Happy Thanksgiving a day late! This was my second year away from my home for Thanksgiving, but I had a good time in Seattle with my brother and his friends.....Friends-giving. At least I did not have to make the turkey!

However, I was expected to contribute to the dinner, which I did with yummy mashed potatoes. They turned out pretty good considering this was only the second time I have ever made them.

BUT the day before Thanksgiving I was told we needed another dish. So, having the major sweet tooth that I do, I decided to make a dessert.

Growing up my favorite Thanksgiving dessert was never pumpkin or apple pie. No, it has always been peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses in the middle!

I have been wanting to attempt these cookies for a while, but after a recent failure at a no bake cheesecake, I wasn't feeling confident. Plus with all the organic, overly healthy, pretentious stores that are around here, I knew I would have to make it from scratch. I have never successfully made any baked good from scratch, so I was a little concerned.

Anyways, I use this recipe, which is pretty simple. First, you put the egg, milk, regular sugar, brown sugar, peanut butter, and butter in a bowl.
My brother does not have a mixer, so I had the pleasure of mixing this stuff by hand.....yay. I have very weak arms, so it was a bit of a struggle. Thankfully Matt came in and helped at the end, because apparently I was doing it wrong...

Anyways after that, I added the flour, baking soda, and baking power, and mixed it all together again! Next, roll them into balls, stick em on a baking tray, and put them in the oven.
Look at those beautiful things cooking away. Best looking cookies I have ever made. There was some difficulties because it took about twice as long for them to cook than the recipe said it would. I ended up standing in front of the oven while watching Parks and Rec on my laptop and checking the cookies every few minutes.

They did finally finish! And as soon as I took them out I smooshed Hershey's kisses into them. Hershey kisses that were obnoxiously hard to find btw. This city needs to chill on the super organic food everywhere.

ANNNDDDD.....

THEY CAME OUT PERFECT!
Of all the things I have done in my life that I am proud of, these cookies are top ten. Literally could not have been better. Plus they were a huge hit! Matt was hovering like a vulture until I told him he could have one, and on Thanksgiving day most of them were eaten before dinner even started.

I am really pleased with how it all turned out, and it was a pretty good first Thanksgiving in Seattle. We watched a lot ....(a lot) of football, played some weird card games, plus I got to see this little baby, who I occasionally take care of these days. I really had a great time.

 I managed to get to New York Comic Con this year! I went for the first time two years ago, and it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. So when I realized I would be in the area for NYCC this year, I immediately bought a ticket. Unfortunately, there was only Thursday tickets left by the time I bought them, so I wasn't able to go to the big panels that happen on the weekend. Still, it was completely worth it. I had an AMAZING TIME.

For anyone who has not gone before, NYCC is nerd heaven. It is larger than the much more famous San Diego Comic Con. Several tens of thousands of more people attend it every year. Every single one a devoted nerd. For those of us mega nerds who often have trouble finding people in every day life who share the same level of passion for our nerdy interests, comic con is home. I was on my own this trip, so I did whatever I felt like doing. The first thing I saw when I walked in was the Weta Workshop booth. For those who don't know, Weta Workshop is the company that was created for the first Lord of the Rings series to manufacture all the costumes, sets, miniatures, ect....I was PSYCHED to see them there. They mostly had costumes from the new Hobbit series, but they had a few things from the original LOTR.
 Really the only thing from The Hobbit movies I was interested in was the War Pig, the true hero of the last hobbit movie :D
 One of the many other things I came in contact with was the USA distributor of the one and only manga/anime that I am a fan of, Tokyo Ghoul. I was quite pleased to see this GIANT poster of the main character. (yes, it is as disturbing as this picture implies)
 NYCC can be very overwhelming, especially for those who are unprepared. I tried to move through the show room floor pretty quickly to avoid an overload. One thing that caught my eye was this giant Iron Man statue. I think it is connected to a Marvel tv show or something. Honestly I didn't pay much attention to Marvel at NYCC, because it seems they didn't care to pay attention to it. Their presence was barely felt this year.
 There was a booth showing costumes from different films as well. They were just reproductions, but still very cool to see up close. They had Marvel and Star Wars stuff.
 I really really wanted to buy one of these Captain America propaganda posters. How cool are they??? This stand was selling Captain America trading cards, covered in fake blood like in the Avengers movie. I seriously considered getting those.
 One of the odd things about NYCC this year was that it was the descent of insurance companies. Nerds need insurance too I suppose. Progressive stepped up their game though. They had their poor employees dressed like THIS (below). You could also tweet them and they would send one of these employees to stand in line for you. I am not sure how that worked exactly, but it was a delight seeing them around. Good on you Progressive.

