicted like me?

Fan of Friday: Week of 6/24/2016

Have you ever been watching a replay of a livestream of three grown men playing a children's video game and thought to yourself, "Hey, those puzzles look fun!" No? Just me? Ok...

I've made my love of Mostly Walking known before, but when the guys played a Nancy Drew game, which I also love, I fell in love with something new: Nonogram puzzles.

A Nonogram puzzle is a number puzzle kind of like a Sudoku. You're given a square, empty grid with the goal to fill in the grid with black squares in the appropriate positions. You determine their position by assessing the number clues/guidelines presented around the edge. These numbers represent the number of black squares in a row, with a blank square in between.

I have an addictive personality. That has been well established. Fortunately, as I get older, I'm better at channeling it at 'healthier' things, not like finishing an entire family-size bag of potato chips in one sitting like I did as a teenager. This new addiction I consider 'healthy'. It's brain puzzle! I mean, playing for hours a night probably isn't 'healthy', but I'm getting so good at them!

The website I visit has six different levels of  difficulty, including a massive weekly 30 by 30 puzzle. It usually takes me two or three attempts before I can defeat it.

They are really fun, little puzzles once you get the hang of it. I highly recommend trying it out if you haven't before. {Sidenote: I don't know how feasible they are to play on a touch screen/without a mouse. They are much easier to play when you can mark 'blank' squares with a right-click.}

Fan of Friday: Week of 5/13/2016

I hate being one of those people who's all like "Sorry I haven't posted in a while...", even when it's true. I haven't and I'm sorry. This implies you noticed/cared that I wasn't here, which seems really self-centered, but whatever. Anyway...

The reason I have been AWOL has been this game: Stardew Valley. It is not an exaggeration when I say that this game occupies all of my free time. I play in until my hands hurt. If I didn't love it so much, I would search out a 12 step program.

For those unfamiliar, which is probably a lot since I believe the game released in only February, it's an 8-bit styled game in the lines of Harvest Moon/Animal Crossing/Minecraft. The premise is you inherit a farm from your grandfather in a small town. That's really it. You farm fruits and vegetables, you raise livestock, you make friends with the townspeople, you start a family. It sounds so boringly simple but IT IS THE BEST! It's an almost perfect example of how to suck someone into a game. It gives you small quests and challenges, rewards you accordingly, and slowly unlocks tidbits of information over time.

You start off with a tiny house and farm parsnips.  With your axe, scythe, pick axe, hoe, and watering can, you clean up your acreage and plant your crops. As your plants grow and you uncover resources, you upgrade your tools, your farm, and your house. Your only limiting bounds are your energy levels and the amount of daylight. Unlike Animal Crossing which is based in real-time, the average Stardew Valley day last somewhere between 15-30 minutes.

I've been playing this game for weeks now and play as two characters. The first one, 'Carolyn', is my exploratory character, doing everything for the first time. Her farm has been running for 'years' and is almost fully built. My second character, 'Red', is my efficient character now that I know what I should do. Although she's only been running the farm for a few 'months', it's developing very quickly. Here's an image of Red in her tiny house:

And here's Carolyn's fancy, fully loaded house:

In addition to farming, there are lots of other ways to explore and make money. A big way to do both is mining. You break apart rocks, gather gems and minerals, and dig deeper and deeper into the mine. As you descend, monsters and creatures fight you, but the resources become more and more valuable.

It's also a remarkably progressive and honest game. You're a female character and fall in love with a woman in town? Cool, get married and adopt some babies. The homeless old man in the mountains is scared of strangers because people have abused him in the past. There are at least two alcoholic characters. There are poor characters and insecure characters. One character returns from war and is battling PTSD. Spoiler alert: two characters are having a secret affair. It would have been so easy for the creators to make everything shiny and pretty, but the silly little NPCs are deep and real. Over time, as you befriend them, they open up to you.

My Carolyn character is now married to Elliot. He's an author with Fabio hair. While sweet, he's honestly kind of boring. My Red character is slowly playing the field, trying to find a more interesting match.

For $15, it's a great game. Given that I have 100+ hours banked between my two characters, I've definitely gotten my money's worth. If you know me from the real world, I would seriously buy the game for you just so we can talk about it. I've been away from it long enough now. Back to Stardew Valley!

Fan of Friday: Week of 9/4/2015

I've got a new addiction and it is literally eating up all of my spare time.

Cities: Skylines!

Oh my goodness, I love this game soooooooooooo much. It's absolutely brilliant.

If you haven't heard of it before, it's basically a contemporary version of SimCity 2000, but better. You build roads and zone for residential, commercial, and industry. You supply power and water and services and watch your little towns grow into beautiful cities.

The thing that really sets it apart is its attention to detail. In SimCity 2000, you zone for industry, but in Cities, you zone for ore industry or oil industry or agricultural industry or forestry industry. Tiny trucks shuttle these parts to commercial buildings where they sell them to customers. In SimCity, you buy bus depots. In Cities, you plan out bus routes and watch people queue at bus stops. There are trash services and pollution and traffic congestion. There are sidewalks and dogs and teeny tiny fire trucks. Every time I play, I notice something new. 

