Second, from several years ago, here’s the recut trailer for The Shining that makes the whole thing look like a feel-good movie. I always get nervous watching it, but trust me – there’s nothing scary here.
Third, this recut trailer for Mary Poppins that scares the *&^! out of me every time I see it. So much that I’m not watching it right now. I’ll post it, and I might watch it when the sun is shining, but certainly not now. I keep going back to it, though, ’cause I love how terrifying this guy made Mary Poppins. It’s awesome.
Last, I have to share this link from Spokeit’s post today. The site is called Catalog Living, and the woman who runs it posts pictures from Pottery Barn catalogs and tells the story of the people who live there. The one who live in the catalog. They (the people who live in the catalog) are totally passive-aggressive, and the site is completely hilarious. These two are my favorites (one and two) so far.
Thanks to Dooce’s archives, I have songs and scenes from The Little Mermaid stuck in my head. Speaking of her archives, though, sometime back in late 2007 (maybe early 2008), she pointed her readers to this site, created by a woman who rescued a baby coyote and raised it. More importantly, she posted adorable pictures of the tiny thing. I haven’t looked around that much yet, so I don’t know how she handles the issues that most likely came up as she raised a wild animal, but it must have been interesting.
From Nancy Nall’s post today, I found (and came late to the party, apparently, but that’s not unusual for me) I Write Like, which supposedly compares your writing samples to those of famous authors. I plugged in a blog post from a week ago or so, and found that
Again, I can live with that. So I plugged in another post. Mario Puzo. Hmm. Another post: Vladimir Nabokov. Um, yeah. So I agree with Nancy – it’s gotta be random. Fun, but not enlightening. I googled it and found this from a NYT blog. End of story, I think.
It rained all night last night. A welcome change, and really soothing to fall asleep to (several times, since I woke up a few times last night). We woke up at 7 this morning to find it still pouring, so running was out of the question. We found ourselves breakfasted and in the basement before 9am, and we spent a good hour making some donation and trash decisions. We’re not done getting rid of the crap in the basement, not by a long shot, but we made a sizable dent. (That looks weird. Sizable. Sizeable? Still weird.) Around 10:30, I went to Costco for Roxy’s medicine and then to Target (yeah, I know – again), and I was supposed to be home before noon so we could leave at noon to meet Erik and Margaret for lunch and a movie. Well, you know how Target is. I got sucked in, and it was almost noon when I got in the car to come home and get John. So we were late. I hate being late, but this time I can’t blame anyone by myself (sorry again, guys!). It didn’t help that I got off the toll road going the wrong way on 7 and had to turn around and THEN wade through the normal traffic in the area. Lunch (at Maggiano’s) was good, but it was more about catching up with E&M, who we hadn’t seen since mid-May, and that was much-needed and much fun. After the movie (Knight and Day – the first half was funny and pretty entertaining. The second half was okay, but less fun.), I bought a new wallet (a nice red, big, adult-type wallet to replace my falling-apart, overstuffed, tiny little wallet that gets lost in my purse and was meant to only hold the bare necessities but got drafted into full-time use because I don’t know why), and we came home, checked on the dogs (they’re fine), and did geeky website things together (I updated my Pages section. See?). Tomorrow might not be so productive, but you never know.
We have had the nicest day. We got up a little on the early side, went for a run – that reminds me. I had just started the last mile, I was on my way home, I’d been enjoying my run and the beautiful morning, and then I ran into my old boss. NOT someone I wanted to see. We were fake-polite to each other for a few minutes, but that was long enough to really irritate me and put a damper on the rest of my run. I got over it, though. We took care of the lawn and the weeding, went out to lunch, spent a few minutes browsing in Best Buy, and then we came home and started watching the USA-England World Cup match. We stopped about an hour in to go to the movies (Get Him to the Greek – very funny), and now we’re back and we’re watching the rest of the game. The noise in the stadium is kinda weird. Like it’s a crowd of angry bees, not people. Maybe a swarm of irritated kazoos.
They’re all so cute. Must be a requirement. Part of the tryout. You can run, you can kick, you can do whatever else it is soccer players have to do, and you’re good-looking. You’re in. Have you seen these guys? Particularly Bocanegra (captain of the US team) and Green (goalie for England). Very attractive guys.
I watched City Hall tonight, a political thriller from the mid-90s with Al Pacino and John Cusack. It was…okay. I think it might be better than that, but I couldn’t get past John Cusack’s bad accent. I love John Cusack, I really do, but he can’t do accents. His Louisiana drawl was in and out and when it was in, it sounded ridiculous. Really distracting.
