nothing to make much ado about

Last month, Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing finally reached theaters. Of course, it didn't reach any theaters near me ... indy movies never come to Central City, and rarely do they play in Grand Island. But my sisters were as excited about this movie as I was, so we decided to see it in Chicago while Blendy and I were visiting Val in Indiana.

I went into the movie fully expecting to love it and anticipating that I'd want to rush out and buy it the instant it hits DVD. Well, that's not exactly what happened ...

You'd think that, as both a Shakespeare fan and a Whedon fan, I'd love this film. But I ended up feeling rather ambivalent about it. It was fine, but it certainly wasn't anything special. In fact, I was so bored during a few segments that I nearly fell asleep.

I'm all about modern-day adaptations of classic tales, but in this case, I didn't think the update really worked. For one thing, while it was a bit humorous at first to hear Shakespeare's words come out of the mouth of someone who was talking on a cell phone, I soon just found it distracting and even absurd. I didn't really buy Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker in their roles as Benedick and Beatrice—I know they were a beloved pair on Angel (which I never watched), but I didn't really think they had much chemistry. And the film is fairly dark—it doesn't carry the light, happy tone I expected. (When I voiced that last objection to Blendy, she said, "Of course it's dark. It's Whedon!" Which is true ... but it's also a Shakespeare comedy!)

That said, the film did do some things right. The scenes where Beatrice and Benedick hear about the other's supposed love for them were hilarious, full of great physical comedy. I enjoyed Fran Kranz as Claudio (Topher!), Reed Diamond as Don Pedro, and Clark Gregg as Leonato. But the best part, hands down, was Nathan Fillion as Dogberry. He completely knocked it out of the park! When I first heard that was his role, I was disappointed—in the Kenneth Branagh version, I always found Dogberry's scenes downright painful. Michael Keaton's Dogberry was gross, unkempt, and probably insane. Fillion's Dogberry was an idiot, but a hilarious one. (Go here to watch a clip.)

As we watched the film, I couldn't help but compare it to Kenneth Branagh's version, and I ended up concluding that the Branagh version is superior in every way except for the portrayal of Dogberry. I even preferred Keanu Reeves's sneering Don John!

All in all, I'm glad we were able to see the movie, but I don't think it's one I'll be adding to my collection.

Have you ever been disappointed by a movie you'd greatly anticipated?

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my (current) favorite things, june 2013 edition

This post has been a long time in the making. I've been thinking about it since before school got out, but then I had yearbook deadlines, book review deadlines, the excitement of searching for and buying a house, and an obsession with Covert Affairs that kept me from blogging. But finally, here we go—my current favorite things!

• Vaseline Spray and Go Moisturizer: I have just about the driest legs on the planet. I also can be incredibly lazy when it comes to moisturizing my skin. So the instant I saw the commercial for Vaseline's new spray lotion, I knew I needed to try it. It is absolutely fantastic! It does everything the commercial claims ... and it seriously takes like 10 seconds. Even I can handle that!
• ipsy: ipsy is one of those $10 monthly subscription boxes that's been popping up over the past couple of years. I went back and forth between ipsy and Birchbox, but I ended up choosing ipsy because most of the bloggers who compared the two favored ipsy. It's so fun to get beauty products in the mail! My first ipsy glam bag came in May, and I am currently using or have already used up four of the five items. The June glam bag wasn't so much "me" as the May bag was, and so far I've only used the Cailyn eyeliner. I'm going to stick with ipsy through the summer and then reevaluate. (I'm working on a post that talks about my items, but for now these pictures will have to suffice.) If you're interested in trying ipsy, you can sign up here.

My May glam bag.

My June glam bag. I got an extra item (the Baublebar bracelet) for referring people to the service.

