unexpected hiatus

And suddenly, it's been a week since my last post. Not the best week of my life, though I suppose it could have been worse. Monday I had to work late, and then of course there was an issue with the register so I didn't get home until 10:00. Alfred made me a grilled cheese sandwich and chocolate milk for dinner though, so that was nice. He made me his famous homemade Caesar salad dressing for dinner on Tuesday, which was also very nice, and extremely delicious. We made the croutons with different bread though, and they weren't quite as good as usual. Ah well, live and learn.

Thursday we had some really nasty weather while I was at work. More specifically, we had severe thunderstorms and tornado warning sirens while we had 150+ kids in various parts of the museum. It was a little stressful. We got everyone into the most secure building (about 75 in one section and maybe 90 in another) and locked all the doors and all just hung out for about half an hour until the worst of it passed. Apparently one of the tour guides that was there with one of the groups saw a cloud drop down and start to spin about a block north of us. Luckily it lifted back up before it turned into a tornado. It's times like those that being in charge is kind of scary.

Friday was sunny and gorgeous, until about 1:45. At that point the temperature dropped about 15-20 degrees and thick fog rolled in. Not dangerous, just cold and kind of crappy. Just as I was about to go eat my lunch outside and enjoy the sunshine, too.

Oh, and we did get some good news this week: a signed lease and deposit from the people renting our house! So it's official, we'll be moving by March 1. I'll write about and try to post some pictures of the new house soon.

A note about the picture: it's from White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. We were watching the movie Year One this week; there's a scene where they're in the desert, and at the end of the scene the camera pulls back and you can see mountains in the background. I said it looked just like White Sands. So we watched the credits at the end, and what do you know, filmed partially in New Mexico. It was kind of exciting.

Another weekend (nearly) gone. It's been a fairly productive one, which is sort of nice. Last week we had our first school groups since winter break, which was good, I needed something to do at work again. Not that I have nothing to do when there are no groups, there's just nothing I want to do. I made brown velvet cupcakes Thursday evening and took them in on Friday. They were brown instead of red due to the lack of food coloring. They tasted good. I had a few interviews too, with varying results.

Friday night we went to Ilya and Mercedes' house for dinner. They had a bunch of really good sushi grade tuna, so it was pretty yummy. Then we watched The Men Who Stare At Goats, which Mercedes and I slept through. Apparently it wasn't as good as Alfred and I had hoped. Saturday we spent far longer than anticipated cleaning the new house. The tile floors, specifically. But they are now clean(er) and sanitized and ready for things to be placed on top of them. The last big cleaning thing we have to do is the blinds, but someone didn't think we needed to bring the vacuum cleaner with us for that this weekend so they'll have to wait.

Today Alfred did a little bit of cleaning and organizing in the garage, while I mostly sat around and was useless. I did exercise and go grocery shopping, so at least I left the house. We also watched the G.I. Joe movie, which probably would have been better if I was a 13 year old boy, but at least the line "knowing is half the battle" was included, which got me pretty fired up (I am a child of the 80s, after all). And "yo Joe." But not "got to get tough," or "real American heroes," but hey, I'm not complaining. Maybe they'll be in the sequel that is so clearly going to be made.

lazy Saturday

Our first non-working (for me) weekend at home in quite awhile. It's been great so far! I didn't get out of my pajamas until about 6:30pm, and then it was to exercise, shower, and put on new pajamas. So, pretty fly. We've done a whole lot of not much today, which has included watching a movie (Julie and Julia, which we both enjoyed), doing some organizing and cleaning in the office, and grocery shopping (for Alfred). Sometimes, it's just really nice to sit around and relax. It didn't help that it's been cold and dreary all day, which really doesn't inspire outside activity. Right now Alfred's making me hamburgers for dinner. We forgot to put Heinz 57 on the list, so I have none. Yes Michael, I could go up on piggy back and cruise the store in my socks, then sprint back home carrying a case of beer which I could then drop in the middle of the road, causing half the bottles to shatter. Ah, memories. Our lives have been severely power hour deficient since you moved.

Also, I have a few more quick movie reviews to add, in addition to Julie and Julia. Zombieland was really funny, especially the Ghostbuster-related parts in the middle. Whip It was good too, though Alfred didn't like it as much as I did. That seems to be a theme with our movie reviews in general, no?