 My other big event of the day was making it into the Game of Thrones panel. Now, I have some serious mixed feelings about the Game of Thrones tv show, but actress Natalie Dormer was going to be there so I put those feelings aside and decided to go. I made a friend in line for Grumpy Cat who was also on her own, so we went to the panel together. We made it into the room two panels before the GoT one, and after watching a panel for a Star Wars tv show while standing, we got really good seats. Unfortunately we still had to sit through a Walking Dead panel, which I had no interest in. It was worth it, however, because the GoT panel turned out to be amazing. They spent most of the one hour panel taking fans questions, which turned out pretty well. The actors were super funny, it was interesting, and overall I had a lot of fun.
 Natalie Dormer was of course charming and lovely. Someone asked her about her role on Elementary (one of my favorite TV shows), and she talked about that for a while. The cast was very careful to avoid spoilers about the upcoming season, but she may have let slip that her character on GoT, Margaery Tyrell, may perform a "walk of shame" in the next season. Here is (approximately) what was said.
Fan: "My question is, how do you think Margaery would handle doing a walk of shame like what Cersei had to do last season?"
Natalie: "I can't answer that without giving away spoilers"
Audience: "OOOOOOO"
So yea. Probably the biggest hint about Season 6 that came out of the panel.

 I want to finish up with some general views of NYCC. Below, for example, is the line for the Main Stage. Now, the first time I went to NYCC, they did not clear the Main Stage after every event. That meant that people could sit there all day taking up seats at panels they did not care about waiting for the most popular panel of the day (basically exactly what I did for GoT). This is actually a pretty frustrating practice for everyone involved. However they have started handing out tickets for panels at the beginning of the day, and clearing out the stage hall after every panel. So the good news for all these people is that they are all going to get into the panel they want to see.
 When I wanted to get into a panel on the Main Stage two years ago, I waited in this line, which encompassed that entire large room, FOR TWO HOURS. Pressed chest to chest with the people around me and not able to sit down, all for the Agents of Shield panel. I was one of the last 16 people let into the panel. It was rough.

The other main attraction of any comic con is, of course, COSPLAYERS. What are cosplayers you ask? Well they are basically amazing fans who create costumes for their favorite characters and wear them to conventions. Here are a few of the ones I really liked...

 Sally and Jack Skeleton from A Nightmare Before Christmas
 Sexy V from V for Vendetta and Maleficent, I think.
 Esmerelda from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame
And Kaneki Ken from Tokyo Ghoul.

A lot of people ask me if I am ever going to dress up for a comic con and my answer has always been, and always will be, NO. I have no interest in becoming a cosplayer myself, but I do enjoy seeing other people do it.

After the GoT panel, it was getting later in the day, and I had some time to kill before I had to go meet my cousin in Manhattan, so I spent almost an hour standing at a charging station charging my phone. In that hour I met around a dozen people charging their phones, and had great conversations with all of them. That is the great thing about comic con, particularly NYCC. You can grab any random person and know that you almost certainly have a passion in common with them. It is seriously a sense of community that cannot be explained unless you are there yourself. NYCC is one of my favorite events ever and I would love to be able to go every single year.

In the meantime......I have my eyes set on Emerald City Comic Con, the comic con that takes place in Seattle. I am coming for you Emerald City.....coming.for.you.