• NCIS: Back when I had cable (almost three years ago now), I watched NCIS fairly frequently. Then I moved, and I no longer had TV. NCIS is one of the shows I didn't bother to keep up with online. Then in February, I came down with the flu, and I spent a week on my parents' couch. USA runs NCIS marathons several times a week, and I started watching them. Suddenly, I was completely hooked. Blendy and I are taking an accounting class together this summer (a decision I seriously regret...), and we decided to reward ourselves after completing our assignments by watching NCIS episodes. I picked up several seasons on sale on Amazon, so we started with the pilot, and we're working our way through. Currently, we're in season two. Honestly, the promise of more NCIS is just about the only thing motivating me to do my homework. (On a side note, I've often wondered if I missed my calling and should have gone into accounting. The answer to that question is an unequivocal NO!) 
• Covert Affairs: Not since Dawson's Creek have I been so entirely addicted to a TV show. I watched the first three seasons of Covert Affairs in about three weeks, and I'm now eagerly anticipating Season 4, which premieres next month. (And I'm ever so thankful that my parents now have cable, which will enable me to watch the show as it airs!) Blendy calls Covert Affairs "Alias lite," and I suppose it is. (Lead Piper Perabo even bears a striking resemblance to Jennifer Garner.) But it's also a whole lot of fun. Christopher Gorham as blind CIA operative Auggie is adorable as usual, and if you didn't know he could see, you'd swear he was blind. Then you have the fabulous Peter Gallagher (Sandy Cohen from The O.C. and Peter on my favorite movie of all time, While You Were Sleeping) as CIA bigwig Arthur Campbell, a great love triangle, and intriguing story lines ... basically, you end up with a show that may not be as mind-bendingly awesome as Alias, but it sure is fun to watch! If you have Amazon Prime, you can stream the first three seasons free. Check out the pilot here.
• Xtra Bacon: Sometime during the last season of The Bachelor, I stumbled across a hilarious podcast that recaps/mocks the show. That podcast is part of the Xtra Bacon Network, a group of pop culture podcasts and blogs. If you're a fan of The Bachelor/ette, I highly recommend you check out Knox & Jamie's hilarious commentary. They even mentioned one of my tweets (at 15:45) in this episode!
• Steel Cut Oats: I have always thought I hated hot oatmeal. Then several months ago, I stayed overnight with my aunt, and she made steel cut oats for breakfast. Oh. My. Goodness. They were so good! I've started making them about three times each week—I just throw 1/4 cup of steel cut oats and 1-1/2 cups water in my little crockpot right before I go to bed, and it's ready in the morning. With a little brown sugar and cinnamon, it's fantastic ... and it keeps me full throughout the morning.
• That Guy ... Who Was in That Thing: When I decided to dump Netflix, this was the only item in my queue that I knew I wanted to watch before my subscription ran out. It's a documentary about character actors, and it features lots of people I recognized, including Timothy Omundson (Lassiter on Psych), Gregory Itzin (Henry Wilcox on my new fav Covert Affairs), Xander Berkeley (Percy on Nikita), and Bruce Davison (he's been in a million things, including X-Men and X2, but I'll always remember him as the teacher in The Wave, an ABC Afterschool Special that we watched in my college speech class). I really enjoyed it! You can watch it here.

Are any of my favorites your favorites? Now that I've finished Covert Affairs, do you have a show I should binge-watch? What are some of your favorite things that I should check out? Let me know in the comments!

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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dumping netflix

I joined Netflix in the summer of 2007. At the time, streaming video was fairly new, and members could stream 1 hour of video for each dollar they paid per month (or something like that). There wasn't much available to stream then, but Netflix soon began devoting large amounts of money to acquiring streaming content.

When Netflix announced its price hike in 2011, I ditched the DVDs and selected a streaming plan. And I remained happy with Netflix.

I'm still happy with Netflix ... but as of July 7, I will no longer be a subscriber. Why? Well, the answer is twofold. First of all, I'm buying a house, so I'm trying to save all the money I can. Netflix is far from being a necessity. Secondly, I also have Amazon Prime (which I get at a reduced price through Amazon Student). Prime includes free two-day shipping and free streaming of select movies and television shows. Amazon's selection has improved vastly in the last year, and now that Amazon Instant Videos can (finally!) be streamed through the Wii, I've been watching more Prime videos than ever. Prime doesn't have as many movies or TV seasons as Netflix, but there's more than enough to keep me occupied. In fact, I'm currently watching two shows that aren't available on Netflix: Covert Affairs and 7th Heaven. Couple that with the fact that I only watched three of the last 100 things streamed on my account, and I have to conclude that my money would be better spent elsewhere. (Multiple family members use my account ... and apparently they use it a whole lot more than I do!)