I’m going to bed extremely early tonight (like in half an hour), hoping to sleep well and get up early. Two alarms. And maybe a wake-up call.
“Googley-elmo” totally made watching two hours of John Cusack’s bad accent worth it. (Yes, I know they’re not related.) Can’t. Stop. Laughing.
Doesn’t this make you want to go to Iceland? (I’m being sincere, I promise.)
Will it be all sunshine and flowers from now on? Let’s go with yes. Why be realistic when I can be optimistic? Seriously, that weight on my shoulders? Gone. I’m not saying I love my job or anything now, but holy hand grenade of Antioch, do I feel better.
I don’t ever want to go here. I had nightmares after Jurassic Park and I was half-convinced raptors were going to leap through my bedroom window and kill me, so a forest full of dinosaurs and GIANT SNAKES is not the place for me.
Now I’m going to bed. Sorry for the choppy post. (I tried to call it a chippy post. Not sure what that means, exactly, but my spellcheck thinks it’s a word.)
Okay, we finished Lost. The whole thing was worth it for Sun/Jin and Sawyer/Juliet. I cried at both. We also saw the new Robin Hood movie today (stupid, but fun). And we started catching up on Glee. Lots of TV today. But that’s not all we did. We mowed, weeded, mulched, and pruned, and after that, we went to Borders. Busy day.
I gave the dogs a little bit of leftover turkey from my sandwich (Wegman’s sub – SO good), and they’re drooling at (and on) my heels now. They’re not letting me out of their sight in case I have more goodies in my pockets. Smart dogs.
John thinks I should change my tag line from “What did you expect?” to “Because Non Sequitur was taken”. And now that I’ve checked, it’s not taken, and I wonder if I should buy it…
In honor of John, here are a few unrelated items:
As I dragged my suitcases from the baggage carousel to the train for the rental car counters, I followed a woman leading a doggie train across the street. Why didn’t I take a picture? I’m an idiot, that’s why. The woman had a rolling suitcase behind her, and attached to that, she had what looked like an overnight bag on wheels with mesh sides. The top was open and there were two little white dogs (Westies, maybe) checking out the surroundings. One was seated with just its head poking out, but the other was up on its hind legs, leaning on the front of the bag, craning its neck in every direction. One of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. They looked like they were riding on the caboose of a little train.
My last rental car (a Kia Spectra), while economy, had power everything. You know, the normal things (windows, locks, etc.). This one, a Chevy Aveo, has power NOTHING. Can you remember the last time you were in a car without power locks? Without power windows? My first car didn’t have power locks or windows, but it was an ’88 Corolla hatchback, not a 2009 Chevy four-door sedan, and I haven’t been in that car since…1997.
I finished the Lawrence Block book, The Burglar in the Library, last night before I went to sleep. That’s right – I liked it SO much I couldn’t put it down. Started it on the plane, finished it before I went to sleep. And as soon as I can find a used bookstore around here that’s open when I’m able to get there, I plan to buy several more of his books. And there are lots of used bookstores in Atlanta.
I started watching Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing and Charm School tonight, a movie I’m pretty sure John isn’t interested in. I am, but I can’t watch it now. It’s about a guy (Robert Carlyle) getting over the death of his wife. WHY would I want to watch a gut-wrenching, soul-twisting, tearjerker of a movie about a guy who’s lost his wife when I can’t be home with John? I wouldn’t, that’s right, so I’m turning it off. I’m going to curl up in bed with the next Dresden Files book ’cause a little light vampire-killing (or whatever monster he’ll go after in this book) is just what I need.
We watch a lot of TV. Not as many movies, but we’ve seen a few lately. We watched Broadcast News last weekend. Both of us confused it with Network (another one we haven’t seen), and we didn’t figure out that we were thinking of an entirely different movie until Broadcast News was over. Where was the rant? Oh, right. Wrong movie. We watched Some Kind of Wonderful tonight, but I was a little disappointed by it. I’m not sure what I was expecting.
List for this weekend:
Run
Clean
Groceries
Swing by the office to drop this week’s evaluations off and make some copies (Yes, I peeked, and yes, they were nice to me again. Thankfully.)
Make sure Jess is okay after Chuck gets on the plane (he’ll be gone for three months)
CATCH UP WITH MY BLOG FRIENDS
Library (to get a new book to listen to during my commute)
Bank
Roxy (who’s doing well, thanks for asking) just gave me a look that said she wished we’d just go to bed already. Don’t we know we’re keeping her up?
