December 12th: Blistering Barnacles!

My god I love Tintin. You have no idea. I've been reading them, repeatedly, since I was nine. I've done them all, With the exception of Tintin and the Soviets (too old. the art wigs me out). The fact that something that kicked off in the 1930s can hook me in so much is just crazy.

A big portion of this is the art. The style is called Ligne Claire (clear line) and means that all the lines are of uniform thickness and strength with no crosshatching or shading to bring things into prominence, and I find it way easy on the eye. It means some of the big landscapes and stuff are just mindblowing. I love it. I love it so much. Who wishes me a merry Christmas? You can prove it by buying me this.


But the Tintin series just doesn't flower into something awesome until the arrival of Captain Haddock. The seething English drunkard is just the absolute best and probably my favorite fictional character ever. So I was impressed - mighty impressed - when I got THIS for Advent.

Screw the gift! This is totally enough for me!

But no - it got better.

Oh man. This is a Librarian mug. It lends me magical super-Librarian powers. I'm like Oracle. It's official merchandise - there's a Moulinsart stamp on the bottom - and I'm really impressed with the quality. The mug is sturdy and well made and actually pleasing to the eye, unlike a lot of mug merchandise which just stamps an image on those horrible generic blocky mugs. It's lightly curved and glossy and has a nice heft. And how cool is it that they made this mug multi-lingual and accessible for all?!? Good work, Belgium!

Go see what Luke got today! It's going to make me and Luke about a thousand times manlier!

December 11th: Bananas! B - A N A N A S!!

I don't seriously have to point out the reference in the title, do I?

I love some Gwen. I really do. She looks awesome, she's a re-inventor, and if I could I would totally hire a group of Japanese girls to follow me around and dance spontaneously.

I can totally understand that.

Now there was a line of perfumes released called Harajuku Lovers, which had five fragrances, one to each girl. I was hoping for one of the Harajuku girls, but my favored fragrance was Gwens. So what did I get today? You're kind of slow if you haven't figured by now. Sorry. But you are.

So I really suspect certain budgets got blown out for this one, thought it is a very dainty bottle and as you can see a good 4/5ths of it is the top piece. Which is also one of the main appeals. These things look fricken awesome. And it smells very sweet and fresh. Theres a bit of vanilla and rose and something else to make it not horribly girly. I approve. VERY much.

Check out Lukes present today. It are game for today! Batman maybe!

December 10th: There is never enough nerd in my life

Doing the 10ths entry on the 11th. Luke was drunk and I was recovering from the kids story time Christmas party and was totally out cold. No one parties like 5 year old's with plates of marshmallows. So I broke my shakily kept pattern and missed a day. What a tard.

So I totally love D+D miniatures. I really do. They are totally awesome and the only reason that we don't play more is that when I lose (and we're about 50/50) I get frustrated to the point of severe irritability. Which makes things unpleasant for Luke.

One of the joys of the game is the craftsmanship of the pieces. Wizards of the Coast cut costs quite severely about two years ago and quality dropped drastically, but back when everything they put out was a miniature statue, they put out this.

It's called the Tundra Scout and it's an ice giant viking thing astride a goddamn mammoth. A mammoth with mystical sigils carved into his mighty tusks. Very. Cool. You know that this thing is going to mess up some serious dudes. This piece was really, really high on my want-but-cant-find list. Probably only upstaged by the Warforged Titan.

Yeeeeeeah.

It makes me really antsy to play this again. I'm hoping we'll be playing some minis on Christmas Day. That would be way cool. I find Christmas lends itself to group games.

Check out what Luke got over HERE. I'm quite proud of this gift.

December 9th: My taste in jewelry is aggressive.

I was surprised that I'd gotten this far into advent with no jewelry. I'm very much a jewelry person and Luke buys really good stuff jewelry-wise. It's his secret superhuman ability. Has been ever since he got electrocuted by that pig. Since jewelry's a bit of a given when it comes to buying gifts for me, I've been eagerly anticipating the inevitable and it arrived today. Behold!!!


Ouija board earrings! (And you see that URL? go find it. Good stuff). Still in their packets, Fresh from their maker. I have not cracked these out yet, maybe a day when I'm not doing storytime with the kids. But holy crap are they awesome. I don't own a ouija board. Maybe I should.

And the giving didn't stop there! Look at THIS!


Seriously. Grenade pendant. And not only is this awesome, it's actually been printed onto what I think is wood, and put on a copper chain. It's an awesome effect and has a reassuring heft. It's a little more substantial than a lot of the laser cut plastic stuff you can find around, and the print job is really good. This pendant got me compliments from my beautician, hairstylist and coffee making ladies today. I preened appropriately.

