Top 12 of 2012

These 12 lovelies earned a Second Glantz from me in 2012.

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TV Show
Downton Abbey. Love the upstairs-meets-downstairs drama.











Movie
Breaking Dawn 2. Because the finale really WAS epic.


Character, male
Iron Man/Tony Stark from The Avengers had me laughing out loud this summer. And he's also kind of a bada$$.

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Character, female
Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham. When I grow up, I want to be Violet, free to zing one-liners at will: "I'm a woman, Mary. I can be as contrary as I choose."









Album
Katy Perry's Teenage Dream - The Complete Confection because of its ability to give me a boost during even the most tedious of workdays.

Song
Don't talk to me if "Somebody That I Used to Know" by Gotye starts playing on the radio; I'll be too busy belting it out to listen to you.

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Literary Crush
Daemon from the Lux series is my new book boyfriend. At least until Jace returns in 2014.

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Eye Candy
LOCHTE!

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No explanation needed.

App

Words with Friends became a little obsession there for a while.

















Social Media Site
Instagram = InstaLOVE

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Netflix Find
David Tennant as The (tenth) Doctor (as in Who). I can't really explain this one - Dr. Who is re-DUNK-ulous - but it's a newfound guilty pleasure.

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Game
Cards Against Humanity is like Apples to Apples but for "horrible" people. It is politically incorrect and vulgar, but when played with the right people, it's also hi-LAR-ious.












I can't wait to see what 2013 has in store!

Top 11 of 2011

These 11 goodies earned a Second Glantz from me in 2011.

TV
True Blood Season Four
Witches, hot Scandinavian vampire nookie, and... well, need there be anything else beyond that? This season (minus the faeries) was AWE. SOME.

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Movie
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Two words: Alan Rickman. Sorry, my fellow Twi-hards, Breaking Dawn was a blast to watch, but it can't compare with the fabulousness that was the last installment of HP.

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Album
Evanescence by Evanescence
Five years, people. That's how long I've been waiting for a new Evanescence CD. And worth the wait it was.

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Song
"Made of Stone" by Evanescence
I just simply love the sound of this song. (Watching this video got me so pumped... I'm crossing one item off my bucket list and am going to see Evanescence LIVE in a few weeks!!!)


Actor 
Matt Damon
You want to talk about a man who's aging well, look no further than this guy. I'd argue, in fact, that his looks have improved since his Good Will Hunting days. And so has his acting. Besides being great in Contagion, he was an absolute riot to watch on 30 Rock.

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Actress
Zooey Deschanel
This little lady captured my heart a few years ago in Yes Man and 500 Days of Summer, but nothing could prepare me for the pee-in-my-pants laughter she'd provide in New Girl. And she's cute to boot.

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Book
City of Fallen Angels (Mortal Instruments, Book 4) by Cassandra Clare
Move over Edward; my heart belongs to a Shadowhunter now! This book was so good that I actually slowed down my reading of the last few chapters because I desperately didn't want the story to end. Thank goodness there are two more titles in the series yet to be published!

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Eye Candy
Ian Somerhalder
Those eyes. That hair. That devilish grin. And *cough* that chest *cough.* The great thing about Ian Somerhalder (besides him playing a vampire) is that there's some major substance behind all that prettiness. The foundation he started is pretty awesome in its efforts to make a positive impact on the environment. Yeah, that's why we like him.

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iPhone App 
Pinterest
While Pinterest is admittedly a good way to pass (and waste) the time spent waiting for appointments and such, it's also really useful, teaching me new recipes, new ways to organize everything in my house, new uses for buttons, and new mantras by which I should be living. While I do sometimes view pins online as I'm enjoying my morning cup of tea, I more often than not enjoy my pin stream and repin via iPhone throughout the day.

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Social Media Site
GetGlue
At first, I admittedly didn't get all the GetGlue tweets I was seeing in my stream. And then, one day, I caved and went to the site where I learned all about the STICKERS. I get free stickers for watching my favorite TV shows and movies?! Yeah, that was a no brainer. And thus my Twitter obsession was quickly replaced with my GetGlue obsession.

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Netflix Find
One Last Dance starring Patrick Swayze and Lisa Niemi
One evening while Hubby was away overnight at a conference, I treated myself to my favorite Fresh Market salads, a ginormous piece of cake, and several glasses of wine. Of course, the only thing that would make this bachelorette night better was finding a chick flick on Netflix that Hubby couldn't stomach watching. I stumbled upon the dance movie that Patrick Swayze made with his wife and knew that I had a winner. While the movie was admittedly not the best - or even good, really - seeing Swayze dance with his wife was such a treat, one that, yes, left me a blubbering fool.

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I can't wait to see what wonderful finds 2012 has in store!

Lay off my natas!

