It Burns!!

I discovered a brilliant invention a couple of years ago called Little Hotties. These are literally little packages of heat that stay warm all day, once activated.
Now, the packages do carry warnings of high temperatures with a chance they can burn you if left next to your skin for any length of time. Usually I will keep the hotties either in my cardigan/jacket pocket or if there are no pockets then in my jeans pocket for lovely cosy warmthness :-) Putting them in my jeans pocket does usually result in a red mark on the top of my legs, but it soon fades away and leaves no lasting marks.

However, yesterday, I wore a pair of new jeans for our work Christmas lunch and I'm now thinking the material of the pockets is much thinner than on my other pairs of jeans as when I went to the toilet in the afternoon and pulled my jeans down, pieces of my skin also came away and left red raw skin there, which let me tell you is extremely painful! I didn't feel this happening at all, I didn't notice my skin slowly burning away.

I spent last night constantly reapplying lovely cooling cream and now have a lovely plaster on it to avoid it getting irritated. Safe to say, I  don't have any hotties with me today. That being said, it won't put me off using them, I'll just take more precautions next time and maybe not put them in my jeans pocket or if I do, wrap it in a few layers of tissues :-)

Film Review - Skyline

I had been looking forward to seeing this film as it looked like a cross between Independence Day and Cloverfield, two films I very much enjoyed. End of the world disaster movies do appeal to me in general though.

The film, however, was quite weird and even now, a few weeks after seeing it, I still haven't really made up my mind what I think about it. It wasn't what I expected, but I wouldn't go as far as to say it was a bad film, but then again, I also wouldn't buy it on DVD.

It would appear from the trailer that aliens invade Earth but you don't see an awful lot more of the aliens in the whole film as you do in the trailer, it would have been better, I think, to see a little more interaction between the humans and the aliens. The characters are a little weak, in that they seem to behave as most humans in that situation would - they're scared, they try to hide and they try to evade capture, there's no real talk or action towards the main characters becoming the heroes and ridding the world of the aliens, this moment never really comes.

I suppose the best way I can describe it is that it was anti-climactic. On the plus side though, it was quite gory and violent at times and the ending was different and unexpected. It was kind of left open for a sequel, but also finished satisfactorily as a stand alone movie - though I do hope they leave it alone, I'm not sure where they could go with a sequel.

Writing this has made me realise my feelings towards the film are more negative than positive, though I do stress I didn't hate the film, but I doubt I will seek to watch it again.

My rating would be 4 out of 10

Book Review - The Hunger Games trilogy

The Hunger Games Trilogy consists of the Hunger Games, Catching Fire and the Mockingjay written by Suzanne Collins. The synopsis is Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. But Katniss has been clse to death before—and survival, for her, is second nature. The Hunger Games is a searing novel set in a future with unsettling parallels to our present. Welcome to the deadliest reality TV show ever..

I actually heard about the first book on Stephenie Meyer's website (author of the Twilight Saga) where she claimed it was a brilliant book. So I thought since I like what Stephenie writes, I would possibly like what she reads. So I bought The Hunger Games, not knowing it was an intended trilogy and I literally read it in a day - I sat on the futon in my brother's old room and devoured it. Although it's technically classed as young adult fiction, it was still brilliant, as so many are these days.

The story is set in a dystopian world which consists of 13 districts, all of which are controlled by President Snow in the Capitol. In remembrance of an uprising against the Capitol many years previously (which resulted in the destruction of District 13), the capitol puts on the Hunger Games each year. The Hunger Games involves taking 2 children from each District and placing them all in an arena to fight to the death - there can only be one winner. The Games are supposed to serve as a reminder to the Districts, of the Capitol's power.

As you can guess, Katniss is the female representative of District 12. For the Capitol and surrounding Districts, the Games are a source of entertainment, a reality show to be enjoyed, to the point where some of the Districts see it as an honour to be chosen rather than a sick and twisted game where lives are lost. Due to the nature of the games, all the contestants have stylists, designers and make up people to help them through their interviews prior to the Games, all in aid of gaining sponsorship which can aid you in the Arena.

The Arena is different every year with new challenges to face. As the book is targeted at a young adult readership, the book isn't overly graphic, but neither does it shy away from the horror of the situation these teenagers find themselves in. Many comparisons have been made with the Japanese horror story Battle Royale and I would say that some of these comparisons are fair, it's possible the author had either read the story or seen the film and gained inspiration from this. I have seen the Battle Royale films and find enough differences between them to find both enjoyable.

I can't write any more about the story without giving away too much of the plot so I will leave it as it is...other than to say I found the first and second book better than the third, though I loved all three.

Overall I would give the trilogy 8 out of 10

Writing Update

Well how do I update you? I suppose 'what writing?' would be the most accurate. I have to say I've not done very well at all with any kind of writing. I did attempt the NaNoWriMo challenge but unfortunately November flew by and I really didn't have time to write - though I did manage about 3100 words, which was more than I expected, though I would still have liked to have done better - maybe next year? At least I can be more prepared next time.

