The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

I saw the movie yesterday. It was amazing. As far as adaptations from a book go, I think I was more favorably impressed with this than with Lord of the Rings. I had read some reviews that were not happy with the computer graphics animals, or the pacing of the movie. For the first, go watch the BBC production from the 80's. Anything is better. I didn't notice a problem with the pacing either. The book kind of takes a good long time about actually getting them all into the Wardrobe and the races through the rest.

I didn't understand why they inserted the ice flow scene. That was the only glaring jar to me.

I loved the additional Edmund footage. Especially the scene imprisoned in the Witch's castle. He ends up face to face with Mr. Tumnus, who he betrayed. It's the first time Edmund is forced to see the consequences of his selfish actions. In the books Edmund is self centered and greedy, then he disappears while the others look for him, and he reappears after Aslan's scouts rescue him. The character development happens mostly behind the scenes. In the movie, a few extra seconds of footage gives Edmund much greater depth. Susan seemed more harpy to me than I remembered, but I'm going to have to re-read the book. Lucy nearly stole the show, and Liam Neeson is a superb Aslan.

As a sidenote, I was more moved by Aslan's death than the entire Passion of the Christ.

Foolanthropoy 2005

Foolanthropy 2005

Donate to this year's foolish charities. Heifer International made the top 5.

Good Heavens

Good Heavens!

The sixth book in the Wheels of Time series has a 72 page prologue. That's almost a tenth of the book.

The best part

The best part...

...Of having a grandmother who marries a vitner is having her buy you your yearly Brighton accessory (This year a pair of Secret Garden sunglasses). Which comes in handy when you are called by Miles to help him buy Christmas presents for his wife, Becky.

She sent us with a list of possible gift ideas (hoping for forstall another year of two nearly identical pairs of earrings purchased in the same Christmas). Item two was "Brighton - belt or other fun thing." So to Brighton we went. As we walked in, I realized I was wearing no less than seven Brighton originals, and I commented to Miles that we should have salesladies flocking to us by the dozen. True to prediction, they were coming at us from all sides. The combination of my wardrobe and Miles' "lets get that too" attitude towards shopping got us all the attention we could ever want. Three purchases and some extensive gift wrapping later we were ready to move on to the next place.

I'd always wondered what Julia Roberts felt like in Pretty Woman. Now I know.

Run Run Run and never stop

Spinning Wheels Got To Go Round

Still to do tonight: practice My Immortal for tomorrow. Finish learning Jungle love, and shape up ending to Mr. Brightside and Boys of the Summer. Do month end spending log entry, update ledger, pay bills. Read more of the Robert Jordan Wheels of Time prequel (I've lost track of the titles. Numbers only from now on)

Tomorrow: Work, Teach, Work, get dressed in a hurry for Calzones gig, Load Equipment, Show, tear down.

Saturday: Drive to Seattle to help with Logsdon Christmas Present. Spend Night.

Sunday: Drive home. Watch Lost with Denise and Nancy.

Monday: Begin week over again.

'Tis the Season

'Tis the Season

The annual Kunzepalooza is over. Or at least, everyone's gone home. And we still have trees to decorate. Mom keeps hinting that it would be "fun" if I would come over and finish it. Usually she says this from a ladder halfway up the 12 foot tree which she is festooning with angels and beaded garland. My tree is "A disaster." Maybe if getting the last two strands of bubble lights hadn't taken three hours, we could have finished it. And having the stand break twice and the tree fall over didn't help either (Note for next time: HGTV showed how to cut a piece of metal conduit to convert a live tree stand to one that holds and artificial one. Wish we'd thought of that. We cut dowel rods to make shims. Not as effective.)

Yesterday I spent seven hours as the Designated Driver on a Lower Valley wine tour. We went everywhere. I smelled some good wine, then got bent out of shape that I couldn't have any, so went back to the car and read 150 pages or so of my book. I'm within 100 of the end. I should finish that tonight. That means another $8.65 and a trip to Inklings in my immediate future.

Tonight I have band practice. I finally figured out how to burn Sean's MP3's onto a CD using our brand spanking new eBay computer. It's so fast! Our last one took for flipping ever to download anything, and we didn't know how we would ever get it to upload pictures. One of our regular donors was talking to Paul, our technology guy, and he mentioned our need, and the guy decided instead of giving a check this time, he'd buy us a new one. Oh how nice it is!

Something just flashed out of the corner of my eye. Someone ran blinker lights around our display window. I wonder when that happened. This is what I get for taking off early friday. The whole store gets rearranged.

