- a little seaside town sounds lovely.

I know several old people that enjoy staying up late - and more that stay up until midnight on New Year's Eve even if they usually go to bed much earlier other days. Guess it all depends. I am a little confused about why no one would be able to go home at midnight - too tired to drive safe???

Several places here have various New Year's Eve night time activities but they mostly go until midnight (or a little later - some activities designed for kids are earlier in the day and some of those have countdowns at the end as though it were midnight). I've heard that lots of them are very nice, but haven't gone to any - partly because I have been celebrating New Year's eve with a bunch of good friends for several years now, but also partly because it is usually COLD on New Year's Eve and many of these events are outside (or at least partly outside) :-)

I hope you have a wonderful time at your town's event and a peaceful and happy night's sleep afterwards.

I have heard lots of good things about The Golden Compass but have not read it because I sort of stopped reading most scifi/fantasy and started just reading mysteries, but I might just have to get that series and see what I think. I've heard about it from several different people now. Good to know there is a prequel because my inclination would be to start there. I also need to reread A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engel which I have read several times - the first when I was a kid - because I just saw a preview for a movie of it that is coming out in March.

The traffic! Lol, people would be stuck in town cause everyone would try and leave at the same time and it would just be mayhem...it already is mayhem with the way it is. If you google image 'Kiama town' or 'Kiama main street' (Or Manning Street Kiama or Terralong Street Kiama) you can see some pictures of the little town and get an idea at how packed it could get. :)

I've seen the preview for A Wrinkle in Time, and there are a few things I'm upset about, but it's Disney...so I may have to let it slide...lol.

Also: You have defeated Mephysto 100 times!

You won a(n) Medium token to use in the battle shop!

Mephysto drops: Water Defense Cabochon Crystal Magma Defense Cabochon Crystal Light Cabochon Crystal Fire Defense Cabochon Crystal Haneul earned 20 EXP Points!

- I think traffic is a problem for any event that has lots of people and ends at a set time since everyone leaves all together. And Kiama really doesn't look big enough to have too much of a traffic jam. Of course, I come from a major city, so my idea of traffic might be a bit different than yours. I can remember just sitting around after fourth of July fireworks for another half hour (or even an hour if I saw them downtown in the city) before even trying to leave (it's fine if you just plan ahead to do it that way)

Lots of the summer festivals all over now have several designated parking lots away from the activities with shuttle buses that take people to and from the festival itself just to avoid some of the traffic jam problems (it works really well too!).

Of course, it also helps if you can just leave your car somewhere fairly nearby and then walk past the worst of the crowds.

Personally, I actually enjoy a little bit of mayhem like that every once in a while (guess I'm a city girl at heart) as long as the crowds are friendly and in a good mood, it can be fun being stuck together. :-)

Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful time and not too much difficulty getting home afterwards.

(sigh) Having had a very bad experience with corporate Disney a while back,, I'm not inclined to give them a pass on anything. But I'll have to read the book to see what I think of the movie. We saw the preview when we saw Star Wars on Christmas Day and the family member I was with didn't notice anything untoward about it - at least not that was mentioned to me. :-)

Congratulations on getting 100 wins on Mephysto! You really have been diligently clicking away. Keep up the great work.

haha, Oh you'd be surprised...considering we have round-a-bouts, when people stop let let people back out of parking spots, traffic gets backed up along the street. Considering it's tourist season, there's just people everywhere! lol. They do shuttle busses sometimes, but we should be alright...it just depends on where we park and what we do. Sometimes we go to friends if they're there, and if we know they're not going to be home, they let us park in their driveway, and then we can take a back way home.

This picture was taken 4 years ago, back before we got new roads and stuff...shows the traffic on the highway, and people trying to merge. You can see the roof of my house in this pic. But when it was like this, it got so bad...we couldn't leave home because it would take hours to get back home...hours to do what what normally be like a...10 minute trip into town

SPOILER (click to toggle)

What bad experience did you have with corporate Disney? I actually worked for Disney for a year as part of their international college program...though that was in the parks and not with corporate stuff..

And I notice all changes from book to movie...I'm one of those annoying people...lol.