Also I've not done any work on my assignments, again down to time constraints. I haven't even attempted my next assignment in recent weeks...oops. I'm hoping the break over the Christmas period will afford me some writing time :-) I promise though that I haven't lost interest in writing and it is all purely down to time.

Here's to doing better and also knowing my first New Year's Resolution :-)
Good luck to my fellow writers out there, I hope you're all faring better than me!

Film Review - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One

As with most of the other Harry Potter films, I booked my ticket in advance for the opening day - 19th November 2010. I was excited for weeks and the day itself went very fast as it happened to coincide with Children in Need. Me and Carol were booked in to see the 20:15 performance and decided to meet at Frankie and Benny's for 6:30pm and head over to the cinema half an hour before the start time.

Despite going along this early, we still ended up in a big queue! The showing was a sell out but we luckily managed to get good seats.

The critics had said how they felt this film was just there to set up the second part, which I think is a little unfair as the book itself has less action in the first half and more in the second, but you couldn't have the second part without the first. I feel that the action that there was in the film was very well done - the broomstick chase with all the Harry's at the beginning, the end to both Hedwig and Dobby were very sad, the death eaters arriving at the wedding party, Harry, Ron and Hermione taking Polyjuice potion to sneak into the Ministry of Magic and many other points throughout the film.

I was surprised at the amount of humour in it, but it did well to balance the very dark themes of this installment. There were moments were I felt the film could possibly have been awarded a 15 certificate, taking into consideration the death of the teacher and the torture of Hermione. Plus the random naked images of Harry and Hermione - what was that all about? For me personally though, I'm glad it was so dark and wasn't diluted down for the kids.

I very much enjoyed the film and can't wait to see Part 2 - I wanted to just carry on watching and I'm sort of hoping there will be the opportunity to watch both halves in the cinema next year :) There were a couple of moments missing in the film which I had loved in the book, most notably for me was Dudley saying goodbye to Harry and letting him know he didn't hate him - it was told so well in the book, but not touched upon in the film which was sad. I know they have so much to fit in, but I think it would have been a nice addition. One thing I particularly liked that wasn't in the book was where it showed Hermione wiping her parents memory of her and making them want to go to Australia - it was a very touching scene.

I am looking forward to seeing the film again and I award this film 9 out of 10

Baking Review - my birthday cake

It was my birthday on 1st December and despite being told it was very sad, I made my own birthday cake. But I wanted to, especially as I had recently purchased the giant cupcake silicone mould I wanted to try out.

So the day before I had all the ingredients ready to go and used a sponge recipe courtesy of my friend Melissa. As it turned out, I had to make a second batch of the mix as the mould holds more than you'd think - or more than I thought anyway.

I'm not entirely certain how I feel about how the cake turned out, aesthetically-wise anyway. The cake took a lot longer than I expected to cook through - the outside was starting to get burned and the middle was still like mush for a long time. The burnt part of the cake was easily scraped off without losing too much of the look of the cake. I put a layer of buttercream and layer of jam between the base and the top and then covered the top in buttercream.

I was a little worried how it would taste but I needn't have worried as it wasn't too bad to be honest and did taste quite birthday cake-like. Next time, however, I will add another layer of buttercream and jam to the base as there was a lot of cake and it needed breaking up a little more.

On the same evening I also made chocolate cupcakes from the Hummingbird book to take into work for my colleagues. And for the first time, my frosting worked out well enough to be able to use the squeezy piping thing I have and I was pleased with how they turned out :-)

Spelling error

I've decided it might be fun to write about any spelling or grammar errors I find out there in the world - especially being an aspiring writer, it's good to be aware of these things. Although I imagine there are so many mistakes out there - more than we notice day to day as the human brain has the capacity to read things you expect to see rather than what's actually there staring you in the face, so it's very easy to miss these mistakes.

This one I found was a few weeks ago in an Italian restaurant called Quattros and as you will see from the picture, they misspelled the word 'cheese', writing instead 'chesse'. Now this I did immediately notice but then I did get worried that this was some Italian version of the word but I googled it and nothing was forthcoming so I came to the conclusion that it was a mistake. I apologise that you will have to turn your head to read this as I don't know why it's uploaded like this when it is the correct way up at the source, but never mind, the error is still legible.

I'm curious in a situation such as this whether the restaurant are aware of the mistake, or if it has passed by unnoticed. I imagine that even if it had been noticed, it would be too expensive to replace all their menus just to change this one spelling, which most people will probably read as cheese and not notice as that is what you expect to read after the word mozzarella.

I also have a vague memory of reading a really poor piece of writing with many spelling and grammatical errors and I remember this being in a notable publication - however I can't for the life of me remember where it was so I think I possibly dreamed it :-) Oh well, I will report back if I realise what it was.

I realise writing about spelling and grammar errors leaves me completely vulnerable to getting comments on any mistakes I make, but I am open and willing to hear back on these and will promptly fix as I know I am as fallible as the people who make the mistakes I will write about. In the meantime I hope you enjoy these mistakes I come across.