it's an amber mail day!

So, the mailman just came by and stacked a couple of packages in front of the door, and both of them were from Ambers! Thank you, Ambers!

The first one, from this lovely Amber, had this inside! Very, very sweet! She had proposed a few months ago that whoever finished their first draft of their book first would get cookies in the mail from the other one -- but I think she finished hers first, so it should be I who am sending her cookies. And now I really shall, to reciprocate the deliciousness! And a BIG congratulations, Amber, for finishing that book and sending it off to a wonderful editor who had previously expressed interest! I have my fingers and toes crossed for you! Just finishing a book, this is a life-landmark that deserves huge amounts of celebration!

And in the next package, which was a weighty Amazon one that made me say, "Huh," as I am only currently awaiting one slender volume from Amazon, was from this wonderful Amber, whose blog I have been loving since my first days of blogging. And in it were these:
Which is awesome, because when I was at the bookstore last looking at baby books, I was overwhelmed by the seeming sameness of them all and did not know what to do! I just sort of stood there! And funnily enough, sweet Jennifer, who came by the other day to drop off boxes of pregnancy tea, and some books and magazines, had -- I think -- mentioned these exact Sears books as really good ones. And now I have them! And I have some reading to do!

Thanks you so much, Ambers, and Jennifer! Once again, I [heart] bloggers!

And now for something completely different, here is the trailer for the movie Jim is most excited about his year:


And second-most excited about:


Or, wait. . . Maybe it's this one:

That just makes me sad, though, because of Heath Ledger. I have bypassed the People and US magazine cover articles on his sad story, but from what little I have heard, as suspected, his overdose was an accidental combination of too many prescription meds, and it's just such a shame. Seeing this movie will be weird, like it was weird seeing Waitress knowing the writer/director/co-star had been tragically murdered earlier that year.

Anyway, there's a little sneak peak of what the year holds in store for comic book nerdlings. Good stuff!

P.S. Has Christian Bale ever played a nice guy? Everything I've seen him in, he's always this deeply intense, cold-bastard type, so I can't help but imagine that's what he's really like. I'm not saying he is. Just, I can't imagine him kicking back being a normal guy. We saw Rescue Dawn the other night, and he wasn't exactly a cold bastard, but he was just really weird -- good movie, by the way.