One last note: I apologize for the lack of interesting pictures to go along with these posts lately. Alfred moved all of our pictures to an external hard drive awhile back, so in order to use any old pictures I have to hook that up and I really am not entirely clear on how to do it. Or where that hard drive is kept. Also, we haven't been taking pictures lately. Mainly because we haven't been doing many photo worthy activities. We'll work on that, maybe. Time for dinner!

movie reviews

For some reason (probably the new TV) we've been watching a bunch of movies lately. So here are my oh-so-fascinating thoughts on some recent ones, beginning with:

1. Avatar. I liked it, although I agree with Katherine that the story was less than enthralling. It was so fun to look at though that I seriously could have just watched the blue things running around their forest for 2 hours. Like, they could have just made it as a documentary and I may have liked that better. I feel like James Cameron made up this whole unique world and we only got to see a fraction of what he must have imagined. I like imaginary things, so I would have liked seeing more of that. Plus, 2 hours would have made it shorter. It was a bit long. Alfred thought the length and storyline were both fine, for those who did not see his comment. Also, it's fun hissing at people like the blue things do. I think I'd like to be a blue thing.

2. The Invention of Lying. This has Ricky Gervais, who I love, and Jennifer Garner, who I don't feel very strongly either way about. It was a decent movie, amusing, interesting idea, but 3 days after we watched it neither of us could remember a thing about it. We had to look it up on the computer to see what we had watched. So, probably doesn't speak very highly of it.

3. Surrogates. The one with Bruce Willis where all people have robots to go out and live their lives for them. This one wasn't very good. The main thing that pissed me off was that apparently these robots basically made crime obsolete, which I totally don't get. If I had a robot to go out and live for me, I'd be knocking over 7-11s and busting caps in people's asses all day long. After all, I'd be robbing and shooting robots, so no harm no foul, right?

4. 500 Days of Summer. Felt very indie-movie-ish, has Zoey Deschanel (is this how you spell it? can't be bothered to look it up) and Joseph Gordon Levitt. I liked this, Alfred did not. He thought it was going to be a comedy. It was not, really. It was very nice though, if you're into this sort of movie. I think Zoey Deschanel should try playing a totally different character some day.

5. Henry Poole is Here. Supposedly a dark comedy, though I didn't see much comedy in it. I guess it had a couple of moments. Stars Luke Wilson, who has evidently since become pretty hard up to be starring in those cell phone commercials. I liked this one too, again Alfred did not. It made me cry a bunch. In my defense, I was pretty over tired that night. And it has some really sad parts, dammit! Fun fact, the female lead in this was also in Surrogates. I forget her name. Radha Mitchell I think? Dang, I'm good. If I'm right. Whatever.

Another fun fact: Alfred's been busy emptying the dishwasher and making dinner while I've sat here typing this extremely captivating post. To be fair, I was at work all day and he was at home, so he offered. He just discovered we have no cheese to add to our egg scramble dinner. The horrors!

happy memorial day!

A bit belated, yes. I meant to post this yesterday.

We house sat again this weekend, and ended up doing quite a bit of socializing. Friday night we met up with Lucy and Phil and a bunch of other people to go to some bar and watch Lucy's brother's improv group. They were pretty funny, we had a good time. Saturday we went to the gym and kicked our own asses quite thoroughly. My legs are still a bit sore. That evening we went over to Ilya and Mercedes' house to eat some ribs and play some games. We tested out that power hour program I mentioned a week or so ago - it was awesome! We only did a power 30, but it worked really well. I think we'll be using it a lot in the future.

Sunday we went to go see the new Terminator movie. I was sort of expecting to hate it, but surprisingly I enjoyed it. Better than the third one, certainly. We did another power 30 that evening. God, I wish we had found this program 6 months ago.

Yesterday we hung out with Alfred's family.

We did a bit of drinking.

Wait, that's not us. Emily put one of the bottles on the ground and a raccoon actually ran off with it. We also had some of these drinks, which were incredibly spicy due to the habanero pepper that Robyn had me put in them.

We played a bit of beer pong. Seriously. We kicked their asses.

So that's that. We celebrated the fallen heroes of our country by drinking a bunch and gallavanting around town. We're so patriotic.

party animals

On Thursday night, after we went to the gym, we decided to go to the movies again. That's right, twice in one week! We smuggled in some food from Chick Fil A and saw Pineapple Express. It was really funny, pretty bloody. I liked it a lot, but Alfred liked Tropic Thunder better. I just thought this one was funnier, and all the action at the end was good. Bill Hader was in this one too, surprisingly, just for a few minutes at the very beginning. I think his part was funnier in this than in Tropic Thunder.

Then last night we went out to dinner with Ilya and Mercedes. Alfred found out that this restaurant we go to lunch at fairly often (well, he still goes, I don't anymore obviously) had 2 for 1 beer last night, so off we went. Mercedes and I only had 2 beers each, but Alfred and Ilya made up for it with 5 each. We had wings and nachos too, definitely a very healthy night. We wanted to get a picture with the food and all of our empty glasses, but the waitress said she couldn't leave the glasses cause they needed to wash them and use them again. She said she was sorry, but didn't sound it. She did take this picture for us, though. Apparently I felt the need to try and hide behind the umbrella pole.