                                                                                                                   (Brian Michael Tully)

As everyone in the universe probably knows, last night was a super blood moon! (aka a Super Moon occurring at the same time as a complete lunar eclipse!) I do not have a telescope, so sadly no good pictures from me. At first I did not even think I would be able to see the eclipse. I went outside about an hour before it began and the sky was completely cloudy. However, about half way through the eclipse my mother messaged me from Texas where she is visiting my sister to tell me that the clouds were gone and I could see it.

It is a tad sad that I had to be told from over a thousand miles away what the weather was in my location, but I went outside and I had a perfect few of the eclipse, which was almost at full coverage.

It really was stunning. I could have stayed out there for the entire thing....

Except I live in the middle of no where. While standing out on my driveway in the dark by myself I heard all that nature's night life had to offer. Owls, bugs, unidentified rustling bushes, and in the distance.....the howls of coyotes. Add that to my over active imagination that was telling me horror stories of murderers hiding in the wood..... I did not stay out there long.

Still, it was nice before I got scared and went back inside. There is nothing really like being out under the stars. Plus this is the second full eclipse I have witnessed this year. Earlier this year I experienced a full solar eclipse in England which was a real treat. So I guess this year has been pretty spectacular on the astrological front! Hope you all where able to have a night with the moon as well! Bye for now!

I went to a local film festival! It kind of blew my mind that my area even had a film festival, but there you go. The Big Eddy Film Festival has been around for four years now. I chose a specific documentary to see about the rise and fall of one of the famous resorts of the Catskills, titled Welcome to Kutsher's. I am always interested in local history, so this film was really the only one I wanted to see.

My mother and I made a day of it. The film was screened at the historic Tusten Theatre in Narrowsburg, NY. I have never actually been in there so that was a treat in and of itself. The documentary was good.  Kutcher's hotel was the last one in the Catskills to be open that had been owned by the same family since it opened, a total of over 100 years. It was recently torn down to make way for a wellness and yoga resort. It is sad, but I am glad there is something new going there that will hopefully rejuvenate the area. Growing up around the massive abandoned buildings of these once stunning and prosperous resorts has always been super depressing. They serve to remind us of how far our area has fallen. The documentary showed me a part of my home I had missed out on and never knew very much about. It was a privilege to see it. You can take a look at the website here.

After the screening there was a short Q&A with the directors of the film (above), which revealed they worked on this documentary for 8 years. That is a long time to work on a single film, and they aren't even from the area! Goes to show that a place doesn't have to be part of your own personal history for you to fall in love with it.

After the film we had lunch in the town, I had a rather delicious grilled cheese sandwich, and then went for ice cream.

I hope this film festival becomes larger, and has more young people involved in it in the future. I love film festivals, and cultural events like them in general, so to see one growing in my backwoods home is really something. To see it become successful would be even greater.

Narrowsburg is a beautiful town nestled right on the edge of the Delaware River. You can walk from New York to Pennsylvania from there. It is one of the best places in the area to spot bald eagles, which we did later that day driving to the ice cream! All in all it was a great day :)

Today is my birthday!! Wooo! I am entering my last year in my early 20s. I can't say there is anything special or significant about turning 23 that I am looking forward to, but I can say that the upcoming year of my life is probably the most mysterious I have ever had to look forward to.

I literally have no idea what is going to happen next! I have always had some idea, and it usually involved going to school. But now that is over, and nothing but a future I cannot even begin to predict lays in front of me. Terrifying? Yes. Exciting? Also yes! But looking back on the past year I have done and accomplished so much that I never would have thought possible.

1) I worked at a high end motor sports club where I got to work for Mclaren for a few days, and ride in some of the most beautiful and expensive cars in the world. Not to mention driven around in them by professional race car drivers!

2) I moved to England. I MOVED TO ENGLAND! I never thought I would move abroad, let alone to England! And I loved it! I love it in England despite everything that drives me nuts about it, and I am really gutted I have to leave. I have met amazing people from all over the world, and have seen and experienced so many amazing things.

3) Traveled the world. I have visited Italy, France, Spain, and Scotland in the past year. The opportunity to visit these places is irreplaceable.

