December 27, 2013

Stuff and Things Christmas Edition

Life as I Know it
MERRY CHRISTMAS YOU GUYS!!!!

I feel like I've barely had the chance to breathe since last week. Holidays be cray. I thought I would have the time to crank out a little Christmas post on Wednesday, but no. I haven't even turned my computer on since last...Thursday? Friday? It's been a long week.

I GET MY CAR TODAY FINALLY!!! HOOOOOORAYYYYYY!!!!! Merry Christmas to me!
Did you guys get anything good for the holidays? My aunts have decided to enable my obsessions, and I got the Recipe Girl cookbook and a sampler of all-natural extracts (did you know that mango extract exists? Well I now own it. What do you think I should make with it?). Plus a Dr. Horrible/Doctor Who mash-up (Dr. Whorrible?) t-shirt because REASONS.

I also got a custom-art shopping bag designed by my super talented 6-year-old cousin AJ. Be jealous. (He loved my present-- a helicopter that transforms into a velociraptor. Luckily, the things I think are cool are things that 6-year-old boys think are cool. I had to tear myself away from the Avengers toys. I wanted the Captain America plushie)

And if you ever want to see a whirlwind of pure Christmas joy and destruction, let two 2-year-old boys loose on some wrapped presents. CC and little B are only one or two weeks apart in age, and they're totally already best friends. And when it came time for presents, the two of them just went completely bonkers. It was the funniest thing. Screaming, running, hands in the air, no present left undemolished. I can't even imagine what they were like Christmas morning with the presents from Santa.
I also made lots of homemade mixes for presents. I made my yellow cake mix (chai tea version), red velvet cake mix, and devil's food cake mix, along with this brownie mix, this hot cocoa mix, and I mixified this chocolate stout cake recipe for a beer-loving uncle.

I also made gingerbread for the very first time. I didn't actually have any, because I'm not a fan, but everyone said it was very good. Of course, they could have just been talking about the browned butter icing I slathered on top. :D
I don't normally do traditional cut-out cookies for Christmas, but I had some extra roll-out dough from something else I was making, so I broke out the cookie cutters. I didn't know what to do with the gingerbread men, so I used red sanding sugar and said they were red shirts. Because I'm a nerd, and if you understand that reference, you are too.

TV
Doctor Who- The Christmas special was...
It was...
...
...

It's just... it had Moffat-sized plotholes. And bringing Amy back just kind of felt like it was copying the End of Time, when 10 went back and said goodbye to all his former companions. I mean, regenerations are sad. They're going to be sad no matter what. But if you purposefully try to make something sad, it becomes less so. Nine's regeneration broke my heart in its quiet, resigned way. Ten's was just... *sob* But Eleven's...

... I was kind of more sad about the cyberman head...

And if the regeneration came about because of old age, it should have been peaceful. I don't quite understand how a regeneration could blow up the dalek fleet. Plus, Peter Capaldi is one of the older actors to play the Doctor, so having him come out of a regeneration because the last one got too old seems a little insulting. And a thousand years, he doesn't age one, but 300 years and he ages 60? And if the Time Lords could just magically grant him a new regeneration, why didn't he regenerate when River sacrificed all of her remaining regenerations to save his life? He was legitimately seconds away from dying then. I don't understand.

They also over-hyped it. We've known it's been coming for months. And we've known who's playing the next Doctor, and that's not good, because then nobody's ever in danger. If they announce every time an actor's going to leave, that means that we'll never be worried about the characters, and then that's just bad storytelling, putting them in danger when we know they're actually not.

I'll miss Matt, I will, but I'm excited to see Peter Capaldi's take on the role. And I think someone needs to give Moffat a good, hard shake, because he's so much better than this. Can we bring RTD back as a consultant?

BUT, I kind of loved Peter Capaldi's opening line:

Psych- the musical was so much fun. And as a fanfiction author, I get tickled every time they poke fun at the Shassie ship. Although the timeline was a little confusing, since there was a line about how Shawn's girlfriend didn't know he was a fake psychic, and Juliet totally already overreacted to that revelation already. (I always kind of figured that was a bit of an open-secret, so I was way confused by how dramatically she took the news). Other than that, I loved it. I'm surprised it took them this long to do a musical episode, actually.

Sherlock- MINI-SODE. OMG ANDERSON. WHY DO I FEEL BAD FOR ANDERSON??? WE HATE ANDERSON! I CAN'T
 
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