Movie Mania

I watched several things this weekend, instead of doing anything constructive.

First, we rented "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." This movie was fairly faithful to the book. Remember that this book was longer than any of the three that had preceded it so unfortunately, the moviemakers had to cut quite a bit of it out; otherwise the movie would have been six hours long. It was long enough as it was. I prefer the book over the movie version, but DH enjoyed the movie. He has liked all the HP movies. I thought that the main characters are looking a little too old for their parts, though.

Next, we watched "Saw II." What a disappointment. I was read for something chilling and creepy like the first "Saw" but this movie was not even close. Other than gore, there were very few scary parts, and unlike the first movie, this movie did not leave me thinking.

The third movie I watched was "House of 1000 Corpses." A few years ago, critics raved about this movie, saying it was brilliant. I found it to be a tedious ripoff of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre." It wasn't even scary. It was just stupid. I don't know what the point was. Perhaps you have to be a Rob Zombie fan to enjoy it. There was a lot of just plain mindless violence. *shrugs*

Last weekend, I saw an 1960 movie called "Sons and Lovers," starring (a very young) Dean Stockwell. It was based on the D.H. Lawrence book of the same title. The movie tells the story of a young man who is trying to break free of his mother's control, and find his place in life. The young girl he thinks he loves offers up her virginity, which he accepts and then realizes that she can't love all of him. The second woman was a married woman, but she still loved her unfaithful husband, so they couldn't be together. Finally his mother dies and the movie ends, with him having the whole world before him. But he wonders if he'll ever be happy with a wife. Now I need to read the book.

Snow

Old Man Winter (hopefully) breathed his last gasp on us yesterday. We had six inches of snow here. Visibility was quite poor in the morning, so I took a vacation day. There was no way I was going to drive thirty minutes north, when the snow was coming almost horizontally out of the north, on an interstate that would be snowpacked. Good thing, too. I saw several cars in the ditches today when I drove to work.

DH saw a semi jackknifed off a bridge yesterday morning when he went to his workplace to pick up his paycheck. It had almost jackknifed right onto the road below.

DD bugged me to play outside all day but I ended up falling asleep on the couch. :( This morning, DH let her play while he was clearing off my car. I think she had fun. The sun is out today and the temperature is predicted to be in the 40s, so this snow won't last too long.

Spring can't come soon enough, in my opinion!

Yet another Survey

A) Four jobs you have had in your life:

corn detassler

nursing home dietary aide

library aide

college tutor


B) Four movies you would watch over and over:

"Tremors"

"LOTR: Return of the King"

"Star Wars"

"Mermaids"


C) Four places you have lived:

grew up on a farm

Terre Haute, Indiana

Peoria, Illinois

Champaign, Illinois


D) Four TV shows you love to watch:

"Battlestar Galactica"

"Lost"

"Invasion"

the CBS Evening News


E) Four places you have been on vacation:

South Dakota

Florida

Europe (England, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany on a tour)

St. Louis, Missouri


F) Four websites I visit daily:

Yahoo

Writing.com

CNN.com

Metafilter


G) Four of my favorite foods:

chili

hamburgers and fries

pork chops

grapes


H) Four places I would rather be right now:

asleep in bed

somewhere warm

Paris, France

Glastonbury, UK

Had any interesting dreams lately?

If so, you can post them here: dreamsbox.com: a place to "read other people's dreams or share your own." (may be NSFW [not safe for work])

A sister site, sinsbox.com, is a place to post anonymous confessions (definitely NSFW).

Weather Madness

The bad weather missed us, heading north as it came our way. Thankfully, the whole system missed us. We got a little bit of rain in the early morning hours. I watched some of the tv coverage of the devastation last night before going to bed, and I think it gave me nightmares.

On Saturday morning, around 5 a.m., a huge thunderclap shook the entire house. That was scary. DD woke up and didn't want to go back to her bed.