4) Worked towards getting my Masters degree, which will also be my third degree overall.

5) Fulfilled a promise to myself that I made 4 years ago; that I would go back to Scotland within 5 years. When I made the promise, I had no idea if I would be able to keep it, but now I have been to Scotland twice in the past year. Not nearly as much as I wanted to, but it is more than I imagine would be possible.

The future may be uncertain, but there are a few things that I know are going to happen soon. First, I am going to visit Germany and see the place where my family came from. Second, I am going to finish my dissertation, which has taken so much of my time (and sanity), I cannot wait for it to be complete. Last, I am going to move back to the USA. Although I have some major mixed feelings about this, I know it is the beginning of the rest of life, and that because of this last year, it is going to be so much different than I ever imagined. I cannot wait to see what this next year holds.

A special shout goes out to Andrea and Brodie, who put on a special birthday for me and made chocolate chip pancakes so good we all almost burst!

Also a shout out to all my relatives I missed at the family reunion yesterday. It broke my heart not to see you all this year, but hopefully next year we will be able to make up for it!

This past weekend I had the enormous pleasure, nay the privilege, NAY THE HONOR, of seeing Julie Fowlis perform live. For those of you who don't know, Julie Fowlis is a folk singer (my favorite folk singer) that sings exclusively in Scottish Gaelic. She is one of the many artists who seek to preserve the heritage of Scotland through saving its native language. She is from the Highlands herself. You may have heard her music before in the Disney movie Brave. She has also won a bunch of awards for her music over the years. Through the student newspaper I write for, I got a ticket to go see her perform at the Shakespeare Globe Theatre in London.


The day started out less than 24 hours after my life-long best friend Hannah flew in to visit me. We got up unfortunately early and got on the train to London. We met up with my friend Ben who I know from my undergrad as an anthropology student. After lunch in which we ate at the diner outside London Euston which serves heavenly Nutella milk shakes, we took a shortcut through London University. (I think it was London University) That shortcut turned into a bit of a detour as we spotted an Egyptian archaeology museum and had to go in. We said we would spend only ten minutes there, but it turned into more like an hour after we chatted with a PHD student doing research on one of the skeletons in the museum.

After that we did some pretty touristy stuff for a while. Hannah wanted to see the National Portrait Gallery where we spent some time making fun of old English fashion (codpieces....why???). Then it was down to the river to see the London Eye, Parliament, Big Ben, all that jazz.


 Next we headed down the river to The Tower of London and the Tower Bridge before crossing over to the Globe Theatre.

There was a terrifying 15 minutes where the people at the theatre did not have any record of my ticket. They had to make a bunch of phone calls to the press office before I finally got it. Unfortunately it was only one ticket, so Hannah and Andrea (who had come along, Ben had left us at this point) hung out while I went to the concert.

For those who follow this blog, I have stated a few times how important Scotland is to me, and how connected I feel to that particular part of my ancestry. For any country, one of the most important parts of its culture is its native language. For the Scots, their language was taken from them by the English over several hundred years of oppression. There are Scottish artists today who fight to preserve their cultural heritage by performing in Scottish Gaelic. Julie Fowlis is one of these artists. Her music keeps me feeling close to Scotland even when I am thousands of miles away. Needless to say I was so excited to see her live I could barely contain my excitement.

The theatre itself was a small side theatre that was lit entirely by candle light. It was absolutely gorgeous. It was also a pretty small room, so no matter where you sat you had a good view...not that it mattered to me because I had an amazing seat!

When Julie and the other musicians came out I was so excited. She was as lovely as I had thought she would be, and had a Scottish sense of humor that was charming and funny. She started off with a cheerful song. She said she always did so because Gaelic songs had a bit of a reputation for being depressing. This made the crowd (mostly Scots) laugh pretty hard. Some of the songs were fun and silly, like one about being sea sick, and others were deeply sad and emotional. One was a song adapted from one of Scotland's most famous poets. It was a poem about grieving for his brother. I did not understand the words, but the emotion behind it and the pure magical power of Julie's gorgeous voice literally moved me to tears. I looked around the audience and saw I was not the only one crying, so I didn't feel too embarrassed.

