The picnic was delicious, the champagne was excellent, remind me to send the Cardinal a note!
Dee's guide to successfully surviving a party at her house (having now done so - it's only taken me seven years to perfect the method...):
The beer was called "My Highland Oaty-oaty-oaty-oaty-oaty". It was. (Our brewer noted to the Male that it was so very, very not the most accessible beer he had ever brewed. The Male responded that if we wanted accessible, we'd buy lemonade. I second the motion.) Fully nitrogenated beer of black like my soul. Most excellent.
Once everyone else who had not implemented Dee's survival tips crawled groaning out of bed the following late-afternoon (look, this is the first time ever I have been substantially less hungover than the Male, I am damn well going to gloat) and we'd made the house look a little more presentable, we went for Pho (the ultimate hangover food - seriously).
And then we saw The Losers. Which was frigging awesome! It was so much fun, but well done fun (yes, it is possible!) and with a villain who is Exhibit A (with a bullet) that you can have the suave, wise-cracking, psychopath bad-guy and do it well. Great look, great performances, great pacing, magnificent banter... the only things that put a slight dampener on were [1] the zany next-gen pixellated spiral of death weapon - when they demonstrated it, the Male leaned over and said, "Did they put in the wrong reel? Is this the same movie?"; and [2] Roque's betrayal. Now look, I totally buy him walking out with a vengeance on Clay (I loved Zoe Saldana, but the volatility in the Roque/Clay relationship was the runaway winner), but he also terminally shafted the rest of the team, and I honestly didn't think that rang true to his character. It felt kinda... cheap. I dunno. Just not as solid-gold as the rest of the movie.
Other points of note:
Prince of Persia on Tuesday night, I am SO EXCITED. In fact, Tuesday's going to be a fucking grand day, what with how my team is skiving off work for the afternoon to go climbing as a team-building exercise, and then we're going to go hang out in my favourite beer cafe until the Male gets off work and then it's all the Jake and Gemma I can eat and WHEEE. Honest, my birthday was last week.
- In-progress hydration! It's kind of a sign that I'm getting old that I really do need to institute the glass-of-booze / glass-of-water policy, but at least I'm not at the requiring-a-berocca-before-bed stage;
- Get out of the kitchen. Once you've finished your drink, the time it takes to get back to the beer tap will assist in tempering your consumption;
- Don't drink anything Miro hands you. This should possible be rule #1. Miro may look like a cuddly bear, but he is actually the devil with a bottle of butterscotch schnapps Drambuie Tia Maria.
The beer was called "My Highland Oaty-oaty-oaty-oaty-oaty". It was. (Our brewer noted to the Male that it was so very, very not the most accessible beer he had ever brewed. The Male responded that if we wanted accessible, we'd buy lemonade. I second the motion.) Fully nitrogenated beer of black like my soul. Most excellent.
Once everyone else who had not implemented Dee's survival tips crawled groaning out of bed the following late-afternoon (look, this is the first time ever I have been substantially less hungover than the Male, I am damn well going to gloat) and we'd made the house look a little more presentable, we went for Pho (the ultimate hangover food - seriously).
And then we saw The Losers. Which was frigging awesome! It was so much fun, but well done fun (yes, it is possible!) and with a villain who is Exhibit A (with a bullet) that you can have the suave, wise-cracking, psychopath bad-guy and do it well. Great look, great performances, great pacing, magnificent banter... the only things that put a slight dampener on were [1] the zany next-gen pixellated spiral of death weapon - when they demonstrated it, the Male leaned over and said, "Did they put in the wrong reel? Is this the same movie?"; and [2] Roque's betrayal. Now look, I totally buy him walking out with a vengeance on Clay (I loved Zoe Saldana, but the volatility in the Roque/Clay relationship was the runaway winner), but he also terminally shafted the rest of the team, and I honestly didn't think that rang true to his character. It felt kinda... cheap. I dunno. Just not as solid-gold as the rest of the movie.
Other points of note:
- I have never seen Chris Evans in a movie where I did not totally love his work. Then again, I seem to have avoided his more lamentable movies. Anyway, he was awesome. In a role that would have been very easy to overplay.
- I may had a moment, when Idris loomed on screen, of thinking, "Oh no, they're all going to get killed/turned into vampires!" You can't prove anything.
- I'm quite fond of Columbus Short's work - he was really excellent as Pooch.
- "...and we're back to killing them" is almost certainly the new catchphrase in our house for this week.
Prince of Persia on Tuesday night, I am SO EXCITED. In fact, Tuesday's going to be a fucking grand day, what with how my team is skiving off work for the afternoon to go climbing as a team-building exercise, and then we're going to go hang out in my favourite beer cafe until the Male gets off work and then it's all the Jake and Gemma I can eat and WHEEE. Honest, my birthday was last week.