We had a quiet weekend. I watched "Murderball," a documentary about quadriplegic rugby players (I highly recommend it!), and "The Constant Gardener," a movie about drug trials by a pharmaceutical company in Africa, and a woman who tried to expose the company. Rachel Weisz won a best supporting actress Oscar for her role as Tess. It was an interesting movie, but LONG.

Don't even get me started on the season finale of "Battlestar Galactica." They married my Chief off to that stupid whiny Callie, and an entire year somehow passed in the blink of an eye??? I hope the writers know what they're doing. DH & I were like, WTF just happened here? I feel like they have tried to move ahead too quickly.

New episodes don't premiere until October. Sigh.

Another survey

From an email list:

Place an X by all the things you've done, or remove the x from the ones you have not. This is for your entire life:

( ) Smoked a cigarette
( ) Drank so much you threw up
( ) Crashed a friend's car
( ) Stolen a car
(X) Been in love
(X) Been dumped
( ) Shoplifted
( ) Been laid off/fired
(X) Quit your job
( ) Been in a fist fight
( ) Snuck out of your parent's house
(X) Had feelings for someone who didn't have them back
( ) Been arrested
( ) Gone on a blind date
(X) Lied to a friend
( ) Skipped school
( ) Seen someone die
( ) Been to Canada
( ) Been to Mexico
(X) Been on a plane
(X) Been lost
(X) Been on the opposite side of the country
(X) Gone to Washington, DC
(X) Swam in the ocean
(X) Played cops and robbers
(X) Recently colored with crayons
( ) Sang karaoke
( ) Paid for a meal with only coins
(X) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't
(X) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose
(X) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
(X) Danced in the rain
(X) Written a letter to Santa Claus
( ) Been kissed under the mistletoe
( ) Watched the sun rise with someone you care about
(X) Blown bubbles
( ) Made a bonfire on the beach
( ) Crashed a party

TGIF!

Yay, it's Friday! Not that I have big plans for the weekend or anything. I might need to go to Petsmart to get dog food, and Mag needs a new collar. He's just about outgrown the one I bought him a couple of months ago. I thought I bought one that would be big enough, but he's grown since then, I guess.

DD is feeling better, so that's good. She had a bath right after supper last night and then went straight to bed. You wanna know what I did? Guess...

I fell asleep on the couch at 6:15, and dozed for the rest of the night. Finally at 10 p.m., I decided I'd get up and go to bed. :) Alas, I didn't sleep well, though. It was like I dozed lightly all night. I hope I'm not getting sick!

Thursday nights are boring anyway. There's nothing on tv. I had some reading and studying on Celtic mythology I was going to do, but I was too tired to concentrate.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

March Already!?

Where does the time fly?

DD has been sick all week. We kept her out of school on Monday and Tuesday (she'd been sick with a cold since the weekend), and she decided herself that she wanted to go back to school yesterday. She brought home her papers and we worked through the things she had missed together. However, she ended up going to bed early, around 5:45 p.m. I hope this is the only cold she gets this winter!

Spring is on the horizon. The dogs have been restless, wanting to go outside all the time to try and chase the rabbits that live in the yard. Or maybe Mag wants to get those mean leaves that drift past. :)

For the past couple of days, I've been looking for a site where I can start up my diary again. The diary was always a place where I wrote longer, more thoughtful entries. The blog is where I write about the daily stuff. D-X is going to be reborn in a different way, though. It will take awhile to get everything back up and running. They need money for hosting at present, and they've gotten about half of what they need. If the new site is like the old site, then I shall definitely re-start my journal there. At the moment, I'm trying out WordPress and resurrecting my Diaryland site as a mirror. Not much there at present. (I've got to figure out where I can host some images. I'm annoyed at my avatar not showing up on the blog.) :)

Needless to say, last night I backed up all my writing from my laptop, my PC, and whatever of my D-X I could find in the waybackmachine archive to floppies and to a USB drive. I know that those storage devices can fail, but at least I bothered to do a backup. Nothing lasts forever.

Not much else has been going on with me lately. I've been watching a lot of movies, which I'll get around to posting about soon, and reading a few books, like "Night" by Elie Wiesel.