I cannot fully describe to you what it was like seeing her live. I felt transported to the highlands, like my soul had flown to the north and was dancing on the mountains. It was magical, heart wrenching, and powerful. I could have listened to her forever.The spirit of Scotland is in that woman's voice. But unfortunately, all good things end, especially when those good things are a person singing live. Leaving the concert was physically painful for me, and I went into a mini mourning because I did not know if I would ever see her perform again.

On the way to the tube station we walked through a pretty interesting area of London I had not been to before, and I am eager to visit again, so that helped lift my spirits a little.

Still, it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and one I am not sure I will ever get to repeat. I hope I do, but until then, I have all her albums to keep me.

Hello all! Last week I went to my first ever opera! I was pretty excited about it, but unfortunately the guy from the newspaper who got us the tickets bailed on me last second, and everyone I knew had already made other plans for the night...so I went by myself.

*mild sobbing*

No I am just kidding! It really wasn't a big deal. The opera was at The Hippodrome in the city center. I had never been there before, and let me tell you it is not located in the nicest looking area. However once you get inside it is absolutely stunning. The outside lobby is sophisticated and modern while the theater itself is grand and beautiful. I got my tickets from the box office and sat down in the extremely comfortable seat.

Unfortunately on the other side of the isle were two absolutely repulsive women. First off, they came in late. Secondly, they TALKED LOUDLY during the performance to each other. They also were eating food out of enormous plastic/tin bags that were so flipping loud. Also they smelled pretty bad. But of course this is England where no one is going to tell them to shut up, so everyone around them suffered for like 20 minutes before someone politely tapped them on the shoulder and asked them to stop. HOW ARE YOU SO OBLIVIOUS????

*ahem* Anyways, moving on to the actual show. The opera was being put on by The Welsh National Opera. They were performing a play called "The Magic Flute". Now I will say that the singing was gorgeous. It was definitely impressive and beautiful. Of course the live orchestra was fantastic as well. Nothing really beats live music. But on the other hand.....the play itself was pretty bad.

It was bizarre, never really explained anything that was happening, was wildly sexist, and just overall was really boring. The entire moral of the story was that women are liars and cannot be trusted, and that they need to be led by men or else they are evil. Men of course are logical and wise. Spare me.

Putting that aside the story was just not interesting. It started out okay but then it got wwaayy too complex. It introduced complicated ideas and settings that were never explained and it was just so anti climatic. If I hadn't been reviewing it for the paper I would have left at intermission...which many of the people who had been sitting around me did.

It really was a shame. I had been looking forward to going to an opera ever since I got here, and the one I did manage to go to was..this. Bit disappointing really. (And by "bit" I mean extremely)

Next week I am going to see Hamlet performed on all ten floors of the city Library, and also a Cirque de Sole style circus! Hopefully they will prove to be better than this theater experience.

One thing you have to understand about Andrea is that she is a huge fan of the band One Direction. Therefore, when she found out that they would be performing at the first ever BBC Music Awards in London, she was determined to go. It took some persuading by Andrea, I rarely ever go to see live music and if I do it is usually for as little money as I can spare, but eventually I gave in.

Before we went to the award show, which started at 8pm, we went to the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. We took the London tube for the first time to get there. I am not exactly a stranger to subway systems, having used the NYC one many times and the one in Washington D.C. After using the London one I can say that it is the most comprehensive and straight forward system I have used. It is so much simpler to navigate that NYC, even if it is more expensive.

Hyde Park is nestled in a VERY wealthy part of London; the type of neighborhood that makes you feel like you would do anything to be that rich. It was gorgeous. We passed a McLaren show room filled with 650S models. I made me flashback to my days working at the race track this year when I got to ride around in one of those cars.

Anyway Hyde part was really lovely. Walking to the Christmas market we walked past a pond that had a million birds in it. So many birds.... including overly friendly swans that made me super nervous.

