Pirates and Dragons and Vampires - oh my!

It *actually* snowed today, the whole afternoon - it was excellent! I love the snow, only now I'm pining for mountains and skis, not good when you're trapped in damp holland I can tell you. *sigh* I don't know when I'll next be able to go skiing to be honest and I miss it so. Not for a couple of years I don't doubt. Maybe I'll start saving now and then I'll have a big savings fund and I can go for a couple of weeks - that'd be lovely :D Sadly it's raining now which will take away all the snow. There go my hopes of it snowing so much that I won't be able to walk to work - not that that would ever happen! A girl can dream...

I started my Pirates marathon today. I'm not someone who can stay up late so due to lazing around most of the morning and early afternoon I only got around to watching one movie so I'll spread them out like I did with LotR - yippee! And Johnny Depp is just as luscious. I can't wait till I can afford a really big screen (I only have a laptop these days) and then I can watch it and see him better :D A lot of people didn't like the second one and certainly not the third. They didn't get the third one which confused me, I thought it was completely comprehensible. And the beginning! So dramatic. Loved it.

It turns out that the guy I had thought I was making dinner with only thought he was giving me cheese. Which is weird because the way he talked yesterday about "it could be a yes but it might turn to a no later" doesn't really sound like not being able to put cheese in someone's fridge. But whatever, strange boy. He did give me cheese and I did get to make cauliflower cheese. It's pretty good with Grana Padano, like it was with Parmigiano, but somehow it's just not perfect. I think it's the lack of Cheddar. I'm a bizarre cheddar fan, I don't like it in sandwiches unless I'm really in the mood for it - give me brie anyday - but I love it in things or on things. Mashed potato, lasagne, pasta, cauliflower cheese - wherever you can use cheese I'd use cheddar. It's the most delicious thing. There's an excellent brand called Colliers, a welsh cheddar, and it's fantastic. A proper gritty cheddar, the cheaper the cheddar the milder and the softer it gets till it's like Gouda (ugh) and if you go past that stage then it's practically blasphemy to cheddar *and* to cheese. I may have been a poor student but I never scrimped on cheddar :D I made mash yesterday (I may have said) and this time it was with Parmigiano but it's just not the same, of course it needed a little bit of mustard in it to make it perfect but it was as good as you can get here.

I talk about food too much methinks. Just think how bad it'll be when I'm back in civilised England with real supermarkets. I'm going to hug the first one I go to I swear. And possibly the first Starbucks though it's less easy to hug a Starbucks!

In my final year at uni I'm hoping to live with some good friends of mine and then hopefully I'll cook more - more and better food. It's so easy to not buy proper food when you only feed yourself. And by improper food I mean fresh pasta and pasta sauces, chicken nuggets only appear when I'm really down. I do eat too much garlic bread though, I'm going to try to cut down. I don't believe in diets, I think they're stupid but I feel a bit too chubby and so, because I eat more chocolate/ice cream/garlic bread than I should, I intend to reduce my intake thereof. I tried that in the second month I was here - the first month was appalling - but it didn't work out from halfway through the third month I think. I got down again and the chocolate and chicken nuggets started making appearances. But now I'm riding a high, well, a higher low and I'm going to seize the day. I have had my first chocolate free week since I got here, I'm very proud. And seeing as I'm banning myself from eating chocolate during the week there's little cause for transgression next week. Though I may have to make up for yesterday's low fat strawberry cheesecake fiasco!

I'm sitting here and the third book in the Twilight series is by my elbow, I'm so gutted I can't go see the movie - I promised my friend that I would wait to see it till I came back from Holland for Christmas only now I'm regretting it somewhat 'cos I am *desperate* to see it. But, I will keep my promise, of course if she gets dragged into seeing it I won't begrudge her even for a second and I will promptly catch the first showing I can and hunker down for two hours of bliss. I didn't think much of Rob Pattinson as Cedric Diggory, he wasn't particularly interesting, let alone particularly hot but he is (to quote a Rachel Giese article I found somewhere online) "scruffilicious" as Edward in Twilight. Of course being in love with the character he plays might have something to do with it... I definitely want to steal the cardboard cut outs from the movie theatre now!

A lot of people have bitched about the books, about the mediocrity of Meyer's writing and I must say it's not the best, it's definitely not up there with the classics but then, I've read Dracula and Frankenstein and they were dull! In fact I'm not sure I've gotten round to finishing Frankenstein... They're excellent stories but appalling books, it's no wonder they've been turned into movies again and again. But Meyer's books, thought not phenomenally written, are also excellent stories with the addition of being readable and re-readable. This is the fourth time I've read them since I bought the first one in June. And aside from one terrible sentence in the first book about tidepools: "The bouquets of brilliant anemones undulated ceaselessly in the invisible current" - those words blatantly came from the thesaurus function in Word. No self-respecting 17 year old would use those altogether in one sentence. But they're pretty evocative, they're descriptive enough to set the scene but you're able to add in your own flourishes. There are some occasions where, I can't remember exactly, certain things don't match up, job scheduling and time sounding like it's going fast but actually only a week's gone by, but they seem to be traps that most writers fall into.

J.K. Rowling I think was very good at that, it's almost as though she had a week by week planner just for each of her books, which wouldn't surprise me, she's a very efficient writer, she knows everything about her characters, and that's the way it should be. I spent *hours* reading up on mammals and reptiles and dinosaurs and breeding habits so that I could know exactly how my dragons function, there's not magic in my story's world so I needed to know those things. They're the things that won't turn up in the book, who needs to know them? But I will know them and that makes me happy. One day when I'm rich and famous and go to fantasy book conferences (which is never going to happen if I don't get my arse in gear) maybe some geeky kids will come up and ask "But how do your dragons stay in the air?" And I will be able to tell them, that's all I need. I live in fear of a Galaxy Quest situation (well not really as I don't have spaceships), but believing your story is just a story and only knowing that much detail doesn't mean someone else will treat it the same way. Take Stephenie Meyer for example, her biological explanations didn't quite add up and the thing is, if she'd either said nothing or researched it more there wouldn't be an issue, but because she said "Oh yeah, well it would work like this" she essentially contradicted herself and confused the rest of us - not good. And then I do think she said "It's just a story" and it's like yeah, sure it's just a story, but that doesn't give you the right to talk bollocks. That was one of the things that drove me to researching my dragons (though I would have done anyway probably) - because I needed to know and I needed it to be logical and semi-sane and above all, theoretically possible. But maybe that's just me. Seriously though, rent Galaxy Quest - excellent movie.

Night all.