*Edited to add the last two items on my list. I remembered them this morning.
John has a weakness for Cadbury Creme Eggs. Since Easter candy started showing up in stores, I’ve bought a handful every week for him. I figured today would be the last day to get any (and Wegman’s was, for once, a disappointment – no Easter candy in sight!), so after the grocery store, I headed to CVS to add a few more to the stockpile. An employee met me at the door, directed me to the candy aisle, and then helped me find the last Cadbury display. John owes that guy. His stash of creme eggs should last him quite a while.
We watched Up last night. Such a good movie. I don’t know what took us so long to see it. I need to add all Pixar movies to my birthday list. We have a couple (Toy Story, The Incredibles – love The Incredibles), but I’d like to have the others. We’re watching Inkheart right now. Well, we were watching it, but we took a break ’cause John’s mom called. I’d never heard of it, but we noticed it on HBO yesterday, and it has Paul Bettany in it (we like him), so we recorded it. It’s…entertaining. Not good. Kinda dumb brain candy. Paul Bettany’s good in it. Huh. I just looked it up at imdb.com and found out that the woman playing Brendan Fraser’s wife was Colin Firth’s girlfriend in Love Actually. The one who cheats on him. Hate her. Who would cheat on Colin Firth? She must be stupid. (And fictional. What’s your point?)
I learned today (something that should have been obvious, but, well, wasn’t to me) that my phone will die if it spends an entire day underground. For the second day in a row, my cell phone started the day fully charged, but by 4ish, when I leave the underground room I’m spending every day in, it has already turned itself off because the battery died. You’d think I would have figured it out after the first day, but no. How hard is it to figure out that if a phone spends nine hours searching for a signal, it might run out of battery power and die? At least it’s not as final as that. That’s why we have cell phone chargers. But I’ve learned my lesson and I’ll turn off my phone when I get there tomorrow. Problem solved.
I watched part of Benny & Joon tonight. I really like that movie. And Aidan Quinn looked good in it. Big blue eyes. Early morning tomorrow (that’s going to be an unfortunate habit before long), so I’m off.
Hmm. Well, that really depends on what you consider a waste of a Sunday. And I think that entirely depends on what sort of weekend you’ve had or what kind of week is coming up. For me, this Sunday, wasting the day would have meant doing nothing. If you know me, you know that I consider doing nothing on a Sunday (or any day) to be one of the best ways to spend a day. Normally. But I have a very busy, somewhat stressful week coming up, with a long commute at either end of the work day and very little time to get stuff done. Today, not wasting my Sunday meant being productive. So I went to the grocery store (Wegman’s, of course) to stock up for the week ahead, went to Staples to buy a laptop bag for work, got my car cleaned out, paid the bills, filled out the census form, and did what little picking up was required to put the house back into the shape it was yesterday morning. That part was easy; Jess and Chuck aren’t that messy. And now I’m done with all of that and I can spend the rest of the day doing whatever I want. I think. And what is that? I think it’s reading.
But first, I’ve seen a few movies recently. John and I watched District 9 last weekend. It was not at all what I expected, but that could have been because I didn’t see any previews or read anything about it before I saw it. It was interesting, certainly, and gory enough for three movies, but I can’t say I want to see it again. We watched Dean Spanley and then Stardust with Jess and Chuck last night. I think I really liked Dean Spanley (it was not at all what I expected – took me completely by surprise when I started to see where it was going), and I think I’ll like it more when I can see it again. Jess performed her magic to get our DVD player to play her Region 2 DVD, and we’re very impressed. Stardust is one I already knew I loved.
I’m a little chilly, so I off to take a nice warm bath, read my book, and…I feel like there should be a third thing to keep the rhythm of the sentence going, but I can’t think of anything. My goal for the evening is to not stress out about tomorrow. I’m as prepared as I can be.
That’s been happening a lot lately (short posts). Sorry. I spent my evening watching Gosford Park instead of playing on the internet. I had a much easier time following what was happening (and who all the characters were) this time, and I liked it. The first time I saw it, I was SO confused when it was over. John remembers it as the most boring 4 hours he ever spent. Clive Owen doesn’t do it for him, I guess. I don’t always like him, but I do in this movie.
And here.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers is fine, but Clive is all rumpled and scruffy and HOT. I like.
It’s Oscar Night, so I might as well talk about it, right? But first, I have to see who’s nominated and find out if I even saw any of these movies. Last year, I hadn’t seen a single Oscar-nominated movie by the time the awards rolled around.