The Winter Wonderland was decent. There were a lot of nifty shops but everything was too expensive to buy anything. There was also a lot of amusement park rides, but again I couldn't justify paying to go on them.


Once we had seen everything there was to see and it was starting to get super cold we headed out and got back on the tube to go to Earl's Court where the awards show was. We headed to a cafe/bar around the corner for dinner and waited out there till around 6pm then headed back. Then we had the lovely experience of waiting outside in line to get in for almost an hour. Once we finally got, and after we went to the bathroom, we went into the made arena space. It was huge. The standing room could fit 8000, and then the seating was way up in the air. Andrea and I moved as close as we could to the stage and waited. When we had gotten into the building people had handed us these weird bracelets to put on both of our wrists. I had theorized that they were planning to kill us all with them, but as it turns out they actually lit up with colorful lights.

A few minutes before the show started the hosts came out, Chris Evans (not the actor) and Fearne Cotton. I suppose they are something of big shots in the UK, but I had no idea who they were. This was actually a common theme of the night as the show featured all British acts. Many I figured out who they were when they sang and I recognized the song, but many I still had no clue.

The show was broadcast live, but we were such small faces in the crowd I doubt we made it on tv. There were only four awards for the entire night, which was kind of odd. The stage setup was beautiful and spectacular, but I expected nothing less. The artists, despite me having no idea who most of them were, were excellent, and I had a lot of fun.

The lights on our wrists were my second favorite part of the night. When they lit them up the entire room sparkled!

Unfortunately One Direction was on the opposite side of the stage from where we were, so poor Andrea didn't get as good of a view as she was hoping for. Ed Sheran was on our side of the stage though, and let me tell you he was AMAZING. He deserved the award he got. I was kind of peeved that two of the four awards went to Pharrell Williams, who was not even there. I am not a fan of the man or his music, so that was a let down.

My absolute favorite moment of the night was when Idris Elba, the fabulous actor, came out to present an award. When they announced his name I screamed so loudly everyone around me turned and looked at me funny. Sorry you music lovers, I am a movie gal.

About halfway through the show I started to get a throbbing pain in my head. I was able to ignore it at the show, but once we left the show is when it really started to go downhill. The headache became overpowering and I also started to get nauseated. The tube ride back to the station was a nightmare. Once we got there we had to wait for almost an hour for our train back to Birmingham, and it was one of great suffering. Andrea had some Tylenol and I took that, but it took forever to kick in. When we got on the train I thought for sure I was going to throw up and we sat near a toilet for that reason. After we left the station in about 15 minutes I fell asleep....and stayed asleep for an hour and a half. This was incredible because I, usually, am not capable of sleeping sitting up. After I woke up I felt 100% better. The sick feeling and my headache was gone. I still have no idea what had been wrong with me.

We did not get home until 2am, and were completely exhausted. Luckily for me I did not have class the next morning. Andrea, however, did. HAHAHAHA. :)

 Andrea was reviewing a play recently and I was her plus one to go see it. The play was "The Big Friendly Giant" that was being put on (or maybe it is still running, I am not sure) at The Repertory Theatre. It is a play that is based off a children's book, so I was expecting it to be odd, but goodness I was not prepared.

We got there kind of late...like 15 minutes late. That was unfortunate and we missed the introduction to the play, so we when we sat down we had no idea what was going on. After a while the premise became clear that a friendly giant had kidnapped a little girl from an orphanage because she had seen him and did not want her to tell other people about him. This premise in and of itself was not weird or creepy, but the way they presented it came off kind of creepy at points. I conferred with Andrea and she had picked up on that as well.

Putting that aside there was also some not friendly giants who enjoyed eating people and a vegetable that had a face and danced as you ate it. There was also a scene about farting, which as you could imagine went down great with the kids. There was so pretty cool dream sequences where the background cast showcased their various talents such as fan dancing (forgive my ignorance about the actual name of the style), contemporary dance, acrobatics, latin dance, rapping, opera singing, and a bunch of other things I can't remember right now.

