nahtmmm

Just saw it in 3D. Quite good, all around. Good acting, good character moments (whether they were accurate is a question I leave to others), plenty of good action, good dialogue, good special effects.

I had a few minor quibbles, but I don't remember most of them. ( Spoilers )

I liked the dual use of "power" to refer to both energy and control. It's a little thing, but I'm a sucker for thematic stuff.

The 3D was not flawless, although for all I know it's state of the art as I've never been to a 3D movie before. It did add to the experience somewhat, but not being used to reconciling something 500 feet away with it supposed to be happening right under my nose, it also detracted. Thankfully it didn't hurt my eyes very much. For that matter, the sound was kept at sane levels.

It amused me that they hired a whole company just to do that long "end crawl".

I'm gonna use thumbnails for this, just so connections don't get bogged down. Click on any of them for a bigger picture.

( Suncatcher update )



( Random bugs )



( More turtle from our recent Turtle Time )



( Camping, with actual text )



( Pooky )



( Penny )



We had a big hailstorm on Saturday. We didn't get any damage here that we're aware of, but the church had a hole punched through its skylight. KJ's work got all sievey in its roof. Sorry about the picture quality here, but you can still see the size of the things that fell in our backyard.




( The big finale: Flowers )

The parents are away for the weekend, so Penny is sleeping downstairs with us and Pooky. Last night was peaceful. When Penny almost bumped into Pooky while making herself a nest, Pooky just got off the bed rather than turning it into a confrontation. Penny only stirred once during the night, to rearrange herself on the bed. I guess she didn't need to go out.

Now Penny's up on the couch all by herself, with the occasional rumble of thunder and no prospect of a walk. I'll dress and go up there, and maybe we'll be able to squeeze in a trip to the park this morning.My parents were visiting my brother two weekends ago, so KJ and I were babysitting Penny. Sunday I skipped church service and came back home because, in my words, Penny needed walkies and KJ needed snuggles.

As usual, I was letting Penny lead the way. She headed in the direction of school. Apparently she was taking me to The Other Park. Except, when we came to the first left, she kept going straight. Very strange, because we'd never gone this direction before, and she knew the way to the park perfectly well. Now, I could have pulled her back on course for T. O. P. But it was getting warm and I hadn't thought to bring any water. Besides, there wasn't any point in needlessly dragging her where she didn't want to go.

Well, a few blocks farther along, I noticed a large dark lump on the sidewalk ahead. It was too big to be a rock and the wrong shape to be a ball or newspaper. It also appeared to be changing shape.
( I bet you totally can't guess what it was )


Yesterday (this week Friday) KJ and I went to a big book fair at West County Shopping Mall. Or some generic name like that. It's a ways to get to and tricky to get out of and is the boring kind of mall -- 98% clothes and department stores -- so we probably won't be going back there. Except for future book fairs. It was so big, we had about half a dozen books between us by the time I gave up on getting through the Mystery section. I ended up with The Long Patrol and Mattimeo (back-filling my collection), an unfortunately large edition of Catton's Terrible Swift Sword, and an interesting-looking little mystery that I picked up on the grounds that 1. it looked interesting and 2. I've become entirely unadventurous in reading over the past few years (but see also the camping update).

My brother also announced his engagement to his girlfriend. They seem to be affectionate and able to tease each other, so I have good hopes for them.

The parents are away for the weekend, so Penny is sleeping downstairs with us and Pooky. Last night was peaceful. When Penny almost bumped into Pooky while making herself a nest, Pooky just got off the bed rather than turning it into a confrontation. Penny only stirred once during the night, to rearrange herself on the bed. I guess she didn't need to go out.

Now Penny's up on the couch all by herself, with the occasional rumble of thunder and no prospect of a walk. I'll dress and go up there, and maybe we'll be able to squeeze in a trip to the park this morning.

KJ took me to see The Hunger Games at the Mills. Pretty good movie and from what I hear they stayed pretty faithful to the book. It also didn't encroach on the space of that book I keep never getting around to writing, so all my concerns about being warped or whatever were needless. I hope. My hopes of being spurred to write something also appear to have come to naught, but I'm going to take a different tack. I'm going to treat it as a story to sort out in my head as I please, a story that maybe one day I'll get around to writing down for whatever reason.

Then we walked around the mall. The bookstore had Rakkety Tam for $3, so I snapped up a copy. Then we came upon a bunch of Eulalia! for $4ish, so I thought about it a moment and splurged on a copy of that. KJ got a set of the Chronicles of Narnia for $20.

