Eureka: Part Two

Continuing from yesterday, here are the final three seasons of Eureka.

Season Three

This is it. The episode.

Season Three brings some of the saddest moments of the show. If you've seen it, I'm sure you know to what I am referring to. Ironically, I really liked the episode, up until about the lat four minutes. Also, Jack's sister is in town, and pregnant with twin boys (she later disappears, never to be mentioned again). Kim comes back (sorta), which made me very happy. I always like it when tv shows make references to things from the past like that. In the end, Jenna is born, Zane proposes, Zoe leaves for college, and Tess moves to Australia. All is well for the moment.


Season Four

What year is it?

Now, I'm going to start doing them the way they aired. Season Four begins by changing EVERYTHING. Some changes were not terrible (Like Andy.) Some were, like Jo and Zane, or Henry and Grace. I guess that's not terrible exactly, but weird. Also, Kevin's not autistic. That made me mad. That was, in some ways, the plot of the show for the first few seasons. Now it's just... gone? And Fargo is the head of GD? This season we have characters like Grant, Grace, and Andy joining the crew. Also, Stark makes an appearance, which got everyone's hopes up and then shattered them. Very mean.

Season 4.5

Folding paper cranes. Parish is a jerk.

This is the Astraeus season. Beverly is back, and up to no good as usual. Jack and Allison happen, finally (it only took five years), Zane decides to go to Titan, and Jo stays behind. Allison gets into a very tricky situation in the final seconds of the season. We have new characters this season like Dr. Parrish (Wil Wheaton) and Holly Martin (Felicia Day)



Season 5

Allison and a way too old Jenna. I think this is at the beginning, before they are found.

This season begins with the clean up of the disaster that was the Astraeus project. Beverley's involved, of course, and a lot of confusion follows. Eventually, they get the situation mostly sorted out, but there is still the Holly problem, as well as the relationship issues Allison and Zane are now plagued with. The final episode was much better than I had hoped it would be, and there were even some cheesy montages of the past. Cute. But the very best moment, for me, was the very last one.

This was the perfect ending. When I first saw it, I went to rewatch the first episode to check for accuracy. It was perfect!

I hope you liked this! These are fun for me, and I think for you too, if you've watched the show. If you haven't, you probably thought it was boring. Sorry. I'm going to do a few more of these this month, so stay tuned.

Eureka: Part One

I thought that today it would be fun to do a post on a favorite TV show of mine. This will be similar to the review of Buffy The Vampire Slayer I did a few months ago. For each season, I'm going to have some pictures, a summary, and some reactions of my own. There will be spoilers, so if you are thinking about watching this show, you should probably not read past the first few seasons. After that, there are WAY more potential spoilers. Even so, it's written in such a way to help you remember it if you've seen it, and if you haven't, it'll probably just be confusing. Come back tomorrow for the second part.


Before we begin, here is Eureka on IMDb.

Also, people you might recognize:
Chris Gauthier:

Vincent, the cook at Cafe Diem. He's William Smee (the guy with the red hat) in Once Upon A Time.

Dr. Parrish, a total jerk. Best known from Star Trek: The Next Generation

Debrah Farentino:

Beverly Barlow, a dangerous woman. Her list is long. I know her from Earth 2.

Joe Morton:

Henry Deacon, mechanic. He's from... everything. His IMDb page never ends.

Season One

The whole crew. S.A.R.A.H. isn't happy.

This season has mixed reviews from me. For one thing, they obviously don't have all their sets for a few episodes, meaning that Global Dynamics looks pretty cheesy at first. There is Nathan, though, which is obviously a good thing. Also, this season has some pretty awesome episodes, including "Right As Raynes," which may be my very favorite episode of the show for reasons that are too spoilery to share. We are introduced to characters like Beverly, Henry, Jo, Fargo, and S.A.R.A.H.

Season Two

Jack and Nathan.

Season Two starts with a bang (sorry, couldn't resist), and continues that way. I love season two. We have characters like Nathan, and Tagart, and even Zane is introduced for the first time. We are still following the main storyline with Kevin, and Beverly is still our main villain. Allison is the head of GD, and all is perfect in the world of Eureka (except all the things that go really, really wrong, but who cares about that. I'm happy. :) )

And because this is a totally awesome episode:

Jo and Nathan. Awesome.

Come back tomorrow for Season 3-5!

NaNoWriMo 2013 - Resources

This year during NaNoWriMo, I used several writing resources that I had not previously discovered, but that I loved. Both of the ones mentioned here I discovered on the regional forums for the Bellingham area on nanowrimo.com

1. Written Kitten

I LOVE this thing. Seriously, I would guess that about 20 thousand words of my novel were written in this. I have used Write or Die occassionally in the past, but it stressed me out too much. This was way better.