During intermission Andrea and I tried to complete the games in the program the play provided. They were supposed to be for children but these games were HARD. We gave up on them after a while. (Last night I caught Andrea trying to finish them, this is a solid week after we had seen the play).

The second half was even weirder. There was a woman dressed up as the Queen of England's corgi who was wearing spandex and had her butt up in the air the entire time, the Queen was played by a man, there were these weird army guys running around, more fart jokes.....I don't know it was all really bizarre.

At the end though they put bubbles out into the crowd and Andrea and I were the only adults swatting at them. Like, how can you have thousands of bubbles descending on your head and not try to pop them? I don't want to be an adult if that is how you have to live.

Anyways after the play we went outside to where a giant Ferris wheel has been set up for the Christmas Market! Andrea and I decided (aka she talked me into it), to go on it that moment despite how cold it was. Lordy, IT WAS COLD. But it was also a lot of fun. I also realized, while up on that Ferris wheel, that the older I get the more scared of heights I am becoming x.x


Till next time my friends!

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend The BBC Good Food Show! It was held at The NEC, which I had just been to for comic con! This, however, was much bigger than comic con was, and took up far more rooms in the massive building.

It was so overwhelming that it became chaotic in my mind. There was just so much to see and smell (and taste) that I was just running around like a chicken without a head! After the frantic rushing around I eventually realized two things: there was a lot of cheese, and there was a lot of liquor. I had to have had at least five or six little shots of different whiskey, vodka and who knows what else! Pictured below was a marshmallow flavored vodka that was fairly delicious. The chocolate wine that was being sampled at the same booth, however, was pretty disgusting.

I am not much of a fan of cheese, so I eventually got tired of trying all of that. Outside of that there were a few stands there that were just so delightful!

Garlic world, for example. An entire stand packed with garlic and garlic products. I tasted some garlic jam from here that cleared up my sinuses instantly, let me tell you! It was also pretty delicious.  I put garlic on just about everything I cook, so I really loved just standing there breathing it in.
There were some stranger things as well, such as an entire rack of smoking fish. I am not a fish lover, so I found this fairly disgusting, especially the smell, but if you like that sort of thing I imagine that would be wonderful.

Another thing that seemed to be very popular and had many vendors for was rapeseed oil. It has a seriously sketchy name, and I had never heard of it before, but it was everywhere. I have since looked it up and it is apparently a substitute for saturated fats and the main ingredient of many vegetable oils!
So there were a few companies in particular that I really took a liking to, and since I was there on a press pass I think it would be a good idea to give those companies a little bit of recognition!

Chocolate Tree

This chocolate company sells organic artisan chocolate with a wide variety of unique flavors! I tasted the rose white chocolate flavor, which I was dubious about but it was actually quite delicious! The company, which is based in Edinburgh, produces their chocolate straight from the bean. I love chocolate so their free samples made me really happy. If you have some extra money floating around and you want to indulge yourself, their chocolate might be the way to go!


So before moving to England I had never had chutney before, and have not had much of it since I got here, so I don't really have a basis or comparison. However I know what my tongue tells me, and this stuff was delicious! I tried the mango and the papaya chutney flavors. They were so delicious and spicy, but not in a way that burned your mouth! This chutney was really the only thing of the day I was tempted to buy. If chutney is your thing, and you like spicy, then I would definitely say give this a go!


So yea, those are the products I really enjoyed! The entire food show was a great experience and I had a fantastic time! I also managed to procure a oven mit for my house! This is a big deal because we have not had one since we moved in 2 months ago, and Andrea and I use the oven A LOT. All in all a successful day!

Last weekend was MCM Birmingham Comic Con!!! Andrea and I got press passes (woo!) so go. This is only the second comic con I have ever been to, the other being New York Comic Con. Obviously the two were going to be pretty different. Getting there was super easy as the arena, The NEC, is right next to the airport so all we had to do was hop on a train to get there. The train was PACKED, and and you could tell who was going to comic con from what they were wearing.

Once we finally got there and picked up our passes we headed into the hall it was being held in. As expected there were a lot of vendors and it was pretty crowded. I think next year it would probably be a good idea to open up the space a little bit.

