(no subject)
I got a cold on Wednesday or there abouts. Thursday, I tried to get my contract materials back to Powerset by fax, but no luck. Eventually, I took them to kinko's and scanned them all in and made an Automator script that could combine pdf's into a single document and e-mailed them back.
That being completed, I was invited to call in for the weekly conference call/meeting of annotators on Friday at 1:00. Luckily Friday breakfast at Silver Spur was able to be moved up (Silver Spur has the best food), so I managed to squeeze in that between breakfast and running out the door to get on the bus.
By the time I got to San Jose, I was pretty miserable from running around at near the peak of my cold. Got to Sarah's house shortly before my scheduled individual call with my supervisor-guy (get off the phone, get on the bus, get off the bus, get on the phone). Then nap, then game. Game till very late (or in my case, this week, observe game till very late).
Up early the next afternoon to go see Beowulf. We managed to find a relatively cheap theater that had matinee prices. Got several people there. I didn't think of calling people to see if they got the e-mail until too late to do much good. The people were definitely going to come did get it, though, so that was good. emerald_moon519 and antilles1382 didn't get it, it sounded like, so they couldn't evaluate the low price i found and decide if it was low enough :-/
I liked the movie. It doesn't attempt to tell the story told in the poem of the same name, and certainly not to hit every scene or line. Instead, it tells a secret-history story: it tells a story that might have gotten writ down as the story we have in manuscript form, and a story, furthermore, which weaves together some of the seemingly unrelated events that happen to Beowulf (I can make a narrative connection between the first two monsters he fights in the poem, obviously; or a thematic connection between the first and last; but the whole set of three doesn't quite fit).
There was some Old English in the movie, which made me very happy. All of Grendel's lines are in Old English. Most are designed to be more or less understandable, but strange to the attentive, Modern-English-speaking audience. There's also a scene in Beowulf's late life, before the dragon incident, of the song of his battle with Grendel being sung in Old English.
Wiglaf has a much expanded role. I liked him a lot, but he becomes a much older character. I hope he will meet with animate_mush's approval.
Also, I have already seen reviews, for example, in the Boston Globe, which use the phrase, "Grendel's Mom has got it going on" (Also, the phrase "After all, if you had magical powers, wouldn't you turn yourself into naked Angelina Jolie?")
I gave a lecture in the theater before the movie :P ("You didn't realize you were signing up for a literary history lecture... oh wait, you're going to a movie with Aidan, you probably did.") And some more lecture after, at dinner, which turned into a brief summary of the Silmarillion.
We got dinner at a Italian place near the movie theater. I hear it had good pizza, but it wasn't very impressive, in general. My curly fries were pretty underdone. But I was able to later put them in the oven and make them much better.
Then we went back to sarkat's for a bit, and then out to see the Mythbuster guys with her dad and his friends. That was pretty entertaining, since the narration is the main part I dislike about the show, and this was just them talking.
Then back, and then back to Santa Cruz. Very busy two days.
Sunday was a lot less busy, but wracked with health problems. I had a bad asthma attack, triggered by my cold as it mostly went away. sarkat had a bad headache with some migraine-like qualities. We watched Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" as part of a program to fill in some of the Disney movies sarkat hasn't seen.
Got up this morning to do the work I got on Friday, which is training work and ideally would be in by this evening, in time for supervisor to give me feedback, and then some real work before he goes on vacation for Thanksgiving. I hadn't had any oppurtunity to do more than set up the annotation program during the busy, sick weekend. Luckily, that only took three hours and a bit, and I got it in with lots of time.
That being completed, I was invited to call in for the weekly conference call/meeting of annotators on Friday at 1:00. Luckily Friday breakfast at Silver Spur was able to be moved up (Silver Spur has the best food), so I managed to squeeze in that between breakfast and running out the door to get on the bus.
By the time I got to San Jose, I was pretty miserable from running around at near the peak of my cold. Got to Sarah's house shortly before my scheduled individual call with my supervisor-guy (get off the phone, get on the bus, get off the bus, get on the phone). Then nap, then game. Game till very late (or in my case, this week, observe game till very late).
Up early the next afternoon to go see Beowulf. We managed to find a relatively cheap theater that had matinee prices. Got several people there. I didn't think of calling people to see if they got the e-mail until too late to do much good. The people were definitely going to come did get it, though, so that was good. emerald_moon519 and antilles1382 didn't get it, it sounded like, so they couldn't evaluate the low price i found and decide if it was low enough :-/
I liked the movie. It doesn't attempt to tell the story told in the poem of the same name, and certainly not to hit every scene or line. Instead, it tells a secret-history story: it tells a story that might have gotten writ down as the story we have in manuscript form, and a story, furthermore, which weaves together some of the seemingly unrelated events that happen to Beowulf (I can make a narrative connection between the first two monsters he fights in the poem, obviously; or a thematic connection between the first and last; but the whole set of three doesn't quite fit).
There was some Old English in the movie, which made me very happy. All of Grendel's lines are in Old English. Most are designed to be more or less understandable, but strange to the attentive, Modern-English-speaking audience. There's also a scene in Beowulf's late life, before the dragon incident, of the song of his battle with Grendel being sung in Old English.
Wiglaf has a much expanded role. I liked him a lot, but he becomes a much older character. I hope he will meet with animate_mush's approval.
Also, I have already seen reviews, for example, in the Boston Globe, which use the phrase, "Grendel's Mom has got it going on" (Also, the phrase "After all, if you had magical powers, wouldn't you turn yourself into naked Angelina Jolie?")
I gave a lecture in the theater before the movie :P ("You didn't realize you were signing up for a literary history lecture... oh wait, you're going to a movie with Aidan, you probably did.") And some more lecture after, at dinner, which turned into a brief summary of the Silmarillion.
We got dinner at a Italian place near the movie theater. I hear it had good pizza, but it wasn't very impressive, in general. My curly fries were pretty underdone. But I was able to later put them in the oven and make them much better.
Then we went back to sarkat's for a bit, and then out to see the Mythbuster guys with her dad and his friends. That was pretty entertaining, since the narration is the main part I dislike about the show, and this was just them talking.
Then back, and then back to Santa Cruz. Very busy two days.
Sunday was a lot less busy, but wracked with health problems. I had a bad asthma attack, triggered by my cold as it mostly went away. sarkat had a bad headache with some migraine-like qualities. We watched Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" as part of a program to fill in some of the Disney movies sarkat hasn't seen.
Got up this morning to do the work I got on Friday, which is training work and ideally would be in by this evening, in time for supervisor to give me feedback, and then some real work before he goes on vacation for Thanksgiving. I hadn't had any oppurtunity to do more than set up the annotation program during the busy, sick weekend. Luckily, that only took three hours and a bit, and I got it in with lots of time.