This morning we're heading to pick up a fireplace that we've had set up as a display at a landscape/nursery place for almost a year. I think I've gotten one call on it, so obviously it was very successful. We've hit a slight snag in our plans:

Yeah, that's a truck in the fountain out front. We're working on it.

blogging over breakfast

I figured I'd come on and write a quick post while I ate this morning. See, there's my breakfast, yogurt and a banana muffin. I didn't get a chance to blog last night because we went out on a date! Yeah, that's right. We went out to dinner and then to a movie. Yay for $5 movie tickets! We saw Tropic Thunder. It was pretty good, definitely had some funny parts. Tom Cruise and Bill Hader dancing, for one. I had read that there were fake trailers before the movie, so when the first trailer started I assumed it was fake. It was something with Samuel L. Jackson (I think) being a bad cop. Looked pretty silly to me, so I Assumed it was a joke, but then the next one looked a little more realistic, like a movie I'd actually want to see. By the third trailer (for a Disney animated movie) I finally figured out these were real. But that first one really threw me off. (The fake ones are very obvious.)

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it here, but for a rich house, the hot water here sucks. They have an instant water heater, which is supposed to heat the water as it's being used instead of heating it and storing it in a tank, so you're supposed to have hot water right away and have it last the whole time. They must have theirs on some setting that turns it off after a certain amount of water or time, because I run out of hot water about half the time. And it's not like I take super long showers, I'm talking my normal 10-minute-max showers. I think it might have something to do with the fact that their shower heads use like 500 gallons a minute. It's nice for the first 5 minutes, but then when it gets cold it sucks.

Wow, this is fascinating stuff. But my breakfast is eaten and I have to leave for work in 13 minutes. Peace out

batman!

We saw The Dark Knight last night. I really liked it. I was trying not to expect too much because of all the hype, so that I wouldn't be disappointed, and I really did enjoy it. It was 2 and a half hours long and I was actually a little disappointed when it ended. Good action scenes, no slow parts where you wonder why they kept it in the movie. Batman's voice is kind of annoying, and there were a few parts that were just completely unbelievable, but overall it was good. As I was walking out and checking my phone, I had a text from Mike saying "if you haven't seen the dark knight yet go see it."

It did make me sad to see Heath Ledger. He was just so vibrant and alive, it's so sad that he was so stupid. Yeah, they said that he died from an accidental overdose, but he did have quite a few drugs in his body, and from what I had read prior to his death he was no stranger to illegal drugs, either. Too bad, cause he was damn good looking (well, and talented, and a father, and all that. It's not too bad just because he was hot). I don't know about the whole Oscar thing, but he did play a very good psychopath. I thought he did a great job.

My mind was apparently very invested in the movie, because I had multiple dreams involving Batman last night. One of them was that I was buying a car that was connected to Batman somehow, like it had special Batman mileage I think, and I actually got up out of bed because I had to do something at the foot of the bed. It woke both me and Alfred up, at the time I knew exactly what I was doing and I think I tried to explain it to him, but gradually realized it was a dream and that it made no sense. Weird.

Lindsay's birthday, and our date

First of all, happy (belated) birthday to Lindsay! Her birthday was actually Saturday, but I got the dates mixed up and then didn't post yesterday. (I tried posting a picture, but blogger won't let me. Come back later.) She's taking her vacation the next couple of weeks, so hopefully we'll be able to hang out sometime. We used to work together, I miss seeing her every day! EDIT: We have pictures! The first one is us with Lindsay and Jeff at our work picnic last year. I do believe it's the only picture I have of Lindsay and I together. Then I had to add the one of them with Xyla cause she's just so damn cute!

So we had some plans that fell through last night, which left us all gussied up with nowhere to go, so Alfred and I went on a date! We went to see Baby Mama (which was good, definitely some funny parts but I thought the ending was a little... weird) and then out to dinner at Outback. (That's the only big chain restaurant where we live, so we got a few gift cards for there for Christmas. We finally got to use a couple!) We were out late too, didn't get back to the house we're sitting at until maybe 10:30 or so. Party animals.

I'm going to take some pictures of this house tonight, probably post some tomorrow. This house is kind of crazy. It's really big, and on the river, and decorated with lots of antiques. Very impressive, and nice to look at, but not very cozy. I do love the layout of the main part of the house, though. We're going to try to get some inspiration for our own house from them.