Dessert Day - the "what the eff, Jamie Oliver?" edition

Over the past couple of years, it's become a little bit of a tradition that Deidre and I get together, possibly bake something, meet up with Inspector Climate, go to a 6pm-ish movie, and are all back at our respective homes by like 9.30pm. Which is FABULOUS, because it means you're busy on New Year's Eve, but don't have to spend a million years at a party socialising with people you're not particularly interested in socialising with. You can go to bed at 10pm if you want, or you can ring in the new year sitting on the sofa in your PJs and watching Jurassic Park for the five hundredth time. In short, it's the best New Year's Eve of ever.

Anyway.

We decided to do Dessert Day pretty much at the last minute and so had almost zero ideas of what we wanted to make. Eventually, I remembered the salted caramel brownies that I'd had in London and decided that sounded like just the thing. So I trawled the internet for recipes and came up with this one from Jamie Oliver.

And let me tell you, there were a few things that made almost zero sense to us.
1. Crinkling up the baking paper and wetting it. Pretty sure it made no difference whatsoever...
2. The whole not stirring thing. Golden syrup is really thick and it's pretty hard to swirl it.
3. The size of the baking tins involved. They both seemed much larger than was entirely necessary.

Pre-baking

Post-baking. Definitely didn't look like the picture...

On the plus side, they were delicious

 In between baking, we watched Pitch Perfect and ate far too much roast pumpkin dip and fancy cheese (using the cheese cleaver, obviously. It's not Dessert Day without the cheese cleaver).

And while the brownies were delicious, there were a few things that we decided we'd do differently in the future:
1. Make more salted caramel. This quantity seemed insufficient.
2. Use a smaller pan so that it's easier to hide the chunks of caramel in the brownie.
3. Freeze half the caramel, cut it into chunks, and bury the chunks in the brownie. Much easier than dealing with sticky spoonfuls.
4. Pour some of the caramel over the top AFTER they've been baked so that it doesn't all get absorbed into the surface of the brownie.

Still, they were delicious whether warm or cold, and the combination of salted caramel and suuuuper dark chocolate was fairly phenomenal. So on the whole, I'd call them a win. Just not as much of a win as they could have been with a few alterations.

And then we went to see The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies. I'd recommend the brownies way before I recommended the movie. It was...not great. But, you know, there was a battle pig, so that's something!

Have you made salted caramel brownies? Which recipe did you use? And did it involve scrunching up and wetting the baking paper?? Because that still seems weird...

K xx

Best of 2014 - Music edition

I've covered off books, movies, and TV shows, so now it's time to talk about the best music I've discovered in 2014!

I probably say this every year, but I'm not really much of a music person. I can't stand the radio 99% of the time, and I basically only listen to music when I'm on public transport and want to block out the world. Still, there are a number of stand-out songs and albums for me this year.

Taylor Swift - Blank Space and Shake It Off

One of these days, I'll get enough iTunes credit to download the whole of 1989, but for now I've been obsessed with these two songs for the past few months. They're both absolutely amazing, and I'm kind of astonished (as are, it seems, many others) to find myself a big fan of Taylor Swift and the growth she seems to have undergone this year. And nothing shows this growth more strongly that songs like Blank Space.

Original Broadway Cast - The Book of Mormon Soundtrack

Eventually, I'll get around to telling you guys about the rest of my trip. For now, I'll simply say that C and I went to see Book of Mormon, and it was absolutely amazing from start to finish and the soundtrack never fails to make me ridiculously happy. Also, I'm kind of proud of my new life skill - listening to Book of Mormon on public transport with a total poker face.

The Basics - The Lucky Country

Technically, I heard them perform this song live last year, but it wasn't released until late this year, and it's pretty damned spectacular. It's a return to the great Aussie protest songs brought out by the likes of Paul Kelly and Midnight Oil, and I'm so glad I can finally listen to it over and over again.

Billy Boyd - The Last Goodbye

Excuse me while I ugly cry forever. I have yet to see The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies, simply because it doesn't come out in Australia until Boxing Day. But I LOVE that they got Billy Boyd to sing the song for the end credits. Because Billy Boyd singing in Return of the King is such a huge part of what I love about that movie, and so it adds a nice sense of having come full circle to include him in the final part of The Hobbit, especially seeing as the video includes footage from all six films and behind the scenes.