Great Statement of Purpose, great writing by Zeke, superb voice acting, and of course my contribution was nearly flawless. (I don't think the "Mwahaha!" scene worked as well in audio as in print, but you can't win all the time.) I'm going to listen to it again immediately!

So there's this Star Trek fansite that performs radio shows, Starship Excelsior. The episodes I've listened to have been good solid stuff. And there's this other Star Trek fansite FiveMinute.Net, which does short parodies of Star Trek, Star Wars, movies, videogames, Shakespeare, what-have-you. And it's all very funny. (I might add that I am a forum member there, and that I write parodies of Star Trek novels that I have read, which puts me at about Magnitude Four or Five on the Richter Scale Of Nerdiness.)

So one of the dudes in charge at Excelsior came over to 5MN (or 5MV as we oldbies still tend to call it) asking for short parodies of their episodes for use in an April's Fool 2011 special. Hey, this is awesome! I'm going to be not only "published" but performed! Well, the guy in charge of 5MN parodied the first episode and I did the next two. The Excelsior dude loved my stuff (as did I, which tells you how good it is) and edited it only lightly.

You may have noticed I said 2011. RL (as I was told afterward) got in the way in a very serious manner for some of the people. So I've been tickled pink about a potentially imminent PERFORMANCE OF MY CREATIVITY for over a year now.

And now it's here it's here it's here and I haven't heard it yet but I am so tickled pink that I think they're going to have to invent an ultraviolet pink just to describe how pink I am tickled.

And I am going to listen to it right now (only 6 MB of your bandwidth and 25 minutes of your lives, folks), but I fear there is no way that it could hold up under the rosy-eyed anticipation I have been living under all this time. Still, I get to hear Zeke's interpretation of an episode too and how could I miss out on that?

Okay, deep breath. Here we go!


(And yes, I know this is all a little silly, but I'm just so tickled . . . and I almost never use "tickled" in this sense, so you know I really mean it.)

Not my ideal place to live, but after months of no microscopy job listings it sounds pretty good. The underlying problem with California per se is that, from all accounts, the weather is boring and the ground isn't, which is the opposite of the way it should be. (Not that St. Louis isn't a little faulty in that regard. <-- Pun not foreseen, but now that it's written down, it's totally intended.)

The big deal for me, of course, is that's a long way to go. It's not the sort of move you can make with a U-Haul over the space of a weekend. And yes, people make longer moves all the time, but it's still daunting, especially since I'd be involved. Worry worry worry flinch.

Of course, it's quite possible that I won't be called upon to make the move. I don't think I quite fit the qualifications. Which isn't going to stop me sending in my resume, because sometimes people are desperate for any port in a storm, but the job was posted where lots of microscopist types will see it and there will probably be plenty of candidates for them to choose from.

So then I went to the company's website to see if they want any particular information or formatting in a resume, because I am just that intrinsically savvy/paranoid, and found that they have another interesting opening on the East Coast. Which doesn't appeal to me either, even though it's probably in a cheaper area than the other one. Which just goes to show that I am a lazy bum who is quite happy to collect moss in one place while everyone else rolls around.


So I went to church yesterday, and the first thing I did when I got in my room was check the posters to see how many had fallen off the walls during the week. Okay that's boring. The next thing I did was to check out that suncatcher cross in the window. I stared at it and tried to remember if the purple had really been that magenta . . . then I realized the blue was totally gone. Just a week of direct sun was enough to fade all the blue in the dyes to nothingness. I went next door and checked on the butterfly. All the blue was gone and the green was very pale. Ah well, what are you going to do? They both still look nice. Although who knows how long the warmer colors will last. I moved the cross to a window where the sun wouldn't hit it so directly. Unfortunately, it's now in a much less visible position.

I guess the paint was really old or something. I mean, cheap's cheap, but it should still be reasonably competent. KJ will have to avoid leaving her froggy in direct sunlight, I guess.


I've been very sneezy today. Explosively so, even. It's been rather annoying.

KJ got a new laptop today, so I get to hang on to her old one (this one). The battery acted dead in the water at first, but eventually it started charging.

We ate lunch at the deli at Whole Foods. I had a beef-and-cheese-and-stuff dish called mina that apparently originates from Turkey. It was fairly good. Might have been even better if I'd gotten to eat it properly hot. Then Dad grilled for dinner. Peppercorns on the steak. He probably enjoyed that better than I did. ;~)

The lady in charge of the children's class was quite pleased with the suncatcher. I sat in on her class since I didn't have any students. Six children today, which is pretty good these days.