Okay, I’ve checked. Of movies that were either nominated for themselves or had an actor nominated, I’ve seen Avatar (liked it, but for a technical category, not Best Picture. I mean, come on, it was a 3D remake of Ferngully: The Last Rainforest!), Julie & Julia, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Soooo, none of the really good ones.
We’ll watch the beginning for Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, but that’s about it. I’ll check out the highlights online tomorrow. We’re going to spend our evening finishing Batman Begins (we got too sleepy to finish it last night) with pizza (and maybe wine – classy, I know).
Oh, we caught up on Lost this morning over breakfast, so Mom, Dad, Mindy, call me tomorrow and we’ll chat.
You go, Roger Ebert! This article moves along really quickly (short, to-the-point sentences, unlike most of mine), and the pictures of scary weather patterns add to the sense of urgency. I flew through this article and it set my pulse a-pounding. A little bit.
I love these drawings/paintings by Rob Gonsalves. They’re all optical illusions and they all hold up after multiple viewings. I like the theme of the third one (of course I do), but some of the ones further down the page are amazing.
If you have ever watched a major dog show in TV (or Best In Show on DVD), you will probably find this as funny as I did.
Not a video this time, just pictures, but check out some of these rooms! I’m not crazy about the antlers hanging from the ceiling, but check out the kitchen at the bottom of the post! Love it.
John’s midterm was tonight. He didn’t feel all that confident about it this morning, but he just called and, except for one question that everyone in the class seemed to have issues with, he thinks he did okay. (That looks oddly punctuated. I’m leaving it.) And he’s on his way home early. I said something to that effect last night, that he might be able to come early, but I totally meant that he takes tests quickly. Not that it wouldn’t take him very long to write down everything he knows. But that’s how it sounded.
Okay, one more link and then I’m done for the night. I’m watching West Side Story on TCM. I love everything about “America” (the opening lines get stuck in my head for days), but my favorite favorite part is at 3:52 in the video here when Anita and her friend sort of flounce over to the guys to sing the next part. The flouncing cracks me up.
Complete and utter failure. Worst ponytail EVER. I took the dogs for a short jog this afternoon, and for the first time in months, I put my hair into a normal ponytail instead of the double-decker thing I’ve been doing (which has been working just fine). Because the ponytail wasn’t tight enough, it slid down the back of my head, freeing all the shorter hair in front to flop around in my face. I couldn’t just tuck it behind my ears (over and over and over) like I usually would because I was wearing my ear grips to keep my wittle ears warm, so I didn’t have ears behind which to tuck the hair. Behind which.
John has been in the driveway all morning replacing the rear brakes on the mustang. It’s not supposed to be this hard. That’s true of EVerything he does to this car. Except when he replaced the drive belt a couple of weeks ago. That one went pretty well. He got the driver’s side done, but he’s having trouble compressing the piston back into the caliper on the passenger side. I’ve been googling the problem, but he’s got the right tool and he seems to be doing all the right things. He’s not ready to assume the caliper has seized yet, but if he can’t fit the new brake pad in, he may have to replace the caliper. And that will mean he won’t be going to his cousin’s new baby’s christening. Because it will take the rest of the weekend (bleeding brake lines, replacing parts, adding fluid, etc) and he won’t have a car to drive until it’s done. So we’ll see. But if he does go, he’ll leave for PA tonight to spend the evening with his family and then drive to Long Island with them Sunday morning for the christening. He’ll stay with his parents in PA Sunday night and go to work from their house Monday morning. So I won’t see him again until after work on Monday. On the plus side, I’ll have Indian for dinner and watch movies he’s not interested in. But that’s only fun for one night, not two. Oh! Speaking of movies, we watched 500 Days of Summer last night. We both really liked it. Joseph Gordan-Levitt was fantastic, and while we didn’t like Zooey Deschanel’s character as much, she was really good. John couldn’t decide if he thought she was really attractive or not. He said he wasn’t sure if he’d call her beautiful, or even pretty, but he wants to keep looking at her. So at least he thinks she’s interesting. I think she’s very pretty. She’s got that blue eyes with dark hair thing I’ve always liked. Like Liesl in The Sound of Music. And I will watch the musical number (from 500 Days) at least three more times before I put the movie back in the mail.
My day didn’t quite live up to its promising start, but how could it have? I had to go to work. Not that work is a bad place. But it’s work, so it can’t compete with anything that’s not work. No, that’s too big of a generalization. There are lots of things not-work that are worse than work. LOTS of things.
