It Started with a Journal

I just finished playing The Walking Dead game that won Game of the Year at the VGAs. I'd read about all these gamer guys who cried at the end of it... and now I know why. I was crying in front of my computer screen, too! It's such a riveting story... but I don't think it should have won GotY. :/ It's not really a game. It's a really amazing story, but it's more like a choose-your-own-adventure tale than it is a game. It's more story than mechanics. As long as you go into it with those expectations, I totally recommend it.

I'm trying to watch all the Oscar-nominated movies this year. Well, I try every year, but sometimes I'm more successful than other times. It's gotten harder since they expanded the field to a possible 10. I'm not doing so shabby this year; I've watched 4/9, and I'm likely going to watch 4 more. The one I'm not sure about is Amour.

Last night I watched Zero Dark Thirty. I was really looking forward to it because of the subject matter, and because of Kathryn Bigelow. I knew I wouldn't like it as much as The Hurt Locker due to the lack of Jeremy, but I thought it would be amazing anyway. It was... all right. Other than also dealing with a military topic, and still being well directed, it was actually quite different from THL. It felt less personal. In THL you really cared about the three guys. In ZDT, you care about Jessica Chastain's character, but in a more removed way because you never really get to know her that well (not like the way you get to know Sgt James), and because since she's not a soldier, her life is almost never at risk. JC was good for sure, but the movie was bigger than she was, particularly the last quarter of it. I'd much rather Best Actress go to Jennifer Lawrence.

I also just saw Ted, which is hilarious and also on crack. It's like a live-action episode of The Family Guy.

I've been reading The Twelve by Justin Cronin. It's the sequel to The Passage, and is supposed to be a trilogy. I highly recommend them. They're riveting and well written. Ridley Scott purchased the film rights; as with any book that I love, I can't wait to see it as a movie and yet am also afraid of how they'll fuck it up at the same time. I was reading The Twelve on my Nook when it crapped out on me. :/ It's glitched from time to time, but now it's really messed up. It basically won't wake up from the screensaver anymore. I can't hard restart it or anything; it just doesn't respond. I went to B&N to see if they could do anything about it and they couldn't. Sigh. I ended up doing an out-of-warranty purchase of another one from them -- $40 for a refurbished version of the same Nook, and I have to send them back the one I have (it's so annoying because you know there's probably some easy way to fix it, and now they're making me give them another $40 grrrr). I don't know what kind of voodoo power they have over me, because a big part of me had decided that I didn't need an eReader anymore, because I have a Surface RT. Even while I was giving them my credit card number I was like, WTF am I doing?! Sigh. Oh well. WHAT'S DONE IS DONE.

This weekend I'm going to participate in "Dinner with 12 Strangers," which is a UCLA alumni program where a Bruin alumni in a local city hosts a dinner and other local Bruins sign up to attend. It's my first one, and the first time this host has done it as well. I don't know how it's normally done, but she's allowing everyone to bring a guest (probably because she's married and her husband will be there), which I kind of feel is contrary to the intent of this thing. I mean, it's supposed to be dinner with 12 strangers, not 24 of them, one of whom is your spouse. Plus, it's supposed to be for UCLA alumni, which half the people probably won't be. I mean, I love the idea of 12 (I guess it would be 13) people sitting around, having one thing in common (where they went to school), and getting to know each other. Or if you're hosting, you alone have the privilege of also having your significant other there. Now I have to hope that I am not the only person not bringing someone, and have an awkward singleton situation a la Bridget Jones/Carrie Bradshaw.

The good news is that originally I was put in the group to bring beverages, while the other group was supposed to bring desserts or side dishes. Me and another woman asked if anyone wanted to switch, and luckily two people spoke up who were like, "Ohmygod I can't cook, switch with me!" So now I get to bring a dessert or side dish. Right now I'm leaning toward dessert, but I haven't decided what to make. I should probably go with something I've made before that will at least be edible and look nice (like the cheesecake or designer apple pie), but I'm also selfish and like to try new things to entertain myself, so I'm kind of leaning toward doing something new (if it's a disaster, I can always run to Bakery Nouveau and get their chocolate cake to bring... and maybe take credit for it... just kidding!). I'd like it to be something more fancy than cookies or a sheet cake. Anyone have any ideas? :D

Had a lovely time with adelagia, slitherhither, and lyndsiefenele on Saturday. Despite the freezing cold and snow, we walked around Greenlake! 3 times! And we helped B. unpack and put away all her boxes from moving! Then we caught a goose and killed it (humanely) to roast for our homemade 7-course dinner!

OK fine, I sort of made all that up. What we did was play board games and eat at two restaurants and one hot chocolate bar. SO SUE US. For lunch we went to Jhanjay, a vegetarian Thai restaurant. I usually need meat of some kind, but curry is the one type of food in which vegetables alone hit the spot for me, because there are already so many other flavors going on. Also, Ta. tried to summit a mountain (of mushrooms) and got 3/4ths of the way there before she had to call in the EVAC team (aka, me and Ti.). Afterward we went to Chocolati for hot chocolate. We all got varying sizes of the Europa, which is twice the amount of chocolate as in their regular house version, and ohmyGOD it was basically like drinking melted chocolate. In fact, it was lukewarm because they can only heat it up so much otherwise the chocolate burns and it's no good. But since I like my drinks as hot as possible, I think next time (and yes, there will be a next time), I'm just going to get the house version. For dinner we tried Satay, a new restaurant that serves "Malaysian street food." I thought it was a little disappointing, to be honest. The food was definitely okay, but when I think of street food, I think cheap and messy. Instead it was served in real plates/bowls, the portions were kind of small, my laksa was not hot or spicy enough, and the prices were a bit high. It was like... fancy street food. I'd rather eat off a paper plate and have more food. It wasn't like the place was super posh!