Also, it utilizes Steam amazingly. Maybe most games do this now, but it takes basically two clicks to download custom buildings and cars and none of that pesky moving files around and making sure they are in the right folders. Once my sister showed me how to do this, I went on a bit of spree. I now have a Jeep Wrangler, the DeLorean, a 'FedEx' truck, and a Volkswagen bus.

I downloaded the Spinnaker Tower from Portsmouth and a community swimming pool and a park that is just the Star Trek Enterprise and Bob's Burgers.

I showed the game to my sister and she was instantly enamored. She downloaded it, but her old laptop couldn't handle it so SHE BOUGHT A NEW LAPTOP. She needed one anyway, but this game is that good.

If you are interested in learning more about this game before sacrificing your life to it like I did, this youtube series shows it off and does a pretty good overview. In it, he has a special traffic mod. I was upset that it wasn't standard in the game download, but I found the mod on Monday and I have been wreaking havoc 'fixing' all my intersections. It's a game changer, guys. 

I'm really not joking when I say it's an addiction now. I've got two different parties to go to this weekend and I really wish I could blow them off and stay in my PJs all weekend and develop the perfect round-about. You've been warned.

Fan of Friday: Week of 11/7/2014

I don't remember how I stumbled across 'The Lovely Side' blog, but it was a few years ago, back when the blogger, Jessica, was still in college and it was titled, 'Lovely Undergrad'.

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It's right up my alley. She writes about two main things: home decor and clothes. When you put it like that, it doesn't do her pieces justice.

Her posts on decor focus on breaking down rooms and determining why they work and how to improve them. It's mood boards and layouts and advice to others on their spaces.

It follows a similar pattern with her posts on outfits. While focusing mainly on office and work clothing, she breaks down building outfits in a very similar fashion to that of home spaces.

Also, I'm fairly partial to her blog because she's featured my ideas twice on it now. First, I submitted my wardrobe as a Mechanical Engineer and why they work. Second, she turned my comment about packing a suitcase of essentials when you're moving and rolled that idea into a whole post.

You can really tell when you read her posts how much time and effort she puts into dissecting and breaking things down. It's quite refreshing.

Fan of Friday: Week of 10/10/2014

Maybe it's because I've been a real engineer for 3+ years now, but Dilbert is starting to make scary amounts of sense to me. This first one is my favorite.

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Since I've been traveling more than usual lately, I managed to read most of the books in the house. However, Dan has a half dozen comic strip anthologies of Dilbert.

The best part is that all the books are from like 1994 so the technology references are so out of date that it adds a fun new element to the strips as well.

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Also, things at work are becoming so muddled by bureaucracy that it's nice to read some mockery of the process.

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I heard an anecdote once that if your job starts to resemble a Dilbert strip, that's a bad, bad omen. I like to think now that Scott Adams is just a genius and every job, no matter how great, eventually gets exposed for the Dilbert strip it is. 

Fan of Friday: Week of 10/3/2014

Lately, I've been very into Sean "Day9" Plott. It's actually quite odd if you know anything about what he does.

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He hosts several gaming themed shows on Youtube.

He hosts a show on 'Magic'. I've never played 'Magic' before not do I have any desire to play it.

He hosts a show on 'Starcraft'. I'd never heard of 'Starcraft' before seeing his show.

While the games he plays are completely foreign to me, it kind of makes sense with my history of gaming. I really just enjoy watching other people play games. Growing up, I didn't play that many, but I love watching my dad play. Even now, some Sunday dinners turn into us all sitting around the living room, yelling instructions at him as he shoots aliens or Nazis. 

I don't know exactly how I got started watching his shows, but it's worth it because he's so good at weaving a story. He goes off on tangents quite often and I usually find the tangents the most entertain part of the show. It's amazing when you consider he shoots everything live.

My favorite show that he does is called 'Mostly Walking', where he and two of his game design friends play old adventure style games. You don't have to know anything about games to enjoy some humorous people play drinking games about the ridiculousness of the dialogue of a game that's 20 years old.

He's quite addicting, so be careful before you get drawn in. At least he films like three hours of footage a day so you won't run out of things to watch any time soon.

Fan of Friday: Week of 9/26/2014

Apparently, for the last couple months, I've been in love with blacks and grays.

Not exactly practical in 100 degree heat...

In the image below is every item of clothing I've purchased recently (minus two shirts from my England trip).

Maybe my inner spirit is in a mood, but I just want to wear black. I want to be a badass in black. I'm not. I'm not a badass at all, but black feels good right now. I'm Sandy at the end of 'Grease' in my tight black pants, sleeveless sweatshirt, and faux leather jacket.