Anyways, there was not as many people in cosplay as I expected, but then again my frame of reference is NYCC. There was still some pretty awesome costumes going around though! Especially in the Star Wars department. We only got pictures of this fantastic Han Solo/ Chewie from Star Wars though.
There was also a lovely pair of Disney ladies that caught our eye...
And my personal favorite, sexy Sauron!!!


Andrea and I spent the first few hours going through all the different shops and generally spending quite a lot of money. I did buy a few gifts for people back home, so it wasn't all for me! There was this one vendor selling movie and tv scripts which was really cool. I bought one for The Two Towers. It is gorgeous. There were quite a few vendors selling these nifty little framed pictures from movies with pieces of actual movie real stuck in next to it! Andrea bought one for The Princess Bride and got Cary Elwes to sign it later!


Speaking of Cary Elwes, yes he was there. He was doing autographing, photos, AND two panels. The panel room was...odd. It came to be known as "the marshmallow". It was basically a giant white inflatable room that could fit around 300 people. Unlike with NYCC, which had a line going into its panels that sometimes reached 5,000 people, at this little temporary room you could literally just stand at one of the entrances and watch the panels if you did not manage to get a seat. There was also NO STAFF controlling the situation or telling people what they could or could not do. This worked out fine for the most part...except when Tom Felton did his panel, but I am getting ahead of myself.

Andrea and I waited outside the room for a half hour to make sure we got into Cary Elwes, and we managed to get seats in the second row! Not bad. Cary was funny and engaging. I really enjoyed his panel. It was a running joke throughout the hour long session about how hot it was in the room, especially for poor Cary who had all the spotlights on him. You could see him sweating. Apart from that he talked about stories from the set of Princess Bride, his favorite memories from his career, and other fan questions. There was also some touching moments involving children in the audience as well.

So immediately after Cary was the big guest of the weekend, Tom Felton. Andrea and I had planned for this. Due to my experience at NYCC I knew that if you wanted to get a seat at the biggest panel of the weekend you needed to be there early, and if they were not making you clear the room after every panel you needed to hang on to your seat for dear life. So needless to say we did not move an inch in between panels and retained our amazing seats for Tom Felton.

Now a bit of background information. Tom has been traveling around the US and the UK filming a documentary about fandom for the BBC. So his panel was unique in that he was asking the audience the questions for his documentary. He came prepared with a bunch of questions about what it was like being a fan and everything was filmed.

GUESS WHO GOT TO ANSWER A QUESTION? THIS GAL! I was holding my hand up for a really long time and Tom told the man with the microphone to give it to me. *swoon*. He was looking right at me while I was talking which made me so nervous my hands and my voice were shaking. A few minutes after I answered the question he came back to me and talked directly to me about my answer for like three minutes. It was heaven. *ahem*. I am okay. It was really a lot of fun, but also kind of painful because I literally wanted to answer every question. At least I got my chance and now I could potentially be in the documentary! wooo!

After the panel finished we cleared out pretty quickly because it was around 500 degrees in the room and we were dying. We headed over to where Cary Elwes was signing autographs and waited around for that. Now, at this point it was around 4pm and neither of us had drank of eaten anything since like 7am. We were started to crash...hard. This led to a somewhat awkward interacting between me and Cary when I went up to get his signature, I was so out of it I completely walked in front of the girl who was supposed to be before me and started talking to him. He was very polite but pointed out it was not my turn and I felt like a colossal fool. Sigh.

We left for the train after that and it was then things really started to get difficult. I was dizzy, exhausted, dehydrated, and could barely think straight. By the time we got into Birmingham I was a mess and Andrea had to guide me around the train station. Do not go without eating or drinking an entire day kids! It is not good at all!!! When we got home I took care of myself and all was well. I will not be making that mistake again, however.

It was really a fantastic day, despite my almost passing out, and it was an awesome first taste of comic con for Andrea. We are bound determined to go to London comic con in the near future. It is all part of the nerd life ;)