Of course, as I've been sitting here typing, I've been thinking about the myriad of items in my queue. Felicity isn't on Amazon Prime. Neither is Nikita. Or The Artist, which I've been intending to watch for the past year. And that's the key—I have 330 items in my queue, but how many of them will I actually watch? Maybe 5 or 10 percent? Just last night, I queued up an episode of Felicity, thinking that if I ever wanted to finish the series, I should do it now. I watched about two seconds before switching to Covert Affairs through Prime. I honestly can't think of one thing that I would be bummed about missing if my subscription ended tomorrow instead of three weeks from now.

As of right now, I think I'll come back to Netflix someday. But maybe I'll discover that I don't miss it much at all.

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buying a house

About six years ago, my aunt told me I should buy a house. She said it was a good investment and I was at a point in my life where I should be thinking about such things.

I ignored her completely.

To be honest, I really never considered buying a house before because it seemed like to do so would be admitting defeat. Admitting that I truly might never get married. Admitting that I might stay in Central City for the rest of my life.

But here's the thing: I like living in Central City. I enjoy my job. Yeah, it took me awhile to get to this point, but in recent years, any time I've thought about moving away, it's because someone else suggested that I should—really, I'm very happy here. And it's time I embraced that. Besides, buying a house somewhere doesn't mean you'll live there forever.

As for the singleness issue, I'm well aware that I may have said sayonara to my one chance at marriage last year. But maybe I didn't. Maybe the man who will make me feel what Abbie feels when she sees Nate is still out there. Why would I think that my buying a house would prevent him from showing up? That's just ludicrous.

So I'm taking the plunge. I'm buying a house. And now that I'm doing it, all my previous hesitations seem completely ridiculous.

It's really amazing how it has all worked out, and I'm still a little bewildered by it all. God definitely orchestrated this. As one of my Bible study friends said last night, isn't it crazy that, while I had no clue, God knew that during this week, while I was crazy-busy with VBS, He would bring me a house?

Here's how it happened: A little less than a month ago, a coworker asked me if I was interested in buying a house. She and her husband had purchased a house in Central City for her and their girls to live in while they attended Nebraska Christian. The girls graduated this year, so they are looking to sell the house. I went to check it out, and I liked it, but I didn't love it. But looking at that house made me realize that I really did want to own a home, so I kept looking.

I looked at a second house two weeks later. This one looked amazing on paper, but the basement was a complete deal breaker. It reminded me of my great-grandparents' basement. It was damp, it smelled musty, and it just looked ... unpleasant. I liked the upstairs, loved the backyard, and hated the basement.

After that, I wasn't sure where to look. I thought about checking out the first house again. And then one day last week, my dad told me I should look at a house that he had just noticed. I looked it up online on Thursday and decided it had definite potential. Friday afternoon, I called the realtor, and he said I could look at it Friday evening. I took Blendy and Dad with me, and we all liked it. Well, Blendy and Dad liked it; I fell in love the instant I stepped inside! I looked at the house again on Monday, this time taking my mom along as well. As we walked through the house, I couldn't help but talk about how my things would fit into the house. I spoke with a loan officer from a local bank on Tuesday afternoon and then made an official offer on the house. Tuesday night, I dreamed that the sellers decided they didn't like me and wouldn't sell it to me no matter how much I offered. (This was such a realistic dream that I woke up believing I'd lost the house.) On Wednesday morning, I learned my offer had been accepted! Now the only thing left is to get the loan ... so I spent a couple hours yesterday filling out the application and a couple hours today locating all the documents the loan officer requested.

This house is perfect for me! Two bedrooms, one bathroom (recently remodeled), remodeled kitchen, living room, family room, fenced in backyard. The only thing I don't love about it is the lack of a garage—the garage was converted into the family room. I'm very excited to have a dishwasher again, and I'm looking forward to letting my cats be in the house.

And I will be especially happy to say goodbye to the dog next door, who recently did this to my welcome mat:

Is it okay to say you hate an animal? 'Cause I certainly don't have any positive feelings for that dog!

No pictures yet, but I promise to post some after I get moved in. It's looking like we'll close in early August.

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quitting aspartame

About six weeks ago, I quit aspartame. Cold turkey. I'd been hearing bad things about aspartame for a long time, and, regardless of the truth behind all the dire warnings, I knew that consuming so much aspartame couldn't be good for me.

