Timing
Have you seen the trailer for the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past? Holy mother of superhero movies! It looks singularly amazing. To end the war between humans and mutants, Professor X (Patrick Stewart) sends Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time to the start of it all to convince the younger version of himself (James McAvoy) to end it before it begins. We have a melding of several of the castmembers from both the original three X-men movies (Stewart, Jackman, Ian McKellan, Halle Berry, Shawn Ashmore, Ellen Page, and Anna Paquin) and First Class (McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and Nicholas Hoult) and then throw in Peter Dinklage for good measure all in one movie? This has to be the most expensive superhero flick in history. And it's going to be beautiful. Quite beautiful, indeed.

Wondering
I started reading the DC Comics New 52 take on Wonder Woman just recently, penned by Brian Azzarello and artsied up by Cliff Chiang. I'm going to warn you ahead of time that I have never once read a Wonder Woman comic and the extent of my knowledge about her remains in what few memories I have of the TV show starring Lynda Carter. So, basically, I'm a complete n00b.

I. LOVE. IT. Wow! I'm about 10 issues into the 24-issue run. Thankfully, my local library has almost all of them as collected volumes so it's a free checkout. But it would totally be worth the money if I felt like actually spending it. The story dives heavily into mythology, which I assume would have been her backstory anyway considering she's an Amazon Princess, but to see her getting involved in a war between Hera, Hades, and Poseidon for the throne of Olympus that has been left open by the mysterious disappearance of Zeus is just beyond cool. We also get what I'm told is an alternate take on Wonder Woman/Diana's backstory. Since I have no knowledge of what has altered (but can kinda piece it together, I think), I have no criticism of the changes whatsoever. And Chiang's artwork is incredible. A bit hyperrealistic and stark, but it works well given the storyline.

Reading
Katie and I will be going on vacation soon and we're really looking forward to it minus the whole leaving-Nathan-at-home-with-her-parents thing. That's going to be really rough on both of us. But we're going to make the most of it without him and one of the things we love most about cruises is the time on deck to just read in the sun or by poolside. But, since we've both migrated over to reading on iPads almost exclusively, we've actually had to dig out some real books so as not to become targets of thieves who see us with the iPads. I'm taking a few, including Harry Turtledove's How Few Remain (a book I started reading on our last cruise in 2011), Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat (a book that has been on my shelf since Christmas of 2011), and Antonio Mendez's Argo (one I found yesterday at Half Price Books). Might seem like a lot to read, but you'd be surprised how much you can get done when you sit on the lido deck doing not much else but relaxing.

Treating
The forecast calls for rain today and through Halloween. This is not a good thing as we were really looking forward to taking Nathan trick-or-treating. Not that we want to do too much of it. He's really not of candy-consuming age yet and walking around for too long he gets tired. So just a few houses in our neighborhood with him in costume. I hope we can still do it without too much precipitation.

Preparing
I hate when I get phone calls from people while at work asking for phone numbers or other information and then, when I start to give it to them, they say, "Hold on! I need to get a pen and paper." If you're going to ask for information, you should have a pen and paper AT THE READY! Morons.

Well, I hope the weather clears up soon. In the meantime, adieu!