Between The Holidays
Christmas was just me, Mom and Dad. It was pretty much the definition of "low-key." Not a lot happened, except the weather.
In retrospect, I should have driven down on Christmas Eve, but the scary weather reports got to me and I drove down on the evening of the 23rd. I went home, picked up my presents (Amazon delivered them that same day), did a bit of laundry, a couple other minor tasks. Then I look out and my car is covered in a couple inches of snow. Uh oh. It was some of the worst driving I've ever experienced. I've never seen snow accumulate like that on an interstate. Traffic was strangely light, so fortunately the drive only took about two and a half hours instead of eight.
I wound up shoveling five times in five days. Digging out the parents' driveway. Digging out a shut-in neighbor's driveway. Clearing away snow plow spillover that had frozen into boulders. My parking space when I got back home. More snow plow spillover. I'm surprised I still have a spine.
Christmas morning, however, was gorgeous. Big, fluffy, gentle flakes. Straight out of a story book.
Everyone enjoyed their swag. I was very happy to receive a Nikon Coolpix camera. My first digital camera! Thus I continue my very incremental progress up the technology curve. (And yes, this is the camera Ashton Kutcher hawks. Whoopty shit. It does what I want a camera to do, and it's idiot-proofed to a degree that isn't insulting.)
Other than that, not much. Ate pie and cookies. Lots of TV. Mythbusters. Jonny Quest. Quick Draw McGraw. And movies. I wound up watching Elf, and was startled to find out I didn't hate it. Maybe I can accept Will Ferrell better when he's playing a character who's clearly not a part of reality, I don't know. I'm not embarrassed to admit I watched it. (I am embarrassed to admit I watched My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Feh. A big load of nothing.)
Also caught the Basil Rathbone version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, which TCM was playing, probably to tie into the new Sherlock movie. Enjoyable enough, but I don't really get the adulation.
And oddly, we all went to see Sherlock Holmes. Mom and Dad really wanted to see a movie, and we spent an ungodly amount of time trying to decide among Owatonna's somewhat meager options. Ma and Pa seemed really interested in Avatar, which confused the heck out of me. I vetoed that because I want to see it with the full tech. We kept going back to Holmes, which I was curious about, but I was worried it'd be anathema to Mom and Dad. I was surprised by one of the most pure fun movies I'd seen in a while. (It helps that it's not an adaptation of any actual Holmes story.) And Dad, a Holmes fan and harsh critic of modern action cinema, really liked it as well. I'm still stunned, both by the movie not sucking and my Dad not thinking the movie sucked. Crazy times.
Which brings up one of my pet peeves: judging a movie by the trailer. Under no circumstances should anyone decide to go or not to go to a movie based on the trailer. It's every bit as stupid as deciding to go eat at McDonald's because there was this really cool McDonald's commercial, or deciding to stop drinking Balvenie whiskey because there was this really stupid Balvenie whiskey commercial. A trailer tells you nothing. Maybe who the actors and director are, but that's it. They're just a lot of loud bullshit edited together by the studios, and they should always, always be ignored. It blows my mind how many intelligent, media savvy people I know who let themselves get influenced by trailers. Gah.
(Sorry for the rantlet. I guess I got a little upset at getting sucked into the "Sherlock Holmes will suck because the trailer sucks" frenzy, despite my strong "trailers are bullshit" stance. Everyone gets sucked into something dumb once in a while.)
I had one more day of vacation to use up before the end of the year, and I took it today. I had a dentist appointment this morning, so Tuesday was the most logical day to pick. Spent most of the day napping and dealing with the mouse problem. Mom had an old school housewife suggestion: cleaning with plain old household ammonia. The theory is that mice can't stand the fumes. So I cleaned up a depressing tonnage of mouse turds and wiped everything down with ammonia and water. Also I moved all the floury, granular sorts of foods up to higher areas and put the canned, bottled sorts of foods lower down (a really obvious solution I hadn't yet implemented because I am an idiot.) Seems to be working. I haven't heard any skittering for the first time in a couple of weeks.
