Life as I Know it has Changed.

There is no turning back for me now.

When I was growing up, vampires and werewolves were nothing more than evil monsters that appeared in old black and white movies starring Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr. They were mindless monsters who caused a ruckus wherever they went, whether that be in merry-olde England, or chasing Abbot and Costello around with Frankenstein.

Dracula was always my favorite bad guy. He was the epitome of the monsters that you love to hate, and usually I would root for him to win (which still generally happens whenever I play the Castlevania video games.) There was just something awesome about him.

Now though, my entire view of vampires has been changed, and there will be no coming back for Mr. Nutz!

Recently, I decided to borrow copies of the books in the Twilight series, just to see what all the hoopla was about. I'd seen a trailer for the upcoming movie, and I thought that with a fourth novel coming out, I should really see why everyone on the Nutz side of the ol' family tree was going gaga over these books. I figured that they would be fast reads, but I never expected them to be so darn addicting. No sooner could I finish one, then I had to bury myself into the next one.

For the sake of anyone reading this blog who may not have read the books yet (like Mrs. Nutz) I won't go into any detail about the books, but man alive I can't stop thinking about how incredible I thought they really were.

About a week ago, I just finished off the fourth installment, Breaking Dawn, and already I'm going through withdrawls. While I would venture to say that I thought the series ended on a great note (indeed I think that the fourth installment is my favorite of them all) I can't believe that there are no more books about Bella and the Cullen Family. Yesterday morning, as I was getting in the shower to go to work, I even found myself wondering what it would be like to be a vampire like in the stories (sadly, the reality that vampires don't exist wasn't what pulled me out of my daydream; rather it was the realization that being said vampire would make it difficult to ever enjoy being in Disneyland again. I guess my old obsession still trumps my new one...)

On the plus side, Mrs. Nutz is thrilled that I have finished reading the books. She sees it as a plus that now I can concentrate on some more important things, like school work and helping her design product for her side business. I hope that she will soon pick up the books for herself and see why they're so engrossing, but knowing my wife as I do, I know she won't share in my obsessive enthusiasm for them. She tends to be more grounded in reality than I am, and that's why I love her.

Ironically, it was the trailer for the movie that got me interested in reading the books in the first place, and now that I have read them, I can honestly say that I think I will HATE the movie! I guess my sister-in-law is right, you really shouldn't read a book before seeing the movie.