So... the Oscars poll was a bust. Sorry guys, I messed it up. Basically only 4 of us completed the whole thing. >< This is primarily because I had missed a bunch of categories the first time around, so the people who took it early either didn't see that they needed to go back to fill out the others, or didn't feel like it, so most of the entries were incomplete. Oh wells, maybe next year I won't be so lame. I can always hope, right? I must give myself a personal kudos though, because in my neverending competition with jade_okelani, I fared OK this year! I got only 1 fewer correct answer than her, and if I hadn't been lazy and lame and gone to change one of my answers like I'd been planning to, we would have tied!

( As for what I thought of the results... )

Sorry, guys. I AM A GIANT DORK. But it's not entirely my fault! So it turns out that the Academy Awards poll I made is incomplete. I thought it was a bit short. >.> It was actually 10 whole categories short -- whatever online news site I copied the list from apparently just didn't care about some of them. So random. Anyway, you can't edit posted polls, so I've created new polls to include the categories I missed (and posted them to the same entry as before). So if you've already answered the poll, you'll need to go back and fill out the new one so you get your full number of correct answers. Sorry!! :(

We are less than a week away from the Academy Awards (this coming Sunday). Fill out the poll! It doesn't matter if you haven't seen or heard of any of the movies, it's all a guessing game anyway. Kind of like March Madness!

I've finally watched all the Oscar-nominated movies, and feel that I am now qualified to give the opinion that Winter's Bone should win best picture. It won't, but of all 10 movies, I think it's the most deserving. Of the two frontrunners, The King's Speech and The Social Network, I give it to TKS. The hype around TSN seems to be dying down (which is good since imho it didn't deserve it in the first place, other than Justin Timberlake, but he's never mentioned anyway), so hopefully voters are seeing that it ain't all that. And the natural alternative is TKS, because I bet very few of them actually even saw WB.

So anyway, the last few days, I've watched The King's Speech, True Grit, 127 Hours, Blue Valentine, and Love & Other Drugs. BV for the acting noms, and L&OD just because. Yes, I've had a lot of time on my hands. :P

... OMG you guys. I had this big long thing typed up with thoughts on each of those movies, but somehow the auto-save failed and now I have an old version of the entry with almost all of it gone. CRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYY. I may find the will to type it all up again at some point, but right now I'm too depressed.

I had a latte this morning and followed it with cherry vanilla granola in milk ... now my stomach has that unpleasant full feeling even though I haven't really eaten anything. Ugh.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend at Sushi Land, which is apparently a chain. It was one of those places with a conveyor belt. I normally avoid such places like the plague, but he suggested it and I didn't know it was that kind of sushi place until we got there. It was OK; the best thing about it was that it was very economical. Plus it was packed to the gills with people, which meant that fresh sushi was constantly being prepared. One of the reasons conveyor belt sushi places seem so iffy (other than that sushi doesn't belong on a conveyor belt, period, and the quality of the fish is lower) is because when there's not a lot of people, some sad-looking plate of sushi is going around and around on the belt, and you have no idea how long it's been sitting there. Ugh. But with that many people, at least there wasn't that to worry about. Depending on the sushi, they were on colored plates that denoted the cost of that particular plate (ranging from $1 to $3 -- or you could order special sushi such as uni that doesn't get placed on the conveyor, for additional cost). You could also order things like a small bowl of tempura udon (for $3), which we did. They also had things like fried calamari and edamame on the belt. For the cost ($25 for the both of us), it was OK, but if the prices had been any higher -- no thanks.

The other day at Whole Foods I saw a basket of beautiful-looking Meyer lemons and couldn't resist. I bought two of them, and have been wracking my brain ever since as to what to do with them. I don't feel much like baking, but otherwise they'd just rot and spoil, and I can't have that! I think I'm going to make these cookies with them. The problem is, that only takes care of the zest ... I'll still have actual lemon juice/pulp to contend with! Have you ever used Meyer lemons? What's your favorite recipe?

Speaking of desserts, yesterday I was at Half-Price Books to see if I could get any ideas about books to request from PBS, and wandered over to the cooking section. (I've got cookbooks on my PBS list, but the chances of someone sending that heavy an item are slim.) Here I found a hidden treasure! Desserts by Pierre Hermé! It's out of print, and while I could order it used from somewhere online, I was super excited to have found it on my own. It's the best thing about used book stores.

I've been watching a number of movies, primarly the ones that have Oscars significance since the nominees have been announced. I was surprised, but also not, by Gran Torino's shut out. Surprised: It's Clint Eastwood. How could they snub Clint Eastwood? Unsurprised: I actually liked it, which of course means it can't win anything. Also it got mixed reviews from critics, but that's true of The Reader as well, and yet somehow, out of the blue, it got a Best Picture nom. ( Anyway, so I've now seen... )