Original Soundtrack - Guardians of the Galaxy

Seriously, there are no words for how much I adore this soundtrack. It's absolutely fabulous from start to finish. 10/10 would recommend.

Fall Out Boy - My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark

I know, I'm late to the party on this one. But I've heard it A LOT this year at the gym, and it just keeps growing on me to the point where I finally downloaded it and listen to it on an endless loop because it's just so stinking good.

What songs/bands/musicians have you discovered this year?

Merry Christmas, y'all. I'll be back on the 29th with my Worst of 2014.

K xx

The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

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This is the ninth book that I've read for Classics Club so far, and that means I'm 15% of the way through my list. Now, someone remind me not to leave all the ones I'm dreading until the end, yes??

Bilbo Baggins and I go back a long way. Back, in fact, to 1994 when my mum read The Hobbit to me and my little brother as a bedtime story over the course of several weeks. I've read it maybe twice since then, but the last time I did a reread was probably in about 2009, so it's been a while.

I'm pretty sure everyone knows the story of Bilbo Baggins and his adventure to the Lonely Mountain, whether it's from the book version or the two (soon to be three) movies that Peter Jackson's managed to drag out of a 350 page book. But what surprised me this time around was how obvious it is that it's a children's book. Maybe it's that I've been reading more middle-grade books since I started working in a primary school library, and so it's more obvious to me?? Whatever it is, there's something about the descriptions, about the language used, about the simplicity of much of the dialogue that just makes the intended audience incredibly obvious.

It shows through too in the fact that much of the violence of the story - and it IS a violent story. There's a dragon, trolls, giant spiders, and an enormous battle for starters! - takes place quickly and in very brief terms. The Battle of the Five Armies takes place over the course of seven pages, and at least one of those pages is basically Bilbo going "Oh shit, we're all going to die" and then getting knocked unconscious. Smaug being defeated takes about a page to describe, and the dwarfs have no idea it even happened until days after the event. It's all surprisingly low-key when compared to the story that Peter Jackson tells us.

I loved the story, as I always have. But what I loved most this time around were Tolkien's illustrations. Despite being simple, black and white line drawings, they really bring the story to life. Especially when it's apparent how much the illustrations have influenced the set designs in the films. All you have to do is look at Tolkien's drawing of the front hall at Bag End to see the similarities:

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All in all, I love the somewhat childish story Tolkien weaves. It gives you this warm fuzzy sense of nostalgia while still being full of action. And I'll be very interested to see how Peter Jackson handles the remaining chunk of the book (I mean, he inserted that ridiculous dip-the-dragon-in-melted-gold scene to The Desolation of Smaug, so......) when the final film comes out at the end of the year.

In short, there's a reason this book is a children's classic and remains on bestseller lists across the globe - it's really freaking good.

Have you read it? What did you think? And are you equally intrigued by how Peter Jackson is going to turn, like, one chapter of a book into a two and a half hour movie?!

K xx

Movie Monday: The Hobbit - Desolation of Smaug

I rang in the new year seeing Desolation of Smaug with Deidre and Inspector Climate. It's been a month or so since it came out, and a good 75+ years since the book was first published, so I don't think anything in here can count as spoilers. Therefore, this is a jump cut free zone.

On the whole, I really enjoyed the film. It was beautifully shot and set and costumed, there was plenty of action without it feeling relentless, and I mostly enjoyed the stuff that had been added to Tolkien's original story. But there were other things that I was somewhat skeptical about and others that had me completely on the NOPE train. You want more detail, you say? No problem.

What I loved:

• Smaug. Brilliant from start to finish. Dragons, much like werewolves, have a tendency to look a little not quite right in films. But not this one. Benedict Cumberbatch - who's quick to tell interviewers that he provided the motion capture as well as the voice - did a fantastic job. 
• Lee Pace as Thranduil. Especially when he was chopping off heads.

