Hey, y’all! I feel like rambling, so I’m going to ramble. What about? Well, the main three things I wanna talk about are two new fandoms I’ve become a part of, and that Texas got snow.

You read that right.

Snow.

But *waves hand dismissively* more on that later.

*slaps table* Let’s talk about WandaVision, please.

Disclaimer: This post contains vague spoilers for the episodes of WandaVision that have been released thus far. If you’ve watched any of the series trailers, you’ll be fine. 😉

You guys. This show…is just… *sputters unintelligibly, then screams*

I cannot get over how good WandaVision is. And unlike Agent Carter or The Mandalorian (don’t hate me, Mando fans!), somehow it keeps getting steadily better, raising the stakes higher and higher with each episode.

In the words of my dad, “I don’t spend all week looking forward to WandaVision. But then every time we sit down to watch it, I’m blown away by how good it is.”

(This is my dad, y’all. Up until now, the only thing he’s fangirled over is Star Wars.)

WandaVision has turned me into a fan of Wanda Maximoff and Vision, for one thing. I didn’t like them before, and I liked their romance even less. (I mean…he’s a robot…?) But this series has made my opinion of them both completely flip. WandaVision gives us a unique look into what the day-to-day life of Wanda and Vision as a married couple could—and probably would—have looked like. And it’s really cute. It’s sweet. It’s sincere and real.

But underneath the charm, there’s also this very threatening sense of foreboding that adds a layer of darkness. Right from the start, you know something isn’t right in Wanda and Vision’s life. Much as you—and they—wish everything could remain so blissfully perfect, things only seem to be getting worse the more people get involved in this strange new reality.

Also, Darcy Lewis, Thor’s girlfriend Jane’s sassy sidekick, is back for the series, as is Agent Jimmy Woo (from the Ant-Man movies) and the daughter of Maria Rambeau (Captain Marvel’s friend), Monica, all of whom are determined to figure out what’s going on in Westview—and bring it to an end. It’s a surprisingly stellar cast of former sidekicks against a grief-crazed, energy-manipulating telekinetic and the mysterious sitcom-themed reality she’s created to house and shelter the life she should have had.

How will it end??

I don’t know, but I’m hyped to find out. I’m also excited to see how the series will tie into Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and other upcoming Marvel films.

[FYI, I wouldn’t recommend watching WandaVision if you haven’t seen the MCU films (a couple of the X-Men films wouldn’t hurt either… *winky wink* ). But as long as you have, you need to give this series a try. And get ready to take a nostalgia trip, laugh along with the laugh tracks, and be blown away by its uniqueness. ❤ ]

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I picked up some gorgeous old Narnias (British editions make Havalah happyyyyyyy) the other day! I guess this is a good excuse to finally read the entire series. Heh.

Aren’t they absolutely lovely, though?

The guy who was selling them invited us into his house to browse the rest of his C. S. Lewis collection as well. As a result, we walked away with more books than we’d planned for—including a copy of The Four Loves, which I’m halfway through now and really liking. Love is a topic I really want to understand, for writerly reasons as well as obvious ones, and The Four Loves has been great for that!

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Heyyyy, I finally got to see Enola Holmes a few weeks ago! I’d been wanting to see this movie ever since I saw the trailer last summer. In the end, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations, but that’s okay. Maybe my expectations were unrealistic. ‘Tis very possible. XD

On the topic of what I did like about it, the scenery (#thatsteampunkVictorianlife) and Enola and Sherlock Holmes as characters stood out. Millie Bobby Brown managed to portray the classic independent heroine (a trope I don’t always like) without being over the top or irritatingly feminist about it. I liked how Enola voiced her opinions on what was wrong with the world, but also maintained poise and decorum and a level head. I also loved her relationship with her mother. ❤

Sherlock was quite interesting to me. I’m not very well versed in the world of Sherlock Holmes (I haven’t read the books, for one thing. I did request the first Enola Holmes book from the library, though. *wiggles eyebrows*), but to me, Henry Cavill’s interpretation of the character seemed pretty unique…? Am I wrong? *looks around nervously* …Anyway, I liked him. It was fun to watch him and Enola play off each other. ^_^

On the topic of what I did not like—

“Havalah, wait! You forgot to talk about Tewkesbury! You must have liked Tewkesbury!”

Um. Yeah. Heh. Let’s get into that.

I didn’t hate Tewkesbury, but… *cough*

I got tired of looking at Louis Partridge’s face.

That sounds awful, I know. XD But…he was always raising his eyebrows and either looking completely clueless or doing that weird, flirty half-smirk face at Enola, and… Eugghh. *shudders* I dunno. Too…makeup-y and his hair was too perfect and he basically looked like they’d grabbed him out of a Gap magazine. (Which is fine! Just not my preference for this particular time period, I guess. XD)

As a character, though, I liked Tewkesbury a lot (he’s a Viscount, for one thing, like Lysander ^_^), and I really hope they do another Enola Holmes movie so I can see where his relationship with Enola goes. *grins eagerly*

And on that note, this quote from the film pleased me:

“[Tewkesbury is] an interesting character, you know.”

