Her Life is a WIP

I could tell you that one of my resolutions for 2015 is to update my LJ more but I can't say for certain that I will succeed in doing so. Instead, I'll just assure you that I still think of LJ often (if only to reminisce and think of its golden days) and I do check my flist regularly, although maybe less diligently than I used to, admittedly. To make a long story short, I still enjoy reading what you're all up to and will do my best not to disappear off the face of the earth.

Now that I think about it, I haven't really made any resolutions for 2015... well, no, I guess I did at least one, in the form of a new GoodReads challenge. I miserably failed to reach my 25 books challenge last year (managed 21) so I decided to do it again. I'm on my second book of the year right now so I'm hoping this will bode well for the months to come. I'm pretty sure I will have the same schedule issues in 2015 than I had in 2014 but I still have hope that I will manage to sneak in some reading time. We'll see. Obviously, another tacit resolution is to keep up with my studying and not get behind on any of my assignments. So far so good, I completed three of them during my holidays. I most certainly wasn't idle. As a matter of fact, we basically never had a single day of "freedom", as in we had something planned every single day during our two-week break. It was always fun things, though (with some studying included, which if not "fun" per say, was at least interesting and stimulating) so I'm not complaining.

We had a wonderful, wonderful Christmas surrounded by family and then had an awesome New Year's Eve surrounded with friends; we actually went away to Alsace for some FP time to ring in the new year :) We visited Colmar's Christmas Market (hearts in my eyes!! It was as gorgeous as I imagined it would be), ate the most delicious food (you haven't lived until you've tasted torche aux marrons, you guys! Photo below. It was my second time eating it but man but it's always an experience). ( Torche aux marrons )

We played Cards Against Humanity for the first time and had a blast! This game is insane and insanely fun. We had a stroll in the snow, we read, we napped... we just had a wonderful time ♥

And today I'm enjoying one last day off work while basically everyone went back - it actually makes the day even more enjoyable (sorry not sorry lol) I'm just chilling for the moment (cruising the net, reading fic etc.) although I made plan to go see The Hobbit again this afternoon with a friend. We'll see...

Fannish wise. I didn't catch up on ALL THE SHOWS (did I mention how busy we were?) but I did watch all of The Originals and The Flash, so there's that. I watched the Downton Abbey Christmas special as well, which I absolutely loved, it might be my favourite so far. I'm also thrilled because The Musketeers is back on our screen! I thought it was a solid episode, especially as they addressed a point that I thought was sadly missing in the previous series namely ( this spoilery scene ). I'm also very happy to have Marc Warren back on my telly.

Ok, update done. Now I'm off to read some more Musketeers fic.

Hope you all had a great time over the holiday if you celebrate and hope that 2015 brings you joy and happiness - personally, professionally and fannishly ;)

The subject is relevant to the entry though it's also a bit misguiding because it might make you believe I won't mention The Musketeers this time around when I, in fact, will do. To be honest, I have a Musketeers thought pretty much every day these days and have to share.

Let's get the Musketeers talk out of the way before I segue into another recent discovery (although it's anything but new as it's been existing since 2005 but I'd never heard of it before, so.)

I've been reading quite a lot of The Musketeers fic the past couple of weeks (there are some really nice ones out there, the fandom has kept me happy so far[1]) and the last story I started made me think about ( an event that occurred in the show premiere )

Onto Teh Discovery now. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled by accident upon a podcast that I'd never heard of before (admittedly, prior to getting into Welcome to Night Vale, I lived in complete ignorance of the podcast world on iTunes), namely Thrilling Adventure Hour, a "staged production in the style of old-time radio". It has different segments which follow different narratives every time but with the same main characters for each segments. It deals with sci-fi, supernatural, noir stories, historical plotlines etc.

It's very funny (I've been known to laugh out loud in public much more than I used to thanks to them) and pretty clever as it plays with genre codes, pop cultural references and even historical ones. It also has some nice guest stars, including Nathan Fillion who happens to be the main character of one of aforementioned segments, namely Jefferson Reid, Ace American, proud member of the American Victory Commission who fights against Nazis... who sometimes time-travel. As you do.