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• The spiders and basically everything with the dwarves wandering around in Mirkwood. Creep-tastic. Plus, Bilbo got to be the hero again. 
• Tauriel. She may be a completely made up character, but I thank all the stars in the heavens for her inclusion. Not only would it have been a total sausage-fest without her, but she's the most BAMF-tastic female character we've seen in Middle Earth thus far. Yes, Eowyn goes into battle and kills the Witch King. But apart from that, she mostly seems to lurk around making awful soup and pining over Aragorn. And Arwen, outside of her one moment of "If you want him, come and claim him!" excellence, seems to mostly turn up in dreams to keep Aragorn on his path. Tauriel, on the other hand, is captain of the guard. She goes to Laketown not to save Kili - if that was the reason for it, she'd have taken medicinal herbs with her - but to prevent innocent people from being killed because of Thranduil's decision. She does her job protecting the borders, though it's not her homeland, and she does what she thinks is right. And she does it all with truly fabulous hair. 

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What was just okay:

• Gandalf going off by himself to investigate the necromancer. It seemed a little too similar visually to his fights with Saruman and the Balrog. But maybe that's just me...
• Legolas. While I did enjoy the fact that this lets us see how much his character changes over the year - dwarf hater here, BFFs with Gimli in Lord of the Rings - and he did have some fabulous lines, it did feel a little like they were trying to jam him into a situation where he didn't quite fit. Add in a few little situations where he gets to reprise his LOTR role as the-one-who-dances-across-the-top-of-the-enemy-and-who-slides-into-the-shot-on-a-shield and it was enough to have me rolling my eyes a little. Plus, the eyeliner was a liiiiiiiiiittle over the top...

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• The barrels scene. Most of it was really brilliantly shot, considering they would have had a limited number of opportunities. But the footage that was shot IN THE WATER? Nope. It was really low quality compared to the rest of the footage, and it stuck out like a sore thumb.

What I really didn't like:

• Gold plated dragon. Yes, a dragon has scales to protect it. But you cannot cover an entire animal in MELTED METAL and then have it fly away without a scratch. Gold may be a soft metal, but it still melts at over 1,000°C. The temperature of lava is somewhere between 700° and 1,200°C. You can't set things up so that the One Ring (and Gollum) can be destroyed by the lava river in Mount Doom, but Smaug could be all "Nah, I'm good". Especially seeing as he has eyes and nostrils and (presumably) a butthole and that one spot where a scale fell off that wouldn't be protected. IT JUST DOESN'T WORK (even if it is visually awesome). 

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• Thorin zooming down the melted gold in a wheelbarrow. Even if it's made of a metal that melts at a higher temperature than gold, there's no way that his legs wouldn't melt off from the radiant heat.
• "You have keen eyes, Master Baggins!". Are you fucking kidding me, Thorin? THERE'S A TEN STOREY HIGH STATUE OF A DWARF LITERALLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. 
• Bombur fighting orcs in the dregs of a barrel. It just...no. 

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• The love triangle. SIGH. Apparently Evangeline Lilly was equally pissed off about this because she said that she'd only do the movie if there was no love triangle. They filmed it all and there was nothing, then they called her back in a few months later to do some extra scenes, and BOOM. Love triangle. 
• The ending. If they'd finished it with Smaug's little speech, I would have been fine with it. But Bilbo's "What have we done?" just smacked off "LOOK, A CLIFFHANGER!!!!!!! Come back in 12 months!". And it was completely unnecessary.

Overall, it came out at about a solid B+ for me. What did you think?

K xx

New Zealand - the hobbit chasing edition

Previously, Ness and I enjoyed Kat's hospitality as she showed us the sights of Auckland (and further afield).

After our four days in Auckland, we packed up our stuff and headed out to pick up our travelling companion for the next week - a teeny tiny Hyundai Getz. The hire car company had promised that it came with maps, so we didn't bother to book a GPS. The maps turned out to be either insanely localised OR the whole of the North Island on one A4 page, so it was a good thing that I'd looked up specific directions in Google Maps before we left Kat's wifi.

A little hesitantly, we hit the road and headed south. Luckily, New Zealand is not like Australia and they actually number their freeways and the associated exits. WHEEEEEEEE. That made navigating a lot easier. We hit a little rain on the way down, but luckily it stopped before we reached our destination or had to do any SERIOUS navigating because while getting to Matamata was entirely straightforward, there was an almost entire lack of brown tourist signs from there, which led us to drive about 10km down a windy country road almost entirely convinced that we were going the wrong way. And then, about 200m before the driveway, there was a sign. HOW HELPFUL.

Still, we reached our destination with sufficient time left over to have a wee spot of lunch. Appropriate, really, considering where we were. Our destination?