When I was a senior in high school, I spent a month on the Atkins diet. I was miserable, and I ended up dreaming of potatoes before I decided to run far away from the diet ... but one thing from the diet that stuck was the switch I made from regular to diet pop. But where I'd been drinking maybe three or four regular sodas per week, when it came to the diet pop, it was a free for all. It wasn't unusual for me to drink two or three cans per day. In college, I had pop with every meal except breakfast. I regularly drank two cans per day at work. And any time I went out to eat, I'd have four, five, or even six glasses of pop.

I'm honestly not sure how I made the decision to quite aspartame ... I just did it. The first week was torture. I knew I'd be giving up my beloved Diet Coke, but I had no idea how prevalent aspartame is. All of my gum? Gone. My water enhancers (Mio, Crystal Light)? Gone. I spent about a week longing for what I could no longer have. Plus, there were the physical symptoms. I had some of the worst headaches I've ever had in my life during that week. And three days after I quit, I had scary physical symptoms—heart palpitations, shakiness, and extreme fatigue.

It hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows since that week, but all my withdrawal symptoms are gone, and I'm proud of myself for making this change!

It's important to note that I haven't quit all artificial sweeteners—that would be practically impossible, though I know it would be good for me—but my use of sweeteners is dramatically less. I found a gum (Dentyne Fire) that doesn't use aspartame as a sweetener. And I bought a SodaStream. It uses artificial sweeteners in most of its syrups, but no aspartame or high fructose corn syrup. My pop consumption has dropped to about 12 ounces per day—not ideal, but much better than before. I now read labels on practically all food and drink before I buy it—fortunately, everything containing aspartame must be labeled with the following warning: "Phenylketonurics: Contains Phenylalanine," which saves me from reading through insanely long ingredient lists.

This is definitely a lifestyle change for me, but it's so worth it! I feel healthier, and I've even dropped a couple pounds even though I haven't changed my exercise habits. I know I have a long way to go before I'm truly living a healthy lifestyle (and if you know how to magically make me like fruits and vegetables, please let me know!), but I'm proud of myself for taking this first step.

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look what i got!

As a book blogger, I get a lot of books in the mail. (Duh.) You might think that getting packages in the mail becomes old hat—that the thrill of seeing a package outside my door would diminish. You would be wrong. Each time I pull into my driveway and glimpse a package by the door, my heart leaps in anticipation!

Today, I saw three packages. The first two were books I've been looking forward to reading, as I've really enjoyed other books by these authors.

But the third package? The third package contained a book I've been greatly anticipating for nearly a year!

Do you see what that says? "Book Gift from Becky Wade." In February, I received a direct message from Becky Wade on Twitter. She said that as a thank you for my support of her book My Stubborn Heart (which I named my top book of 2012), she'd like to send me an influencer copy of her next book. Of course, I said yes! So while I won't be on an official tour for this book, I'll still be reviewing it ... and hopefully soon.

Trust me, it took just about all the willpower I possess to keep from devouring the book as soon as I took it out of the envelope. But I have three other books that have to be reviewed by next week, so Undeniably Yours will have to wait ... for now. As I sit here at my dining room table, I can practically hear the book calling to me from the living room bookshelf—something tells me I'll be reading it sooner rather than later. And when I do, I'll be sure to tell you all about it.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received the aforementioned books free for review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

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chew spry gum and watch a great movie!

I went to the dentist yesterday. It was a pretty normal experience, as far as preventative care visits go. My dentist always gives the same spiel about eating foods that are good for your teeth, staying away from sugary drinks, etc. And he normally says to chew gum that contains xylitol because it can actually help your teeth. Well, he changed it up a bit yesterday, recommending (and giving me samples of) a specific gum which contains no sweeteners other than xylitol: Spry.

Immediately, I recognized the name, but it took me a while to figure out why. Then it hit me—My Girlfriend's Boyfriend! It's a movie I fell in love with a few years ago, and my post about it is actually my #1 viewed post of all time. (You can see it here.) Spry gum has a supporting role in the film—the main character's brother is the spokesman for Spry. I always thought the gum was made up for the movie, but I guess not!

See the clip about Spry, which is one of my favorite sequences in the film:
Now that you've seen the clip, go ahead and watch the whole movie. It's so cute and clean! Oh, and—if you can find it—buy some Spry to go with the movie!

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