I had an alert set up in my iPhone calendar last week to remind me that the New Moon Movie Companion was released. I have poured over it since that day memorizing and loving every detail in the photos and the descriptions. I have an obsession with film/television production anyway…add in my obsession with all things Twilight and I found every page fascinating and entertaining. LOVE IT.

But…of course I would. It’s Twilight.

There are a few things in my life I find myself incredibly and often blindly loyal towards. Twilight is one of them. I’ve heard all of the criticisms of the first film and while I agree with a lot of it (special effects FAIL!) I will always qualify it with, “but they were very low budget with production, they didn’t realize how big it would be!” You know…because it’s my job to defend it? For some reason?

I was talking to my sister-in-law about that this weekend as she was telling the story of doing the same thing – finding herself feeling the need to defend it to someone who was harshly critiquing the movie. Of course, she doesn’t quite take it to the extreme that I do (does anyone?) but she still agreed to feeling blindly loyal.

It’s funny…I kinda take it personally when people criticize things like Twilight or Harry Potter because I feel this odd sense of ownership with these items. Like they belong to me somehow…I’ll defend them past the point of logic. It’s not that I can’t recognize faults with these franchises…because I can. I hate Jasper’s hair in New Moon, I hate that a certain location was destroyed in the last Harry Potter movie that was not destroyed in the books. But I criticize them the same way I do my children…with love and adoration. BECAUSE I AM INSANE.

My point? The New Moon comes out in a month and I can not get enough. It is time for the stars to make the media circuits and the magazine covers, there are interviews and special reports and I am EATING IT ALL UP.

Please tell me I am not alone…or if I am, please pretend that I’m not…okay?

It’s not secret that I love Google and all of it’s by-products. (Except Picasa. I’m still too much of a flickr whore to use Picasa.) Well today? There were all sorts of new things waiting for me in my Google Reader. I can now “LIKE” things I read. It is evidently not the same as “SHARING” – which puts them on my sidebar you see to the right – but people in Google Reader who read that same article will see a note that tells them someone likes it and they can see who…and I guess I’ll be on that list? I’m not exactly sure yet. But that doesn’t stop me from clicking that “LIKE” smiley face on things! I’m crazy with the liking! It requires less commitment than sharing but it still shows my favor! Bring on the liking!

The other thing I found was that when I clicked on “Your Stuff”, there was a box asking me for my thoughts!

Now, evidently this has always been there and I’m just an idiot for not noticing, but I don’t know if I ever click on “Your Stuff” because, well, it’s my stuff so I know what’s there. But after finding the “LIKE” thing (that is new, right?) I guess I was just going click crazy to see if there was anything else new.

So, of course I had to type in it and guess what! It showed up on my sidebar! It’s like Twitter + Google Reader going on there. I mean, I don’t want my thoughts pushing back the articles I shared on my sidebar like they’ve done now…but still! So cool! I’m surprised I haven’t seen more people use that function yet. Of course, I have no idea what I’ll use it for (if anything) but I’m bound through adoration to proclaim my love for everything about Google Reader.

My point? I LOVE the new LIKE feature on Google Reader. And I LIKE the old Shared Thoughts feature.

What do you think? Are you going to “LIKE” this if it shows up in your Google Reader? I will because I can not resist something so awfully meta.

What you are seeing is my Google Reader window as it looked a few minutes ago. Now, the feeds you see in this image indicate the feeds that have updated since I last logged in to my Reader. Once I’ve read the feed, it disappears from the list. (Something you can change, of course.) What the red arrow is pointing at is one of my favorite features of the feed reader. My Friends Shared Items. Anyone who is one of my Google Contacts and who uses Reader to mark feeds, if they click “share” at the bottom of an entry, I’ll see it in that section. I’ve discussed before how much I love this feature and how some people share some of the coolest things. But the new thing that I’ve been meaning to talk about? Follow the red arrow below.

That arrow points to the new feature. See, now you can leave a comment on an item inside the feed reader for your other feed reader buddies. If you want to keep up with the comments on shared items, you click that little link “Switch to Comments View”.

Here you’ll see myself, Pink (my Google Reader Twin) and Sarah discussing the “New Moon” trailer (Of course. What else would we be discussing?) Anyway – my point of all of this is: USE GOOGLE READER. And more importantly? SHARE ITEMS. I want to see what you like! And maybe comment on it! Especially if it involves Taylor Lautner. I always have something to say about him.

LilZ and I went to see Wicked last night and I can say that his gratitude alone made the cost and the effort of the trip worth it. He must have sincerely thanked me 900 times and if you’ve ever known a 14-year old you will understand that such intense gratitude is something to be cherished.

And I can say all of that even considering the fact that I was up all night hugging the toilet in (a very cool) hotel room due to some incredible awesome food poisoning. His gratitude was THAT AWESOME, that it counterbalanced the cost of the trip, the tickets and my misery.

Now…all of that said? My love of the actual production? Turns out to all be icing on the cake. I loved it more than I would have ever expected. We’ve been listening to the soundtrack for months, so we felt like we wouldn’t be in for any surprises. Little did we know…we were so surprised. The dialog was funnier than I expected and there were parts of the actual story that I hadn’t picked up from just the music. If you get a chance to see the show, YOU MUST SEE IT.

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.

Now, I need to get to bed because I’m still feeling very woozy as I was still puking even up to about 4 hours ago. I’m just now starting to feel kinda human again and now really ready for a good night’s sleep. Somewhere other than the floor of a bathroom.

And, on an un-related note, MORE PHOTOS!

AndyZ has entered the Grabby McGrabsALot phase of his infant development. He’s still a little shaky with his aim, but he is now grabbing for everything he can. Like LilZ’s cellphone, or MrZ’s razor, or my new necklace. (Which he’s totally replacing with HIS OWN MONEY if he breaks.) We know the drill, we went through it with NikkiZ. We’re learning to be on the constant lookout for Dangerous or Breakable things he could grab from wherever he’s at. And then, if we’re on the ball, we move that thing. Or, if we’re a little sleepy and not quite paying attention, we freak out and scan him for burns when he sticks his hand in our hot coffee.

(No burns!)

NikkiZ, on the other hand, is really irritated with this new phase. AndyZ has shown an intense liking of her HAIR. He pulls it every chance he gets and we’re having the hardest time explaining to her that he doesn’t mean to. Or, he doesn’t know it’s going to hurt her when he does it. Or something like that. The first few times she accepted that he didn’t realize what he was doing, but she’s starting to get frustrated. Like, Dude! How many times do I have to tell you to stop doing that! You can tell she doesn’t want to be mad at him, but she would also like it if he would QUIT PULLING HER HAIR ALREADY.

Because it’s so fine, putting it back doesn’t really do that much good. He doesn’t need much of a grip to yank it out of a ponytail holder or a clippy. So, inevitably, she’ll go to give him love and then one of us will come running as she starts hollering, “My hair! He’s got my hair!” It’s like the cycle of life around here lately.

I told her that maybe she should just avoid giving him kisses for awhile until he learns not to grab her hair.

“I have to give him kisses. He’s my brudder.”

And then I died.