Not gonna lie, I haven't fangirled that hard since I went to Wizarding World of Harry Potter this time last year.

I think I was one of the few people on our tour who was actually fangirling though - most of the other people on our tour seemed to be of the "when in New Zealand..." approach to things. Or they were hiding their excitement a lot better than I was...

The first thing we saw was the narrow passageway where Frodo jumps onto Gandalf's cart at the start of Fellowship of the Ring. Which, coincidentally, is the same one that Bilbo runs through yelling out that he's going on an adventure in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey:

That led us into a cluster of small sized hobbit holes. They have small ones and big ones, you see, so that they can film both sets of shots.

Each one is completely individual. The attention to detail is astonishing, and the gardens are beautifully maintained.

Across the village green and up a small rise, we came to the larger sized hobbit holes, and a view across Hobbiton as a whole:

At the top of the hill, there were hobbit holes of each size where we could go right up to the front doors. Obviously, I took advantage of the situation for photos:

At the top of the hill was the biggest and most fabulous hobbit hole of all. And, for some bizarre reason, I was the only person on the tour (or at least the only one on the tour who would admit it) who knew who lived in this particular hobbit hole. Because, you know, it's SO TRICKY:

Bag End is the only hobbit hole that actually has an interior, purely because they had to have shots where either Bilbo or Frodo was standing in the doorway and you could see down the passage behind them.

Down the other side of the hill, we came to this fabulous signpost:

And then to the field where Bilbo's 111th birthday party is held, which gives a great view back to Bag End, and the massive tree on top of it. Said tree, you'll be interested to know, is entirely fake. The leaves were individually spray painted and wired on by a team of university students, and when Peter Jackson decided the colour wasn't quite right, they had to go back and spray paint them all again. Good grief. (Still, it looks pretty amazing)

Off to one side of the party field (which was basically just a field, hence the lack of photos) was Sam's house. Usually, you'd be able to go up to the fence but the day we were there, the gardeners were doing some work (how appropriate!), so I had to make do with this instead:

And then it was off on a little walk around the lake-y pond-y thing to the Green Dragon for a well earned drink (it was surprisingly warm in the sun):

The pub was beautifully presented, and was actually built by the family who own the property, rather than the film crew. It wouldn't surprise me if they expand it to include accommodation so that you can stay at Hobbiton!

It was a completely fabulous couple of hours, and I'd recommend it in a second. It's not cheap by any means. But it's TOTALLY worth the time and money.

Next up, we head to Rotorua and all its associated stinkiness!

Hands up if you'd fangirl over a visit to Hobbiton as much as I did?

K xx

Movie Monday: Iron Man

I've made very little secret of the fact that I'm a massive fan of the MCU. And that I think Marvel is approximately 10,000 times better than DC. So it's kind of surprising that it's taken me this long to get around to covering where the latest stream of Marvel awesomeness began. Still, I got there eventually, and if you can think of a better way to spend New Year's Eve than going to see The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, then coming home and watching Iron Man, I think you're wrong.

Reasons why Iron Man is awesome:
1. Robert Downey Jr. I mean, come on. He's one of the most fabulous comeback stories in the world today.
2. Tony's response to testing the Jericho.
3. Gwyneth Paltrow. There are literally no words for how much I adore Pepper Potts in the movies, and I'm not sure anyone else could play her so brilliantly.
4. The press conferences.
5. Paul Bettany as Jarvis. Do not try and tell me Jarvis isn't a character. I will not believe you.
6. Tony's test flights.

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7. Clark Gregg as Coulson. As much as I find Agents of SHIELD to be incredibly dull, the MCU wouldn't be the same without Coulson.
8. The scene where Pepper's stealing files.
9. Terrence Howard as Rhodey. I adore Don Cheadle as Rhodey, but there's just something about Terrence Howard in the first one that makes him seem more...military. Or something. IDK, he's great.
10. The scene where the eyes on Obadiah's suit light up in the darkness.
11. Proof That Tony Stark Has A Heart.

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12. Ingenuity. Who else but Tony Stark could design and build a suit like that while being held captive in Afghanistan?
13. Jeff Bridges. He's a brilliant villain that you didn't see coming.
14. Tony hiding on the belly of a fighter jet.
15. The Mark 1 suit. Ugly as hell, but does the job.
16. Replacing Tony's arc reactor.

