Fangirl Five Friday (#1)

Fangirl Five Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Evil Eva at Nancy Drew Is My Homegirl, in which bloggers list the five things they're fangirling over this week.

I first discovered this via YA Crush, and finally decided to take part! So, in no particular order, here is my list:

1. (Almost) new Game of Thrones!
I am a massive SOAIF/GoT fan. The first HBO series is how I discovered the books in the first place. In the space between series, I have worked my way through the first three books, and am incredibly excited to see the second book come to life. (Sadly, SPOILER ALERT after the trailer...



...minus Sean Bean, who when I was a kid I thought was the most famous man on earth, given that he and I are from the same neck of the woods, and he was always on our local news programmes.) This primer from The Guardian is a handy little guide if you're struggling to remember how it went the first time around...

2. Bob's Burgers returns!
Okay, I promise not all these will be to do with television (despite the fact that I just discovered I can watch Wallander online through my Lovefilm subscription - the Swedish version starring Krister Henriksson). But the boy and I caught up with the first two new episodes of Bob's Burgers last weekend, and I am back to coveting that pink rabbit ears hat again. H. Jon Benjamin is one of my favourites. (Archer is my other current favourite.)

3. Sunshine
Being in Brighton last weekend, I got to enjoy the unexpected sun right by the sea. The sun is never my best friend, because I burn in the time it takes most people to put on their shoes. But that doesn't stop me being excited to be able to sit outside and write, or walk miles without pulling out the winter coat, or jump in the pool knowing that it's lovely and warm outside for once!

Sunset on Brighton beach (via me)

4. Soundgarden tickets!
Last week I managed to book tickets to see Eddie Vedder in London. (You have no idea how exciting this is to me. The boy and I are already seeing Pearl Jam for the fourth time this summer, but this was a delicious little bonus.) Yesterday, said boy booked tickets for... Soundgarden. As Pam might say in Archer: Holy shitsticks. Our grunge quadrology (erm...) will be complete come the summer (Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Mudhoney, and Soundgarden). Long live flannel.

Looking good, guys. Eddie Vedder & Chris Cornell, via Grunge Report

5. Baking cookies
My friends and I had dinner together this week, which we do periodically. We all bring different parts of the meal, and this time it was my turn to bring the dessert. As we were having American-themed food, I brought cookies. I baked them for the first time ever, and they were (modesty alert) AMAZING. I am now convinced of the necessity to bake homemade cookies every week. (This article states that PhD baking is not uncommon, given its built-in study breaks and focus on completely different parts of the brain. I did copy edit an article in between cookie rounds, so maybe it really is the future of study...)

Honourable mention to The Hunger Games film, which I talked about earlier this week. No fangirling, but definitely a renewed appreciation for the book after being pleasantly surprised by the film.

And finally: I have been largely AWOL this last week. Blame a mixture of complete computer failure, a trip to the beach to see the boy, and general PhD/journal madness commitments. I am now back from the beach, and possess a new shiny computer. Given that I am still buried in the third year of my thesis and still the editor of a journal, expect the madness to continue on that front.

Also, has anyone else noticed that Blogger has gone all country-specific? My URL now reads ".co.uk", as does anyone else's Blogger blog that I visit, regardless of their location...