In Written Kitten, every time you hit a word count goal (I had mine set for every 100 words) you get a new cute kitten picture on one side of your screen. It is fantastic. The pictures are pulled from flickr, so some are better than others, and some are a bit weird, but the idea is wonderful. The one thing I didn't like was that I wasn't able to format my text the way I wanted (for example, I wasn't able to indent my paragraphs with the tab key). I worked around that, though, and I might need to credit Written Kitten for the completion of this novel. :)

2. Baby Name Genie

This website allows to you type in a last name, and choose a gender (or not, if you want to be surprised), and then it will give you first and middle name combos for the last name you provided. Names are my favorite part of writing fiction, and I love finding interesting ones for my characters. Baby Name Genie was a website I used a TON this November.

The majority of my characters got their names (or at least part of it) through this website, and I am sure I will continue to use it in the future.


That's all I've got for you today. Come back tomorrow for a long overdue Homeschool Friday post (sorry about that!). What websites and other resources did you discover this NaNo?

Life Update {Illness, Dancing, Singing, and Writing}

Hey guys! It is way past time for me to write one of these. The last month was INSANE, and I know that the one coming up won't be much better.

I have been really sick this last week, and in fact had to stay home while my family went to Thanksgiving with relatives. As a result, I did no school, and am quite behind there, and not a lot of writing. In fact, I was pretty sure that this was going to be the year I didn't win NaNoWriMo, but I managed to pull through in the end, which was a bit of a miracle.

Since I know that there are some of you in the Bellingham area who read this (and some family and friends who may be interested in coming), I thought I would post the dates and times of some of my performances for choir and dance over the next week or so.

On Saturday, December 7th, our Scottish Dance group will be performing at the Port Festival at from noon to 1pm. There will also be an Irish Dance or two from those of us who do both types of dance.

On Tuesday, December 10th, our Homeschool Choir will be performing as part of the Whatcom Homeschool Association Annual Christmas program, which begins at 7pm, and includes many performers. This will be at Kulshan Middle School and is open to the public.

There will probably be more choir performances, but they have not been finalized as of right now.

I have a lot of practice for all these, and overall I am swamped. I am really glad that NaNo is over, because if I am this overwhelmed with out writing 2k each day, I would be going crazy trying to fit that in too!

In the past week, I also saw Catching Fire (review coming soon) and Ender's Game (read review here). I also watched 5 episodes of Lost on Thanksgiving, and I am finally up to the beginning of Season Five. It's only taken two years. Oh well. At the current rate, it'll take almost another year to finish.

Also, this might sound a little crazy, but I want to try to put up a blog post every day for the rest of December. I really want to see if I can manage it. It will be a mix of holiday stuff, book and movie reviews (I have a ton stacked up waiting to be finished), some school stuff (I haven't done a HF post in weeks!), some other fun things I don't want to talk about yet, and some general chatty life update posts for the days I don't have anything else.

It should be fun, and crazy, and I might not make it, but I also might. I really just want to see if I can manage to do it. On that note, I have some ideas of ways things may be changing a little around here in the new year, but I'm going to wait a little while to talk more about that.

I hope you are all had a good Thanksgiving, and are enjoying the coming holiday season!

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

 (This review contains affiliate links, which means that if you buy something after clicking it, I will get a small compensation.)

Today I am reviewing The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. I read this book for the high school World Lit group I am in, and I also saw a play version of it.

Summary (from Amazon.com)
Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.

With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.

My Review
I enjoyed many things about this book. I found it to be a unique look at the lives of eight women, and their relationships with their families and each other. The characters in this book were good, and each had a distinct personality. With the format of the book, I often found it difficult at first to remember who was who, and who was who's daughter, but I think it mostly sorted itself out. When I saw the play version, they did it a little differently (they had the first mother story and then the first daughter story for each set together), and I think it helped me keep track a little better. Also, by doing that, it made me realize that there were many connections between the mother's childhood experiences, and their behavior and reactions as an adult. I missed these connections when I read the book.

I very much enjoyed her writing style. It was quick to read and flowed well, but still managed to portray complex ideas and emotions with ease. I was impressed with how she was able to write about such different people and times, but still make them all feel like they were part of the same story. She manages to capture with words not just the women, but the relationships and the emotions that those relationships were built on.

In this book, the plot matters much less than the characters, which is rare. The plot that there is exists between the lines, and between the stories. In many cases, the most important parts of the plot were the ones never told. They are the ones that you must realize for herself. For example, one part that to me seemed very important plot wise, but was never said was the reason for Ying-Ying St. Clair's extreme reaction to her pregnancy, and the eventual loss of her child. This ties back to her first marriage in China, which her husband and daughter in America do not know about. When her first husband left her, she aborted their child she was pregnant with at the time, and now she feels that the loss of this baby is her punishment.