I think, after some reflection which really shouldn't be inspired by a post this shallow, that I've been feeling kind of tread on lately and black makes me feel stronger. Less weak. Even if it's just a black top with polka dots made of sleeping kittens.

I don't usually wear black with black, but if I start doing that, someone should really start to be concerned about why I feel so helpless...

Fan of Friday: Week of 5/23/2014

This week, I am LOVING 'Supernatural'!

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The show burst into my life a couple years ago, I think around season seven. I watched the episodes online as they aired and I never felt like I was missing out on the backstory because, for the most part, each episode is basically 'Find the evil thing, kill the evil thing."

However, last summer, since the shows that air are pretty much crap, I ordered season one and decided to start from the beginning. It seemed like something Dan and I could do together. It could be our show. It took us a long time to get through season one, but by fall, we'd made it and I forced him to order us all the remaining DVDs since they were on Black Friday clearance.

Again, progress was slow until about a week ago when Dan told me he isn't as into it as I am and I am free to watch them alone. I have since torn through about 25 episodes alone.

So, right now, I haven't seen Seasons 3 through 6. Apparently all the stuff in the middle where people keep dying and getting sent to Hell and losing souls and yada yada yada. No spoilers, ok? Also, I haven't seen the last couple of episodes of the current season, so again, No Spoilers!

Random tangent: you can totally use 'Supernatural' to bond with preteen girls. At a mentoring lunch with a bunch of middle school girls, the only topic of conversation I could keep going was about 'Supernatural' and it's crazy fandom. One of the girls even told me I reminded her of the character Charlie.

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And you know I have a sweet spot in my heart for Felicia Day, so I was incredibly flattered.

Why didn't we have shows and crazy fandoms like this when I was a preteen girl?

Fan of Friday: Week of 3/14/14

Yes, I know it's not Friday, but I've painted myself into a wee bit of a corner with my Fashion February posts being on Friday.

And yes, I probably should have just saved this until next month, but there no time for that, people! This is possibly my favorite thing ever and it's only (ONLY) available in March! I must tell you about them before this much too small window closes!

Mmmm, Lime Eegees.

God's gift to mankind. If you are currently in Tucson, go get one right now. And if you are currently in Tucson and have never had one, what is wrong with you?!? GO! Go get one!

Since Eegee's are purely a Tucson thing, let me explain a bit. Eegee's is a fast food chain and their signature frozen 'drink' is called an Eegee (pronounced 'E-G'). You can drink it with a straw or eat it with a spoon, but if you drink it with a straw you are doing it wrong and you will be mocked.

The texture is smoother than a snow cone, but thicker than an icee. And it will give you a brain-freeze almost instantaneously, every single time. 

They have three standard flavors: lemon, strawberry, and pina colada, as well as a rotating monthly flavor. 'Lucky Lime' for St. Patty's Day.

Seriously, lime is the best flavor and if I had a bigger freezer, it would just be stocked to the brim with part packs of lime Eegee's. Come to think of it, my parent's do now have a freezer in their garage. I bet I could hide a bunch in there and no one would ever know...

Fan of Friday: Week of 2/21/2014

Hi, my name is Carolyn, and I'm a youtube addict.

My new show of choice? TableTop on Geek and Sundry. Basically, it's just Wil Wheaton and three of his friends playing boardgames you've mostly likely never heard of, unless you're into that sort of thing, but if you are, then you clearly already know about this show.

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And, spoiler alert, Wil Wheaton almost never wins.

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It's actually a great way to learn about new group games. My husband and I don't play a lot of games together because I get insanely competitive, but it's much easier to put that aside when it's a game that is new to both of us.

And it's nice to learn about group games that aren't just based on playing cards or Apples to Apples.

Most of the games are competitive strategy based games where you have a set of skills and try to be the first to complete some sort of goal, but they do play some team games and even cooperative games where the goal is to just survive the scenario together.

I inadvertly got Dan hooked on the channel, too, and we then went out and bought Settlers of Catan to play with my mom and my sister.

So, if you've got 30 minutes to kill, I highly recommend watching the video where they play the Star Trek version.

Fan of Friday: Week of 2/14/2014

Seriously, if you haven't seen 'Frozen' yet, are you living under a rock? Go! Go now! Go see it!

And once you've seen it, go see it again in the Sing-a-Long version! It's group kareoke, y'all!

Don't worry if you don't like singing in public. Just do what we did and go see the late show on a weeknight. It was almost completely empty, minus a group of college kids who sat in the very front. We sat in the very back and each group happily ignored each other.

Also, if you're looking for something a little less princess-y (I was going to say 'girly', but 'Frozen' really isn't that girly, it's just Disney-y and princess-y), try out the 'Lego' movie. I don't what the writers of that movie were on, but it's a trip in such a weird way, but it all ties up so beautifully in the last 20 minutes.

And lastly, I love that movies have gotten smart and started making interactive movie posters. I mean, how awesome do I look as Captain America. Nailed it.

Yeah, movies, awesome...