No solid plans for New Year's yet. Thinking of a live band sort of show someplace, because I haven't seen one in ages. I'll figure something out.
In retrospect, I should have driven down on Christmas Eve, but the scary weather reports got to me and I drove down on the evening of the 23rd. I went home, picked up my presents (Amazon delivered them that same day), did a bit of laundry, a couple other minor tasks. Then I look out and my car is covered in a couple inches of snow. Uh oh. It was some of the worst driving I've ever experienced. I've never seen snow accumulate like that on an interstate. Traffic was strangely light, so fortunately the drive only took about two and a half hours instead of eight.
I wound up shoveling five times in five days. Digging out the parents' driveway. Digging out a shut-in neighbor's driveway. Clearing away snow plow spillover that had frozen into boulders. My parking space when I got back home. More snow plow spillover. I'm surprised I still have a spine.
Christmas morning, however, was gorgeous. Big, fluffy, gentle flakes. Straight out of a story book.
Everyone enjoyed their swag. I was very happy to receive a Nikon Coolpix camera. My first digital camera! Thus I continue my very incremental progress up the technology curve. (And yes, this is the camera Ashton Kutcher hawks. Whoopty shit. It does what I want a camera to do, and it's idiot-proofed to a degree that isn't insulting.)
Other than that, not much. Ate pie and cookies. Lots of TV. Mythbusters. Jonny Quest. Quick Draw McGraw. And movies. I wound up watching Elf, and was startled to find out I didn't hate it. Maybe I can accept Will Ferrell better when he's playing a character who's clearly not a part of reality, I don't know. I'm not embarrassed to admit I watched it. (I am embarrassed to admit I watched My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Feh. A big load of nothing.)
Also caught the Basil Rathbone version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, which TCM was playing, probably to tie into the new Sherlock movie. Enjoyable enough, but I don't really get the adulation.
And oddly, we all went to see Sherlock Holmes. Mom and Dad really wanted to see a movie, and we spent an ungodly amount of time trying to decide among Owatonna's somewhat meager options. Ma and Pa seemed really interested in Avatar, which confused the heck out of me. I vetoed that because I want to see it with the full tech. We kept going back to Holmes, which I was curious about, but I was worried it'd be anathema to Mom and Dad. I was surprised by one of the most pure fun movies I'd seen in a while. (It helps that it's not an adaptation of any actual Holmes story.) And Dad, a Holmes fan and harsh critic of modern action cinema, really liked it as well. I'm still stunned, both by the movie not sucking and my Dad not thinking the movie sucked. Crazy times.
Which brings up one of my pet peeves: judging a movie by the trailer. Under no circumstances should anyone decide to go or not to go to a movie based on the trailer. It's every bit as stupid as deciding to go eat at McDonald's because there was this really cool McDonald's commercial, or deciding to stop drinking Balvenie whiskey because there was this really stupid Balvenie whiskey commercial. A trailer tells you nothing. Maybe who the actors and director are, but that's it. They're just a lot of loud bullshit edited together by the studios, and they should always, always be ignored. It blows my mind how many intelligent, media savvy people I know who let themselves get influenced by trailers. Gah.
(Sorry for the rantlet. I guess I got a little upset at getting sucked into the "Sherlock Holmes will suck because the trailer sucks" frenzy, despite my strong "trailers are bullshit" stance. Everyone gets sucked into something dumb once in a while.)
I had one more day of vacation to use up before the end of the year, and I took it today. I had a dentist appointment this morning, so Tuesday was the most logical day to pick. Spent most of the day napping and dealing with the mouse problem. Mom had an old school housewife suggestion: cleaning with plain old household ammonia. The theory is that mice can't stand the fumes. So I cleaned up a depressing tonnage of mouse turds and wiped everything down with ammonia and water. Also I moved all the floury, granular sorts of foods up to higher areas and put the canned, bottled sorts of foods lower down (a really obvious solution I hadn't yet implemented because I am an idiot.) Seems to be working. I haven't heard any skittering for the first time in a couple of weeks.
No solid plans for New Year's yet. Thinking of a live band sort of show someplace, because I haven't seen one in ages. I'll figure something out.