“Hmm?”

“And I suspect he’s rather keen on young Enola.”

“Then he should marry her. Maybe it’ll tame them both.”

—Sherlock and Mycroft

(Basically, the only other thing I didn’t love about the film was that I felt like the climax was a bit of a letdown. For both plot lines. *shrug*)

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So, as you probably know, a vicious cold snap swept pretty much the whole nation a couple weeks ago, and Texas was hit pretty hard. (Texas really isn’t prepared for this kind of weather. But hopefully they will be next time, lol.)

The temperature had been steadily dropping for a few days, but it wasn’t until Sunday that things really got more serious. We woke up Monday morning to a light blanket of snow on our yard and the news that about half the state had lost power and water.

So, not only had it been years since it snowed at our house, but my school community day also ended up being cancelled due to the fact that the roads were too dangerous to drive on (no four-wheel drive here); and since my director didn’t have power, we couldn’t have class through Zoom, either. Can’t get much better than that, right?

We officially had a snow day on our hands! *gasp* Upon which news I immediately proceeded to throw both cats out into the snow simply for the sake of seeing what happened. (They’re fine, don’t worry. They hated it, though. XD)

Behold, as close to a winter wonderland as our area will probably ever get.

On top of it all, my dad, who is still working from home, discovered that he couldn’t do any work because all the servers were down. So we bundled up and attempted to go on a snowy family walk together.

It was like the Arctic out there. I felt like a pink penguin in the fluffy magenta coat I hadn’t worn since England. The wind seemed to zone in on us, as clearly we were the only human beings for miles around insane enough to attempt to actually do something in this weather.

…We didn’t get far.

But we did get some pretty pictures of snowdrifts over the nearby golf course.

I spent the rest of that day doing whatever I pleased, including making headway on Foxhunt, baking bread, and catching up on chemistry. And the next morning, my brother made us fluffy pancakes for breakfast (a rare treat).

Things were just peachy. While the winter freeze continued to freeze birdbaths solid and eliminate what I hope to be a large portion of all mosquito larvae, we made on with our lives as normally as possible. And, thankfully, we still had power and water.

Until we didn’t.

Yep, around 7:00 PM on Tuesday, we had just finished dinner and were settling in to watch an episode of The Office. Then, without warning, all the lights went out.

And that’s when I realized that no power also meant no heat.

Yeah, we kinda panicked.

It was actually really unsettling. The house was totally dark and silent, and there were almost no lights anywhere in our neighborhood as far as we could see in all directions. (Except for a strand of Christmas lights belonging to a house across the bayou from us. That was…suspicious, to say the least.) (Also, why were their Christmas lights still up? )

My dad, luckily, leapt into action. He whizzed all over the house, collecting flashlights and candles and battery phone chargers and debating with my brother whether or not to light a fire. Far from the warm, cozy Office-watching-party we had anticipated, we spent the evening huddled in our living room under layers of blankets, all while the temperature in the house continued to drop. The whole situation felt somewhat apocalyptic, like it when Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017 and we spent a week wondering if we would have to evacuate to our roof to escape incoming floodwaters (we didn’t).

It wasn’t all bad, though. Since we didn’t know how long we wouldn’t have power, we refrained from using our mobile devices and instead had fun reading aloud The Ickabog aloud, playing card games by candlelight, and using our conveniently large and white chimney to see who could make the best shadow puppet of Trump. (We eventually looked up a how-to—yes, that exists—and hey, not bad, right?)

And so commenced one of the weirdest nights of my life. We all slept in one bedroom, to conserve body heat, and while I didn’t sleep badly, I didn’t sleep…well, either. It didn’t help that I woke up in the middle of the night to discover that our water had given out as well as our power. Lovely.

Luckily, both power and water came back on around 1:00 pm the next day (after we spent over an hour in a Chick-fil-A line trying to get some hot food), much to our relief. And neither was cut again.

So in the end, we actually got off pretty well. A lot of people had pipe bursts and ceiling cave-ins (including one of my friends, whose family without power and water for three days and had to stay with multiple families until their utilities returned), as well as food and water shortages. But we survived the “snowpocalypse” without dealing with any of those things, and the icy roads didn’t kill us, either. Thank you, Lord! XD

So yeah. It was a weird week, the likes of which I may never see again, considering that our area hadn’t gotten that cold in over thirty years. But at the same time, it was kinda fun, too, in a way. XD

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In other, less interesting news, driving practice is coming along slowly but nicely. Honestly, I hate driving (hey, this is the girl that put off getting her permit until last fall—over two years later than when I could have gotten it), but I’m trying to make myself drive every day in the hopes that doing so will ease my loathing of it. And hey, I don’t freak out when a car passes me anymore! That’s something, right? XD

Thanks for reading! Did you survive the nationwide cold snap? Do you refer to those delectable golden rounds as “pancakes” or “flapjacks”? Have you read The Ickabog? Let’s chat in the comments! 🙂