Check out Luke's gift over HERE - it's pretty fricken sweet today.

December 8th: I think there are throbbing members in my future

So with today's gift the joke was on me. I opened it and my absolute first thought was: "holy crap, I have to blog about this." Careful what I wish for, apparently. Because apparently at some point I wished for some serious hunks of man meat.

Oh yeah. Boy, are my cheeks red. In my defense, as a librarian, I am a lover of all books. But my god, I wish romance would shift a little away from the covers they tend to put on their titles. Seriously. It's mortifying. Some male model actually got called into a studio and told: "It's for a romance novel. Look sexy." And THATS what they came up with. Hilarious and weird. (Also - "The Nymph King"? Guffaw)

Also it kindof ruins the visualising aspect of the whole thing. You're picturing the central characters and they, well, don't look like that. The Nymph king looks like he'd be happier on a surfboard smoking weed. And I think the above dude has had his manboobs tampered with. He's got more a of a rack than I have.

In their defense they're actually of a higher production quality than most romance - you can faintly see on the last one the embossing on the cover which is actually quite intricate and beautiful. And lets face it - I will read them. And I will LOVE them. In a slightly humiliating but enjoyable way.

I hope you're learning lots of new things about me.

Check out Luke's present (which if I say so, was pretty fricken rad) over HERE.

December 7th: Christmas just turned up the ROCK.

Holy crap guys, things just got a little bit hair metal all up in this joint. I have an urge to shred my jeans and tie a handkerchief around my forehead. And rock out to some Maiden.

Shit yeah.

What could have possibly brought this on? What would make me lose my dignity like this? Why do I want to load up Guitar Hero 2 and show my worth with a totally awesome rendition of "The Trooper"? This is why, friends.

ITS THE PICK OF GODDAMN DESTINY.

Such a crazy and valuable gift alone would have been totally worth my time. But you know what? It gets better.

Hang on - who's that dude? Lets take a closer look.

...Hetfield? Is that you?

OMFG GUYZ! I've been gifted a tiny gaming statue of James Hetfield! With a damn sword! IN FRICKEN ARMOR! If this miniature got any cooler he'd sprout rams horns from his shoulder blades and piss molten fire.

But let's not get carried away. AlphaHetfield gets uncomfortable with too much enthusiasm. There is a blue elephant in the room - the remaining gift.

Back in Diablo (I and II) you drank Mana Potions to replenish your magical energy. This screencap obviously had a great love for his magics. My third gift - AWEsome - is a tiny energy drink called Mana Potion which I think - and I might be wrong - was intentionally styled on the famous Diablo potion. Its certainly geared towards gamers. I'm not going to drink it - I don't know, it seems like a bad idea - but I AM going to admire it and maybe sling it onto a belt so I can pretend to be a Rogue or something. Sigh. Good times.

Go check out Lukes totally robotacular gift. It'll make your day.

December 6th: My slothful ways

Today I dragged Luke out of bed early, not just because of Advent, but because he was coming along to the annual gymkhana horse riding competition that I was kind of nervously going to participate in. And he was wisely agreeing to go along. I figured he owed me some displays of boyfriendly support.

So Advent found us mussed up and sleepy eyed and slightly nauseous (there was beer involved in our Saturday night, and some awesome sushi train goodness and Zombieland viewing) and stumbling out to the lounge room with slightly less vigor than usual. This was shortlived, thankfully, because my gift prepped me right up.


I'm a librarian, so obviously a book of pretty much any time is always welcome. But not only is it a book about SLOTHS, its a book about BABY SLOTHS. And it's very much more picture book oriented than education, which means its chock full of images like this that make me want to melt:


Aaaaaw.

So this was a themed gift - there were separate elements. The book was wrapped with this:


Whats happening here? Why the retro paracetamol pattern? Is this gift a portal from a magical 70s dimension? I should point out that I have a bit of a thing for storage boxes and this one is an absolute gem. It's staying with me. Enough! The suspense is killing me! Lets open it up!


Oh man. Oh man. This is serious. My Christmas tree - MY OWN GODDAMN CHRISTMAS TREE - will have a handmade, hand painted sloth ornament hanging in it. From it's feet, no less.

And thats totally the kind of Christmas tree I want to be around. A highly personalised one, which has a sloth in it. One day we'll have Christmas in South America, and we will have a real sloth in our Christmas Tree. One day.

This is all too much excitement. I need a lie down. Go look at Lukes blog and leave me in peace.