And thank you! The Cursed Irion is next in line, no idea how to uses these Cabochon Crystal.

I still have the original trilogy of books, maybe I'll reread them soon and then look into the prequel/sequel stuff. I don't remember exactly when I read them, but it was like 10 years ago or something probably, so I might even pick up on stuff that I didn't before reading them again.

And I notice changes from book to movie as well, but it depends on what the change is whether it bothers me or not. Like leaving out minor things for the sake of time is fine, in my opinion. You can only fit so much into a couple hours, if they included everything from the book it would be way too long as a movie.

But it does tend to bother me when plot points get completely changed, or they switch the order of things or change character personalities, or try to combine multiple books into one movie and mess up the plot, or the opposite where they stretch one book into several movies unnecessarily ( looking at you The Hobbit >.> )

Skipped to level 15 today in BQs. Got to level 29 though so still got some decent exp. I've just been so tired this week...

I haven't read The Hobbit, but I saw the first movie, and I will say I enjoyed it. My favourite part of it was the brown wizard...I can never remember his name. I told my friend who is a major (and I mean major) Hobbit/LOTR fan, that I want a movie just about him. It could just be him going through the forest with his hares and other animals being crazy and I'd enjoy it. He told me that would be amusing indeed.

But yes...with The Golden Compass movie...they completely changed things, swapped things around and just...argh!

But with this book, I'm already picking up on this...or I should say, recalling things from the first book...

The first Hobbit movie was the best, and it seems most fans agree. I think it would have been fine if they only did two movies instead of three, and didn't try to put in as much stuff that wasn't actually in The Hobbit book (although I think some of it did come from The Silmarillion, which is part of the same universe Tolkien created). But they didn't need to put in more stuff that wasn't in the book they were basing the movies on, just do the book as it is and leave it at that and it would have been fine.

The first one did turn out decent enough though, and a good portion of the dialogue was like word for word from the book in some scenes anyway, so that was nice. And the cast was good too. It was mainly just some writing and scope issues.

Also the main complaint I remember from the Golden Compass movie is how they changed the ending...

I have to say, this is keeping me entertained while I battle away...

Yeah, I thought I had heard something about that. Oh well, at least it's probably still not the worst movie adaptation of a different source material. Eragon and ATLA are probably in the running for that though. :P

What battling are you working on now? I still have to do my quests and BQs for today, and maybe eventually I'll get back to battling some of the other opponents for scrolls and stuff. I haven't really been doing that lately.

I'm trying to work my way up to the tomes and scrolls...I'm jumping around all over the place. Working on Daemon, and using Angry Arnold to heal...I'm also stuck on beating Gate Keeper for the 5th time...I keep missing it...

I'll try to get myself back into battling more in the new year. At least we should still have plenty of time until the next reset, if there will be another eventually ~

Good luck with Gate Keeper!

I should try to beat GE some more and slowly work my way up to 50, I forget which number I'm on now.

It's really making me mad...I mean we're both down to the red, and he kills me first...lol. My numbers are all over the place at the moment...mostly because I feel like jumping around. I have been keeping track of wins though, so I know what I need to do.

I'm still holding out for a plot next year...now that Haneul is stronger, I may enjoy the battle parts more. ..I'm also looking forward to new challengers next year..with 500 CSC being a reward for visiting the calendar every day, I should be able to get some.

I'm looking forward to seeing what they do instead of the Throwback challengers this year. I know said there would be lore involved, so that will be exciting to see even if it's not a full plot or anything (although one of those would be nice too ;)).

Are they not doing throwback challengers in the new year? I like plots in general...for the story and the puzzles. I know they cause lag, but I'm one of those people who try to relax and not let it get to me

Yeah, they mentioned when they released the current ones that they'll be doing something else next year instead. And then it was mentioned elsewhere that it would involve new lore stuff too, so I'm hoping it means we'll get some more new Normal and Secret challengers instead of just the CS ones this coming year.

Oh, that would be awesome! I'm taking a break from battling now...working on my own spread sheet so I can keep track of my progress...

Friday.

Not sure if I'm going to have time for BQs today, but having a whole long weekend will make up for it. :)