Who Should Read This Book?
I highly recommend this book. It is a wonderful look both at Chinese-American culture, but also, more importantly, at the importance of strong relationships between mothers and daughters. I would recommend this book to anyone, but I think women of all ages would find it particularly powerful.

Ender's Game {Movie Review}

I'm sorry the blog has been so silent lately! I am working on a life update post which should be up later today, or tomorrow morning.

First of all, this will have spoilers. I am going to make no effort to avoid spoilers. If you've read the book, there should be nothing to worry about, but if you haven't, this will definitely give away some things. If you haven't seen the movie, this post will mainly be focusing on the differences between the two, so continue at your own discretion.

Second, this isn't really going to be much of a review, but really more of a list of things I did and didn't like. I went and saw the movie last night with a bunch of friends, and some of these items were things that really came from them in the post movie discussion time in which we all stood in the lobby and blocked the walkway and got strange looks from the theater workers.


Things I DID Like

1. I felt like over all, it was a pretty good adaptation. They made changes that they needed to make in order to make it into a two hour movie, and for the most part, didn't cut any important things (see the exceptions below).

2. The actors/actresses. I thought that they chose really good people to play most of the characters. I especially liked how young many of the kids actually looked. They didn't have a bunch of older actors playing kids. Asa Butterfield (Ender) is actually 16 years old, though he looked a lot younger. Hailee Steinfeld (Petra) is 17, and she looked a little more her age, but still young. Also, Harrison Ford was fantastic.

3. The battle simulations. They looked really cool.

Things I Did NOT Like

1. The thing I disliked the most was how fast it all seemed to be. It felt like a week passed from the time that Ender was taken to battle school and the time that he was fighting his final battle. It would have been really nice if they would have at least had someone mention in passing some thing like "Wow, I can't believe we've already been here for two months," or something like that. Or, as a friend suggested, they could have done some training/battle montages.

2. At the very end, Ender walks out of the HQ, walks about fifty feet, and finds... the egg of the bugger queen. Fifty feet from command central. There is NO way that they would not have known that was there. It doesn't seem like it would have been to hard to make it more like the book (where he finds it on another planet).

3. There were very few characters (other than Ender) who were developed at all. Even Bean was introduced and then essentially forgotten. Petra got a little more screen time, but still very little character development. You know nothing about any of those characters.

4. Another thing that I disliked was the omission of the Valentine/Peter storyline back on Earth. I understand that they couldn't include a lot because of time constraints, but it would have been nice if they had least made some references to it.


Overall, I think it was pretty good, considering the time they had to work with. I think it could have been better, but I was pretty pleased. If you are a fan of the book, and are considering seeing it, I recommend it.

Behind the Albergue Door {Book Review}

Today I am reviewing Behind the Albergue Door by Dean Johnston, a book about traveling El Camino de Santiago in Spain. When I had to opportunity to get this book to review, I jumped on it. Walking El Camino has been a dream of mine for a while, and I must say that this book made me even more excited to travel there someday.

Summary

Behind the Albergue Door : Inspiration Agony Adventure on the Camino de Santiago is a detailed and, according to the author’s mom, hilarious account of the 5 weeks in the fall of 2012 that he and his wife spent hiking the popular 800 kilometre Spanish pilgrimage route, the Camino de Santiago. It mixes stories, advice and humour in a way unique among travelogues and is a terrific read for past pilgrims, future pilgrims, travel buffs, and those who simply enjoy reading about other people’s suffering.


Review


This book is a wonderful combination of informative and hilarious. Dean Johnston intersperses his advice and guidelines with humorous anecdotes and stories of fictional travelers. I found his writing style quite enjoyable, and I think he managed very well to combine the serious and not so serious topic he covered.


This book is thorough, and covered many topics such as what to pack, the food, the weather, the other people, and more. There are also several chapters, intersperced through out the book, which tell the story of a fictional El Camino traveler, usually told through emails, tweets, or other modern methods of communication. These stories help demonstrate the different kinds of people who make the journey, and some of the experiences they might have.


 There are also more real life, semi serious stories from Dean's actual time on El Camino de Santiago, which, by the end of the book, make you feel like he is a family friend you have been asking for advice from. Nothing, it seems, was too personal for him to share, and that is what makes this book so wonderfully comprehensive.


I would highly recommend this book to people to love to travel, people considering walking El Camino de Santiago, and those who simply love a well written real life adventure!

Now, I have the very special opportunity to give away a copy of this ebook to one of you! You can enter below using your facebook account, your twitter account, or your email address. Unfortunately, since I have been really sick lately, I did not get this up as soon as I had hoped, and so Dean Johnston would like to send this to the winner in just three days!
You can find this book at Smashwords here, Amazon here, and the author here.

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.