It rained today! That’s the first non-snow precipitation we’ve had since early December. Well, maybe not, but it’s the first I’ve noticed, and it made a big difference in the amount of snow left on the ground. I’m SO glad.
I finished The Pillars of the Earth a few days ago. The last third was much better than the rest, starting just before the (very quick – really, I was surprised) grand tour of France and Spain. But I’m not in a hurry to pick up the sequel. I started a Stuart Woods mystery/thriller instead. Actually, I read the first Dresden Files novel first (it was okay). Almost forgot about it.
I haven’t mentioned yet how nicely John planned my birthday. We got up early to go to Ikea for the shelves, but not before waiting half an hour or so for this woman who answered the craiglist ad to show up to take the old dining room table. She didn’t show, so we left. In the car, John said, “I got you this for the ride to Ikea,” and handed me a card and the new Michael Buble CD. At least half of the songs are standards, with a couple of new originals, and another couple of covers. I really like it. We went to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast (yay bagels and boo coffee), and then we shopped at Ikea, which is always fun. When we got home, John put all the shelves together, and sometime in the middle of that, the other woman who answered the craigslist ad showed up for the dining room table. So it’s gone. We went out to dinner at the Woo Lae Oak in Tysons Corner (it was really good), and as we were leaving, John said, “I didn’t bake you a cake, but we can’t let your birthday go by without dessert, so what do you want?” I decided we should go to Wegman’s and visit the bakery ’cause they were likely to have chocolate-covered strawberries. They actually didn’t, but when I asked them if they knew where else I might find some, they said they’d make some for me. They did, and they were yummy. So we got home (with the chocolate-covered strawberries and some peanut butter fudge for John) and I found another card and another present on the coffee table. John planned our evening, too, and bought me a copy of the movie Clue, which neither of us had seen in I don’t know how long. So we sat on the couch with our chocolate-covered strawberries and fudge, opened a bottle of the dessert wine we bought in Charlottesville when we were there for Jess and Chuck’s wedding, and watched Clue. Pretty much until we fell asleep. I couldn’t have been happier. And that’s why my birthday was so wonderful. John planned it.
I spent several hours today setting up 6 new versions of my website. You’re looking at version #1 right now. And I’m including a screen shot of it at the bottom of this post so we can all still see it when I switch to the next one. I’m not even really tired of the original version, but I thought I’d test a few new ones and see if I (or we – you have some input) like them better.
So this is what I’ve been doing for the last 5 hours or so. We slept in (’til about 10:30) ’cause we stayed up late. We watched Adaptation and then had to follow it with Modern Family ’cause the movie was so weird we needed to cleanse our mental palates with something light and funny. And easily understandable. It was after one before we went to bed. We got up late, watched the first two-hour episode of Caprica while eating breakfast, and then we set up on the dining room table with our laptops again.
I was supposed to go to the grocery store today, and when I have to stop there on my way home from work tomorrow, I’m going to be really annoyed I didn’t do it this afternoon. But right now, I’m very happy I didn’t go. All we have to have before dinner tomorrow is stuff for breakfast (we have plenty for lunch), so when I go out to pick up dinner for tonight (yeah, we don’t have tonight’s dinner here, either, so I guess what we really have to have is breakfast AND dinner), I’ll swing by the Giant right next to the Indian place (’cause we’re having Indian for dinner – yay!) and pick up some cereal.
Then we’re in for the night. And I’m getting pretty hungry, so all of that is happening very soon. After I shower. We did one of those lazy Sunday things and rolled from bed to couch and breakfast, and from there to the dining room and our laptops. Didn’t shower, didn’t get dressed.
And Roxy just threw herself at the sliding glass door, so I should go let her in. Enjoy the new site (and let me know if something doesn’t work)! I’ll leave it this way for a day or two and then switch to the next one.
Published January 19th, 2010 at 9:24 pm by Zannah in general, movies with 2 comments
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I watched the last half of Sense and Sensibility tonight and totally cried my eyes out at the end (when Edward shows up, and then Elinor starts crying, and then everyone else hilariously rushes out of the room, and then they watch from outside, and he kneels…kills me). All by myself in front of the TV.
But I’m okay now. Office Space is on (yay!) and John just called to say he’s on his way home (also yay!). Tonight was his first class of the semester, and it ended early.
I think I’ll continue that trend and end early, too. Good night.
My blog is exactly what it looks like. I make no promises to say anything profound. I read, I write, and I try to figure out what I really need to be really happy. Isn't that what you do?
Thankfully.)
