Back to your regular scheduled posting
We both took last Friday off last week. I had an extra vacation day (after carrying over the max) so I figure it's better to have two short weeks than one extra short week. My company has a holiday shutdown, so Thursday is my last day before January 3rd. Apparently during the break, I'll be going to some sort of holiday lunch at Angie's work since they (mainly Mr. Wang, the boss) love me so much there.
We're doing a double family gathering on Saturday. For lunch, we'll have lunch with Angie's family and then its dinner with my family. It'll be too much food for one day which is a bummer, but having Christmas and Christmas Eve fall on a weekend this year makes it more difficult for planning purposes, I think. We're planning to go to a Szechuan restaurant for lunch then have dinner at a Mongolian hot pot place. Angie also has her sights on trying a snow ice (hopefully Taiwanese) place that we randomly saw which is also right next to the hot pot place.
I'm also fairly interested in what I'll get this year. I guess I have suspicious, but I never know what people will actually get me. Although I do think it was harder to make up a wishlist for Angie's family. But I kind of forgot what I put on it so it'll be somewhat a surprise. My family is pretty hit or miss (often miss). My parents are fairly bad at gift giving (we rarely did gifts as kids). Howie is super hit or miss. Hugh and Harold are okay but sometimes very random.
On Thursday, Angie and I watched Rogue One. Overall, I thought it was good, not great.
Rogue One
I think if anything, its one of those movies which are decently entertaining, but pretty much adds nothing to the overall series. Its actually very much like they took a good Star Wars novel and filmed it. There are good original characters who all die by the end. There are cameos or fan fiction like scenes with famous main characters (somewhat creepy CGI). But overall, it was well done.
I like Jyn since she was spunky and a good protagonist. The Rebel officer was okay and I liked how there wasn't a heavy forced romance. The droid was good in a Drax sort of way. I didn't really care for Donnie Yen's character as some sort of stereotypical blind master. He's pretty much a mix between wise men troupes of a Jedi and a martial artist. But I guess appealing to different markets and all. I also was expecting the movie to be darker since it seemed like there was lots of talk about how it had lots of reshoots because of the mood. But overall, it had humor and such.
I guess if anything, it'd be a "formulaic Marvel movie", but with Star Wars, which isn't terrible. As of now, I'd probably say it fits between Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith in quality. My list would be: A New Hope > Empire Strikes Back >> The Force Awakens > Return of the Jedi > Rogue One > Revenge of the Sith > The Phantom Menace > Attack of the Clones.
We also gave up on Scream Queens with just two episodes left. Part of me wanted to try to power through the last two episodes, but its been just so uninteresting this season. I still like the Chanels, but overall its just not that funny without Chad Radwell or his JoBro friend. So its been lots of Final Fantasy XIII and a Chinese wuxia series, Swordsman.
Several weeks ago, before Thanksgiving, we bought Starbucks coffee from Shoprite since they were packaged with something free and to make $300 to get a turkey. I'm like pretty against Starbucks (I normally like Dunkin Donuts more) since I think they're all about hipster trends and pretension, but I'll have to admit that French Roast is really good. The grinds actually smell way too strong, but it was good. Damn you, Starbucks!
Another thing is that the square in Berlin that was attacked, its somewhere that we've been. There's a church around the square which was bombed out during WWII that we visited. Then if its the square that I'm thinking of, we just walked through it. I remember it was fairly empty, mainly full of kids just hanging out. I can imagine it'd be a good spot for a market since it was very open. Shame.
There's also no one else on my entire floor/wing area. So maybe I'll try to sneak out early today, tomorrow, and Thursday if it is the case the next few days.
We're doing a double family gathering on Saturday. For lunch, we'll have lunch with Angie's family and then its dinner with my family. It'll be too much food for one day which is a bummer, but having Christmas and Christmas Eve fall on a weekend this year makes it more difficult for planning purposes, I think. We're planning to go to a Szechuan restaurant for lunch then have dinner at a Mongolian hot pot place. Angie also has her sights on trying a snow ice (hopefully Taiwanese) place that we randomly saw which is also right next to the hot pot place.
I'm also fairly interested in what I'll get this year. I guess I have suspicious, but I never know what people will actually get me. Although I do think it was harder to make up a wishlist for Angie's family. But I kind of forgot what I put on it so it'll be somewhat a surprise. My family is pretty hit or miss (often miss). My parents are fairly bad at gift giving (we rarely did gifts as kids). Howie is super hit or miss. Hugh and Harold are okay but sometimes very random.
On Thursday, Angie and I watched Rogue One. Overall, I thought it was good, not great.
Rogue One
I think if anything, its one of those movies which are decently entertaining, but pretty much adds nothing to the overall series. Its actually very much like they took a good Star Wars novel and filmed it. There are good original characters who all die by the end. There are cameos or fan fiction like scenes with famous main characters (somewhat creepy CGI). But overall, it was well done.
I like Jyn since she was spunky and a good protagonist. The Rebel officer was okay and I liked how there wasn't a heavy forced romance. The droid was good in a Drax sort of way. I didn't really care for Donnie Yen's character as some sort of stereotypical blind master. He's pretty much a mix between wise men troupes of a Jedi and a martial artist. But I guess appealing to different markets and all. I also was expecting the movie to be darker since it seemed like there was lots of talk about how it had lots of reshoots because of the mood. But overall, it had humor and such.
I guess if anything, it'd be a "formulaic Marvel movie", but with Star Wars, which isn't terrible. As of now, I'd probably say it fits between Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith in quality. My list would be: A New Hope > Empire Strikes Back >> The Force Awakens > Return of the Jedi > Rogue One > Revenge of the Sith > The Phantom Menace > Attack of the Clones.
We also gave up on Scream Queens with just two episodes left. Part of me wanted to try to power through the last two episodes, but its been just so uninteresting this season. I still like the Chanels, but overall its just not that funny without Chad Radwell or his JoBro friend. So its been lots of Final Fantasy XIII and a Chinese wuxia series, Swordsman.
Several weeks ago, before Thanksgiving, we bought Starbucks coffee from Shoprite since they were packaged with something free and to make $300 to get a turkey. I'm like pretty against Starbucks (I normally like Dunkin Donuts more) since I think they're all about hipster trends and pretension, but I'll have to admit that French Roast is really good. The grinds actually smell way too strong, but it was good. Damn you, Starbucks!
Another thing is that the square in Berlin that was attacked, its somewhere that we've been. There's a church around the square which was bombed out during WWII that we visited. Then if its the square that I'm thinking of, we just walked through it. I remember it was fairly empty, mainly full of kids just hanging out. I can imagine it'd be a good spot for a market since it was very open. Shame.
There's also no one else on my entire floor/wing area. So maybe I'll try to sneak out early today, tomorrow, and Thursday if it is the case the next few days.