My favourite segments are "Beyond Belief" about Franck and Sadie Doyle, two socialites who happen to be mediums and whose favourite pastime is a) drinking and b) solving mysteries involving ghosts, vampires, werewolves etc. "Jefferson Reid, Ace American", the story of patriotic soldiers of the AVC during WWII, "Amelia Earhart, Fearless Flyer" who tells the story of brave and intrepid Amelia after she faked her death to be able to secretly fight the nazis. You go Amelia! And I'm slowly warming up to "Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars" which is a western! Set on Mars! In the 31th century!

As timing goes, believe it or not but turns out they're doing a crossover with... Welcome to Night Vale on Saturday \o/

Anyway! Is anyone following TAH? I know I'm late to the party (almost ten years late omg) just, bear with me, alright? lol And for those who'd be interested, you can get the episodes over there.

[1]Lol I meant to write "the fandom has kept me busy so far" but I guess "happy" works as well ;)

I always feel so betrayed by my body when I wake up early on weekends, case in point I was up at 7.45AM this morning. Why, body, why did you think this was a good time to get back to consciousness on a Sunday? Especially as I've been absolutely knackered the past two days. One of my (grand)uncles passed away last weekend and we wanted to be there for the funeral. He's from the part of the family that lives in the south-east of France, which means we left really early on Thursday morning to be on time for the funeral that was held in the afternoon, we spent the night at my cousins' and we left on Friday morning, pretty early too.

I was feeling fine till I got home when the whole thing caught up with me and I felt very tired all of a sudden. It didn't get better by Saturday, I felt like my body was up and about but my mind was still asleep. I actually did fall asleep at one point and if Cookie hadn't woken me up (we had to head to her mother's) I'm fairly certain I'd have slept the day away.

I was hoping for a nice lie-in this morning but alas it wasn't meant to be. I'm making the best of it though as I decided this gave me the opportunity to catch up with the latest Musketeers fic that have been posted over the past few days and maybe watch a couple of episodes (for the umpteenth time, I reached that stage where I know some of the dialogs by heart. It had to happen).

Speaking of the Musketeers, last week episode was another fast-paced one, wasn't it? No long review as I feel too lazy right now but, quickly, ( this spoilery bit about d'Artagnan's storyline )

As an aside (though in reference to the episode's "subplot") I'm very grateful for the way the writers chose to portray Porthos, I've enjoyed this version of him from the get go. It also has a lot to do with Howard Charles, who's perfect in the role, I absolutely love him.

And, of course, huge amount of squee for Porthos' "who would look after you" line directed at Aramis, at the end. I mean, who would, indeed? ;)

PS: I long for a Musketeers icon, you guys. Remember the time when each show had its own icon community, quite often before it even premiered? We had it so easy back then and we didn't even know!

I'm having a chilled saturday and enjoying every minute of it! I studied a little this morning, watched some tv and went to the cinema in the afternoon. Hope you're having a good one as well :)

On my way back home I was thinking of the two episodes of Hannibal that are on our schedule for tonight and I realised this week had been a very good week tv wise. Always a reason to celebrate ;)

Let's begin with Orphan Black, which was the lovely surprise of last weekend. I've caught up with all the episodes and am now more than ready to find out what series 2 has in store for us. Confession time, I caved in and watched the sneak peeks BBC America shared.

Then there was The Musketeers, which I kept going back to the past few days. Don't know exactly why... scratch that, I do know, it was after watching "The Good Soldier"; that whole story about Marsac and Aramis... it just kinda filled me with glee. So I'm officially on board ;) Incidentally, I've had the opening theme playing in a loop in my head all day yesterday. And I didn't even mind. Too much.

After that we had Person of Interest. How much did I enjoy that episode, let me count the ways! I might have been kicking my feet in sheer delight as I was watching. As a matter of fact, I was hooked as early as the opening credits! How many shows actually use their opening credits as part of the narrative? Seriously, that's such a clever (and original) move ♥ I'm so smitten with that show. Nothing new at this point but some things bear repeating. ( One comment or two )

Moving onto Arrow now, which... argh, they sure know how to drag things out, don't they? I was expecting something else for that episode, I'll admit, but I can't even hold a grudge because I did like what they gave us. Sometimes, I feel like Arrow can do no wrong, anyway lol

Lastly, as mentioned previously, I watched the latest episode of Community "App Development and Condiments" and I found it brilliant! So funny and clever, Community at its best, I'd say. Also, if you've seen it, you can find Greendale's social network online, how awesome (and fun) is that? Transmedia ftw!

And now is later and we're watching Hannibal. Ok, that first scene was something, wasn't it? This season is going to be epic!