After having slept for nearly 14 hours, I am now awake enough to say a proper hello and tell you a bit more about my travels (lucky you).

First of all, thanks for all the lovely comments, and hello to my new readers {waving}. I promise to pay you all a virtual visit once I get back to the States.

The travel to Portugal was obviously successful since I'm here safe and sound, and the transatlantic trip taught me several things:

• It's totally worth the $40 to get a day pass to the US Airways Club if you're going to be in the airport for 4+ hours. Lunch, TV, free wi-fi, comfy chairs... it's the best.
• People drink a lot of alcohol when it's free, no matter what time of day it is (see above note).
• Pink grapefruit Airborne tastes yummy.
• Air travel makes some people lose their minds. If it happens to be the person sitting in front of you, there's no need to pay for the in-flight movie.
• Just because your flight leaves the gate on time doesn't mean you'll actually be in the air on time.
• A 7-hour flight does not mean you'll get to sleep for 7 hours; you have to factor in the 2-hour dinner before they dim the lights and the rude wake-up call 2 hours before you land so that they can serve you subpar tea and danishes.
• If you've only gotten 3 hours of sleep in a 32-hour period, it's okay to take a small step off the caffeine-free wagon (said caffeine will give you quite a jolt after being free of it for 4 months).
• When you're trying to get into a country at the same time as 10,000 other people and only one customs officer is working, be prepared to stand in line for two hours. PS. There are no bathrooms between the plane and customs, so you should use the airplane facility, even if the captain has already turned on the "fasten seatbelt" sign.
• If you're waiting for 2 hours to clear customs, you will have to go on a scavenger hunt through baggage claim to find your luggage.

After the first order of business of de-grunge-ing and eating, I spent my first day in Portugal exploring the rocky (and windy) coast of Cascais.

The water and sky are both so blue (and the sky is so cloudless), it's difficult to distinguish the two without the waves.

The coast is a geology teacher's dream: sinkholes, mica, and salt deposits (oh my!) all in once place.

Aloe grows in abundance (I wish this stuff had grown on the beaches where I enjoyed sunburning).

After posing with the parentals...

(I told you it was windy.)

...we explored the S. Jorge de Oitavos Fort.

(the flag of Portugal)

We also explored a traditional Portuguese supermercado (but I forgot to take my camera in) and passed by the Portuguese version of Target.

Today, day 2 in Portugal, we laid low. Portugal is a very Roman Catholic state, so most things are closed on Sundays. We did, however, chow down on some traditional Portuguese pastries. They were all yummy, but my favorite so far is the nata, which is in the left side of the box.

It's kind of like a sweet custard encased with a puff pastry, and then it's torched on top like creme brulee.

Despite my best efforts to have a back up so that I could avoid the camera disasters I usually have on once-in-a-lifetime trips, I'm experiencing a camera FAIL. So our first stop tomorrow is to find a camera. Then it's off to Baixa (downtown Lisbon) to see the architecture, do some shopping, and finally try a Ginjinha.

Well, it's nearing midnight here, so I better bid you adeus.

Have adapter. Will travel.

I've never considered myself to be a low-maintenance traveler. I mean, you don't really expect me to wear the same pair of earrings with every outfit, do you? But I never really thought of myself as high maintenance either. Until preparing for my trip to Portugal.

Okay, first things first. WAHOO!! This time next week, I'll be blogging from the rocky beaches of Portugal. And that is precisely why I have become high maintenance. Blogging.

My first few questions to my dad in preparation for this trip were not the ones out of a hundred questions I should have asked: What clothes should I bring? Do I need a doctor's note for my prescription medicine? Can I bring you any comforts from home? No. My first questions were: Do you have wireless? What kind of converter do I need? What do your plugs look like? Because, you know, I'm not paying $40 per minute to use my phone and I might die if I go 11 days without tweeting. Besides, I have a responsibility to my loyal readers (all 3 of them... I used the all 1 of them joke on Twitter and 3 of you responded, so I must be up to 3 readers now... or at least I was before I recycled jokes that were lame the first time I told them) to take them to Portugal with me virtually.

After a little bit of research and a whole lot of online shopping, I am now properly armed to enter the Portuguese Blogosphere:

(Psst... Jenny. Click on the picture. I figured it out. Aren't you proud?)

Of course, this is in addition to my laptop, laptop charger, camera-to-laptop cord, etc. It should be noted that I also looked into getting a laptop power cord for the airplane (that's how deep my technology addiction devotion to my readers runs), but my crappy cheap flight doesn't have such technology yet.

So now I probably have to pack an extra bag just to carry all my tech accessories, but I promise you, nice-man-who-will-have-to-help-me-lift-my-bag-into-the-overhead-compartment, it will all be worth it-- because now I'll be able to document my trip day-by-day as it's happening, instead of trying to remember the details three years from now when I finally get around to scrapbooking it.