My New Resolution

My New Resolution

Ok, so it's a little early for official resolutions, but on the wall at Inklings was a newspaper article about local shops going out of business because everyone is going to Walmart. My last favorite bookstore, Sunshine and Wisteria, went out of business a few years ago. I didn't shop there very often. They had a very small selection and were a bit pricey, but I must have had them order five copies of "The Phantom" by Susan Kaye when my friend group went through them so much we kept having to duct tape the cover back on.

So here are my new substitutes:

1.Instead of Safeway, Wrays Thriftway.
2. Instead of Borders, Inklings or Off the Record.
3. Instead of Starbucks, Find another coffee shop. That one is difficult. I have a local drive through that I like, and Inklings has great Spiced Chai, but Starbucks is opened later than anything in town other than bars.

Some things however, I still will buy at regular retail. Some stores include:

1. Walmart. I'm sorry. I hate what it does to the job market in our country, but there are some beauty supplies that the mission stockroom doesn't have and it's the cheapest place to buy them on such a limited budget. (But I did have extra money last week and bought shaving cream at Wrays.)
2. TJ Maxx. It's new, but discounted. It's a chain, but I love it for things like stationary and underwear. I'll wear anything else thrift store, but that I want new.
3. Taco Time. It's a chain, but it's a local chain. So I'll keep on with the crisp meat burritos.

Black Friday

Happy Black Friday!

And it's snowing!

Bloomin' Onions

Bloomin' Onions

ANDREW
You sure you don't wanna stop and pick up some burgers or something, you know, road trip food?

SPIKE
It's not a road trip. It's a covert operation.

ANDREW
Right. Right. Gotcha. (beat) I - I bet even covert operatives eat curly fries. They're really good.

SPIKE
(rolls eyes, then) Not as good as those onion blossom things.

ANDREW
Ooh, I love those.

SPIKE
Yeah, me, too.

ANDREW
It's an onion... and it's a flower. I - I don't understand how such a thing is possible.

SPIKE
See, the genius of it is you soak it in ice water for an hour so it holds its shape. Then you deep-fry it root-side up for about 5 minutes.

ANDREW
Masterful.

SPIKE
Yeah. (beat) Tell anyone we had this conversation, I'll bite you.

ANDREW
Right.

I'm so tired. I hated it when Kevin said that every day in response to "how are you." but I am. All weekend I turned down every invitation and slept. And read. 1200 pages of the Wheels of Time series. It's very good. I'm on book five now. I think I might take a break after this one and read the prequel.

Today was idiot day again at the shop. For the morning at least. People kept coming up with problems, and even when I gave them the answer they wanted to hear they wouldn't stop talking about it. One lady wanted me to track down the safety key to a donated piece of exercize equiptment that came to the shop about when I did. If they ever had it at the warehouse in the first place, and if they kept that sort of thing around, no way would anyone know where it is. I put in a call to mollify her. Then, after she and our new handy man took it apart to see if it works, and put it back together, all the while carrying on a monolgue about how she doesn't know how much it costs, and without a key there's no way to tell if it will work, and she already plugged it in on saturday and the other lady said to talk to Nancy on monday, and she said Nancy would be here monday morning, and why isn't she back yet, and the other lady said that Nancy could tell her how much it was. Finally I walked away, placed a few calls, and came back with a price of $50. For a treadmill, that's really cheap. And for the hundreds of dollars you aren't paying for a new one, I bet some sporting goods store would know how to order a replacement key. But the monologue kept on going. And I kept giving her the information, and she looked right at me and KEPT TALKING. Later she came to the register sans machine, but with several pairs of earrings and balked at the price I gave her (alright, so I was wrong. Earrings are .50, not $1, but I gave her the second pair for .10 because she just wanted the backs.) Another monologue commenced. I'm not kidding, her shopping experience took up almost an hour of my morning.

We have a new handyman who worked at Goodwill before this. We put him to work testing appliances, but that meant me running around to hunt up power cords and batteries and USB cables and such so he could test them. He reported that we have many appliances that don't work -- but it turns out that they just don't work because he needs something else to test them. I gave him my personal cables to hook a VCR to a TV, and I haven't seen them since, and my batteries, also MIA. Tomorrow I'll have to track them down.

My Immortal is kicking my butt. I am so nervous about that song, and I feel I'm wasting everybody's time at practice playing the whole thing over and over again for the 16 measure they actually join in. I don't have a pop voice, the microphone barely picks me up, and I can't play and sing at the same time yet. And I've practiced for hours and hours.

On the brightside (Speaking of which, Sean, our drummer, won a karoeke contest this weekend singing Mr. Brightside, and $300 to go with it.) tis the season to decorate for Christmas and enjoy the wonderful rush of holiday shoppers. Or perhaps retire to my closet, whimpering in the fetal position until after New Years.