I tried really hard to find a gifset of this scene. Womp womp. Also, source.

17. The soundtrack.
18. Defending the innocent, then letting them get their own back.
19. The house in Malibu. I mean, come on. That house is fabulous.
20. Dummy and the fire extinguisher.

Plus, the following quotes:
- "Iron Man. That's kind of catchy. It's got a nice ring to it. I mean it's not technically accurate. The suit's a gold titanium alloy, but it's kind of provocative, the imagery anyway."
- "So, you're a man who has everything...and nothing."
- "Okay, this is where I DON'T want to be."
- "Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!"
- "Well, Ms. Brown. It's an imperfect world, but it's the only one we got. I guarantee you the day weapons are no longer needed to keep the peace, I'll start making bricks and beams for baby hospitals." "Rehearse that much?" "Every night in front of the mirror before bedtime."
- "Please don't follow me around with it either because I feel like I'm going to catch on fire spontaneously. Just stand down. If something happens, then come in."
- "Am I making you uncomfortable?" "Oh, no, I always forget to wear deodorant and dance with my boss in a room full of people I work with in a dress with no back.
- "The truth is...I am Iron Man."
- "If you douse me again, and I'm not on fire, I'm donating you to a city college."
- "You are institutionally incapable of being responsible."
- "Who the hell are you?" "Nick Fury. Director of SHIELD." "Ah." "I'm here to talk to you about the Avenger Initiative."
- "I do anything and everything that Mr. Stark requires. Including occasionally taking out the trash."
- "Oh, my God, you crazy son of a bitch! You owe me a plane, you know that, right?" "Yeah, well, technically he hit me, so..."
- "What is going on in here?!" "Let's face it, this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing."
- "Doesn't it kind of defeat the whole purpose of having your own plane if it departs before you arrive?!"
- "I'm sorry. This is the fun-vee. The humdrum-vee is back there."
- "Just call us SHIELD."
- "Good God, you're a woman! I honestly, I couldn't have called that. I mean, I would apologize, but isn't that what we're going for here? I thought of you as a soldier first." "I'm an airman."
- "Oh... ah... EWW, there's pus!" "It's not pus. It's an inorganic plasmic discharge. It's from the device, not my body." "It smells!" "Yeah, it does."

Happy Monday, y'all.

K xx

101 in 1001 #1

Well, hello! I had every intention of starting to tell you guys all about my trip on Wednesday, and then I ended up spending a hundred years writing selection criteria responses and the next thing I knew, it was 10.30pm. And then I was going to do the same yesterday, but I ended up spending the afternoon Hulk smashing the planet because of the Buffy episode that we were covering on Snark Squad today, which has been the cause of many MANY ranty "WTF IS THIS EPISODE???" emails between Lor, Sweeney, and myself.

ANYWAY. As it's now after 6pm on a Friday night, I'm too lazy to start telling you about my trip in detail. So instead, I shall tell you this: that my trip crossed off the very first thing on my 101 in 1001 list(!!) - to visit a new country. Sure, I've flown through Auckland a bunch of times, but I'd never actually left the airport or cleared passport control. And now I have! Not that I have the stamp to prove it... *sad panda*

I promise I'll start telling you about my trip really soon. But in the meantime, here's some purdy pictures to prove that I actually left the country:

Auckland

HOBBITON!

The Champagne Pool

Mt Ngauruhoe

Wellington

Have good weekends, y'all.

K xx

I'm going on an adventure

I know I've mentioned this on Twitter and in the comments sections on a few posts, and probably in passing a couple of times, but I realised today that I've never actually properly told you guys something pretty big. And that something is this:

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Yes, my friends. At stupid o'clock on Saturday morning, I will be heading to the airport to board a plane to the land of the long white cloud. (The stupid o'clock part is not an exaggeration - my plane is at 8.10am, so I have to be at the airport by like 6am. URGH)

I'm flying into Auckland, where Ness and I will be staying with our BFF Kat for a few days. Then we're hitting the road. We'll head down to Matamata to go here:

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Hobbiton, more precisely. BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY. Then it's on to Rotorua, which apparently smells a lot like fart, but which is full of awesome geysers and hot springs as well as places to see kiwis and keas, and learn about Maori culture.

