LIGHTNING BLOG UPDATE!
Life keeps intervening, I'm afraid. Either I'm working (as has been the case lately), or I'm out doing cool stuff with my friends and my sweetie, and the blog seems to fall by the wayside. Ah, well, I'll try to catch you all up in this LIGHTNING BLOG UPDATE!
- We've been running again. So far it's every other day, but we're jog/walking up into Runyon Canyon Park, which is about a five to ten minute walk from our house. Dogs are allowed off-leash, so Annie gets to practice her good citizenship, and Cutter gets to freak out and try to attack all of them. That's actually an exaggeration; once he gets tired enough, he doesn't really snap at other dogs unless they get too close. We do about 2.5 miles total, and we do it at around 7:15 or 7:30 in the morning. Better than coffee!
- Being in L.A., we see more movies these days. In the past two weeks, we've seen The Da Vinci Code and Nacho Libre. The Da Vinci code was very good, quite a decent implementation of the book. They made a few tweaks here and there, which if you read the Trivia section on IMDB, were due to permission issues rather than directorial cuts. I thought Tom Hanks was good as the lead, although it was more due to his excellent acting ability than actually looking the part. The rest of the casting was phenomenal, especially Jean Reno, Paul Bettany, and Sir Ian McKellen. Nacho Libre was good silly fun; Jack Black being a goon and Jared Hess doing what he does best - bizarre randomness that is still somehow heartwarming.
- This morning Sce and I were baptized as true Angelenos; she called me about a half hour after she left the house, reporting that she'd just seen a police chase pass her going east on Sunset. I joked that I would probably see them come by soon, but she said they were pretty far west of our house. Well, even while she was still on the phone, I heard police sirens. I looked out the office window, and saw slowing traffic on Sunset, and then a gold Corolla slid past, followed closely by an LAPD officer. Another cop zoomed along about a minute after that.
- We hosted a barbeque for Sce's cousins (and brother) yesterday evening, which was lovely good fun. We played poker and darts, and made tons and tons of food. We also watched the Tivoed Korea vs. France World Cup game. Sce's cousin Brian spent the night, since he works like 5 minutes from here.
- I finished repairing the dilapidated fence in the back yard by hanging the gate off of the post I had set in concrete two weekends ago. I trimmed the top of the post, so it all looks neat and tidy now and the gate actually works. I also replaced the disposal, which died when a porcelain spoon got into it. The whole unit just seized up. The good news is that it was on its last legs anyway, so I'm gonna cajole the landlady into crediting us the $80 or so bucks.
- A good friend of mine turned Quarter-Century Man this past week, and we dropped by his place for a chill party experience to hang out, have a couple beers, and watch people play with monkeys and balls on the XBox 360.
- I got over my cold. Mostly.
- I got a hankering to play Warcraft 3 again, and so in the evenings have been playing against the computer and getting my ass handed to me as usual.
- I finally got ahold of some medicine for the fish. After one dosing of the tank, I have not seen a return of the dreaded "Ick." Hopefully the tank will continue to flourish. Our plants are going great guns, and all the fish seem to be doing well. Yesterday we moved the fish tank to the shelf between our foyer and sitting room, and it looks good in that spot.