Monthly Archives: February 2013

Feb 17 2013

Do dinosaurs belong on ski slopes?

Dinosaurs have their place. They are interesting on the ‘wildlife’ tv programmes, fun in movies, make cute toys for kids and perhaps even belong in my office. I’m less sure that they should be on the ski/sledging slopes. All that crashing around and roaring could start an avalanche surely?

Scifi best friend is currently visiting so we went sledging in the mountains yesterday. She brought with her three t-shirts that Scifi hubby ordered – one for each of us. They are bright green and say ‘Ask me about my T-Rex’ on the front. When said question is asked you pull the bottom of the t-shirt over your head and roar like a T-Rex as the shirts have a T-Rex printed on the inside.

Predictably this resulted in lots of dino antics on the slopes. Luckily no avalanche but one crash with a skier (not dino related and not serious), several encounters with snow drifts (dino ‘racing’ apparently) and lots of aching muscles and bruises for Scifi hubby and Scifi BF this morning. I’m fine but then I didn’t try to beat the mountain in quite the same way they did. The mountain won.

Showing the t-shirts to my parents on FaceTime last night they both looked puzzled until Dad finally said ‘They mean T-Rex not T. Rex’. A little more explanation and the generation gap became clear – he was thinking of the Marc Bolan 1960s band and couldn’t work out why we were all roaring!

20130217-082109.jpgScifi hubby and Scifi BF roaring like loonies on the slopes

Feb 15 2013

Romance Scifi style

Valentines day with Scifi hubby is always an interesting experience. He’s a romantic a heart but tends to express it in peculiar scifi ways.

This year it’s dinosaurs. The valentines card was a work of scifi perfection…

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He met me at work this afternoon and brought three ‘friends’ with him as a gift. A spinosaurus, a brachysaurus and Batman riding a 22 inch T-rex – with sounds. Apparently they need to sit on my desk at work in order to be happy dinos. I left him in reception and took my dinos back to my desk and my boss helped me find somewhere to put them. Luckily she’s very understanding and finds scifi hubby an amusing subject. I’m not actually sure if this is a good thing 🙂

The dinos with their friends – yes I already had five dinosaurs. He’s been smuggling them into my handbag for years (the Care Bear is a whole other story!).

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The T-Rex won’t fit so he’s currently stalking my neighbour over the office wall.

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At least this year I joined in too and visited the comic shop to buy his present.

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Feb 12 2013

How many books is it normal to buy in a year?

I’d love to know the answer to this question. What is the average? Do men buy more than women? The fans of which genre buy the most? I can take a guess at the last question perhaps – it has to be comic book fans. Scifi hubby has just made a list of all then hardback graphic novels that he knows are coming out this year and that he wants to pre-order. There’s 56 of them.

I’m sure I should be annoyed about this number but I find books much easier to cope with than the rest of the collection. Partly because if you were to ever look at my Amazon account you would see quite how many books I get through in a year. The only thing that irks me is that he doesn’t read them all! I’d love to know what percentage he has actually read. some are even still in their cellophane…

Also keep in mind that this is just what he plans to buy and doesn’t count the impulse purchases, paperbacks, the comics themselves or the oversized, special edition, foil cover, limited edition, costs six times what it should book that he will inevitably find at some point this year.

Last year THE book was a limited edition, oversized hardback of the Walking Dead with a red foil cover. It was only available at New York Comic Convention and in limited numbers. Day one of the con saw us in the scrum to get two copies of the book – one for him and one for his scifi friend Mat. Having achieved that we then dragged these beomoths of books around with us until we found Tony Moore (the artist for the comics) and got him to sign them. Unfortunately he wasn’t sketching but he was friendly and signed one book ‘to Scifi hubby’ and one ‘to Mat’.

Two days later we took the books to be signed by Robert Kirkman. Just getting to see him was a challenge as he was only signing for forty people each day. Luckily our new scifi convention friends Jo and Jen helped us out (thanks guys!) and we had our 60 seconds with the ‘big man’. He signed both books, one ‘to Scifi hubby’ and one ‘to Mat’. Have you guessed the ending yet? Of course Kirkman signed them the wrong way round, so the books were signed ‘To Mat and To Scifi hubby’ and ‘To Scifi hubby and To Mat’. Oops! Scifi hubby had a complete melt down when he realised. Child like feet stamping, pouting bottom lip and “The books aren’t worth anything. I might as well just out them straight in the bin” was the gist of it.

In the end I took the books off him, fluttered my eyelashes at the ‘bouncers’ guarding the queue and got back to see Kirkman again. He was really nice about it, covered the mistakes with drawings of zombies and then signed the books the right way round. Queue total turn around from Scifi hubby when he realised he had something that no one else had. The irony is Kirkman is the writer not the artist so they aren’t the best zombies in the world, but I was definitely the best wife that day!

Feb 3 2013

How much is a piece of plastic worth?

We have a lot of plastic in our house. In fact I think we are probably solely responsible for the profits of the plastics companies. If our house was ever to catch fire I imagine that the environment agency would issue a health warning to nearby residents to stay indoors to avoid the plumes of toxic plastic smoke.

The one advantage of plastic toys is that they are usually just that – toys. They are sold in toy shops and supermarkets and usually very cheap. Ok we have to go through the rigmarole of finding the correct one, picking the one with the most perfect packaging, stopping the checkout assistant simply bashing them together into a bag and then get them home in one piece. Ok Scifi hubby never opens the packaging and they live in stacks in his room. But plastic has the advantage that its cheap. Given the quantity that Scifi hubby buys this is a GOOD THING!

Some of the toy companies have always made collectors editions and we have a range of twelve inch Star Wars and Batman toys, but even the most expensive of these usually only cost £20-30. However, there’s now a few companies starting to make ‘toys’ specifically for the collectors market. They used to focus on statues but recently have started to produce plastic toys too. I can just about understand paying over £100 for a statue, after all they will last forever – assuming they don’t get dropped. I’m still not convinced that paying that kind of money for a plastic ‘toy’ is a good idea.

Luckily Scifi hubby agrees with me – or at least he did until Sideshow Collectibles announced their new Joker ‘collectible’. I admit it’s a good looking toy. Possibly one of the nicest I’ve seen. With a whole fabric wardrobe – yes Scifi hubby gets to play at dress up 🙂 But really $190? For plastic!

The other annoying thing about these ‘toys’ is that there are only a limited number produced, and the first hundred usually come with something extra special in this case a pair of fish shaped guns (yes really). This brings a pressure to decide very quickly if you will buy it or not. They announce the figure and give pictures weeks before but you don’t know the price until the second that it goes on sale, and they usually sell out in minutes. This really doesn’t help my argument. It also doesn’t help that they are already for sale on eBay at much higher prices, even though they won’t be delivered until September.

Suffice to say that come September we will be the proud owners of a plastic, Sideshow exclusive edition, sixth scale figure, Joker. Oh and it still hasn’t actually sold out.

20130203-130414.jpgI once came home to find Scifi hubby washing his original plastic Star Wars toys in the sink as they had sweated in the heat and needed cooling down I wonder if, in ten years time, I will come home to find him washing this one?