From there, we hit the road again and head south for Tongariro National Park, home to a ton of waterfalls and rainforests and three volcanoes. One of which you may know better as Mount Doom! We plan on doing a couple of bushwalks (known in New Zealand as "tramps". LOLOLOLOLOL). Plus, we're staying in a schmantzy hotel that looks a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittle bit like the hotel in The Shining... O.o

A couple of days later, it's back on the road time, and we're heading across to Waitomo to check out the glow worm caves of awesomeness:

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Aaaaaaand then it's back to Auckland and the airport. Ness is heading Christchurch, and I'm heading To Wellington. Why? TO SEE KIM, OF COURSE. We have been all caps emailing about it for months. There will be museum-ing and Marvel-ing and generally having All The Fun, and it will be MAGICAL.

So there you have it. If I'm not around much over the next couple of weeks? That's why.

Wish me good weather?

K xx

Movie Monday: The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey

When I went to see Man of Steel last week, they showed the trailer for The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug, and I fangirl flailed so hard that everyone thought I was insane. You know, just for a change. So when I was at Target yesterday and they had An Unexpected Journey on DVD for $10, I figured that it was the perfect opportunity to revisit the first part of the series. (Just don't revisit it at 10pm because you will be there FOREVER...)

Reasons why The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey is awesome:
1. Dwarfmitage. You guys know I loves me some Richard Armitage, and Nikki and I were insanely excited when we found out that he was playing Thorin. He's pretty fabulous though.
2. Martin Freeman.
3. The plates scene, especially Kili and Fili.
4. The Misty Mountains Cold.


5. The dwarves OMFG.
6. Gollum.
7. The first drawing of young Bilbo, which is half Ian Holm, half Martin Freeman. Awesomeness.
8. Ian McKellan.
9. Sneak peeks of Smaug.

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10. It puts the events of LOTR into perspective.
11. The soundtrack.
12. Erebor.
13. I swear to God, Elijah Wood hasn't aged at ALL.
14. Fainting Bilbo.

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15. Bilbo running to catch up with the dwarves.
16. Oaken shields.
17. Rabbit sleighs.
18. Sylvester McCoy. He's pretty great.

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19. The trolls.
20. The scenery.
21. Stone giants.
22. Bofur's hat.

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23. The riddle competition.
24. Gandalf's sudden appearance in Goblin Town. Awesomeness.
25. Bilbo saving Thorin.
26. The eagles. Okay, so they totally could have dropped them off CLOSER TO THE LONELY MOUNTAIN. But it's still pretty awesome.

Plus, the following quotes:
- "It's just the usual; summary of out-of-pocket expenses, time required, remuneration, funeral arrangements, so forth." "Funeral arrangements? Oh, up to but not exceeding one fourteenth total profit if any. Seems fair. Present company shall not be liable for injuries including but not limited to laceration, evisceration... incineration?" "Oh, aye. He'll melt the flesh off your bones in the blink of an eye." "You all right, laddie?" "Yeah, I'll be. Feel a bit faint." "Think furnace, with wings." "Yeah, I-I-I need air..." "Flash of light, searing pain, then poof, you're nothing more than a pile of ash!" "...No. [faints]"
- "Is he a great wizard, or is he more like you?"
- "I don't like green food." "Where's the meat?" "Have they got any chips?"
- "If Baggins loses, we eats it whole." "...Fair enough."
- "All good stories deserve embellishment."
- "I'm going on an adventure!"
- "I've got parasites as big as me arm!"
- "Do not speak to me of Radagast the Brown. He is a foolish fellow." "Well, he's odd, I'll grant you. He lives a solitary life..." "It's not that. It's his excessive consumption of mushrooms!"
- "Well, that could have been worse!" [Great Goblin falls on them] "Oh, you've GOT to be joking!"
- "Forgive me for doubting you." "No, it's fine. I would have doubted me too."
- "Is he lost?" "Yes, yes, and I want to get unlost...as soon as possible!" "Oh! We knows! We knows safe paths for hobbitses! Safe paths in the dark... SHUT UP!" "I didn't say anything..." "Wasn't talking to you!"
- "I would take each and every one of these dwarves over the mightiest army."

So. On a scale of one to Bofur when he successfully throws an egg into Bombur's mouth, how excited are you about The Desolation of Smaug coming out in December?

K xx