As time goes by
It's been so long since I last did a big whopper of an RL update that I've almost forgotten how. Or perhaps not. Here follows a tale of two weekends and many movies.
Chicago - the city, not the movie. Or Chicagoland, at any rate. Last weekend saw me jetting off across the Atlantic again. My cunning pre-selection of a bulkhead seat was thwarted by a helpful check-in lady who swapped me to an aisle seat. Sans extra leg-room. Thankfully, the More Room on American meant that I was fine anyway - the 'plane was sufficiently empty that I could move across and avoid being reclined on. This meant that I could use my laptop in peace for a change, allowing me to catch up on some fanfic - y'all can safely post your DV13 spoilers now. Oh, and I picked up a copy of Reloaded tax free in the airport, so it got to make a transatlantic round trip before I ever watched it. hermorrine picked me up at O'Hare and spirited me back to her swanky new apartment for a weekend of Rest and Relaxation.
Fairly quickly I got my initiation on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy - something a fair portion of my friends list have been squeeing about over the last few months - and I have to admit that it was most entertaining. And I'm sure Vicki wasn't really suggesting that I could use some assistance from the Fab Five ;-) We also watched a bunch of movies over the weekend (no cinema this time, but we've got a bunch lined up for Thanksgiving), both new (such as the ... different ... Dogma) and old favourites, including the newly-released DVD of The Lion King. Before the film itself, there was a promo for TLK 1½ with Timon & Pumbaa MST3King bits of the movie, and the menus featured a Zazu very obviously not voiced by Rowan Atkinson. This put me very much in the mood, so when it started it was very much Nants *blink* ingonyama *blink*blink*blink* bagithi baba *rapid blinking* etc. At this rate, by the time it's out over here I'll probably just break down completely and be unable to put the disk in the player :((
We also played a game of Trivial Pursuits - for added fairness, I'd brought a pack of British questions so that, for example, I would get questions about British sports about which I know very little rather than American sports about I know even less and likewise for history, and so on. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony - my British cards turned up a bunch of questions about American sports and history... There was, of course, food as well - Chilli & Mac, Chicago-style pizza, quality burgers (note to self: skip the starters, especially when the stack of onion rings is that big) and stonking shakes. Alas, all to soon it was time to abandon my lady and fly back home to England - amply armed with Mountain Dew and Reese's, of course...
I did manage to catch a bit of sleep on the flight back - the bulkhead/aisle seat helps a little, but cattle class seats never really recline enough for serious snoozing to be a practical proposition. Monday afternoon was for jet-lag recovery - vegging out in front of a stack of Matrix DVDs, a long hot bath and some reading. Oh, and catching up on what you lot had to say over the weekend. Later in the weekend, some new toys arrived, allowing me to play around with some Xbox hackery. No, I haven't installed Linux on it yet. Yes, it's only a matter of time.
This weekend was a little more typical. Saturday took me into town to do some shopping for such exciting items as pyjamas and slippers. Very important items for one's comfort around the home though, especially as winter sets in with earnest. As, indeed, are the Lush bath ballistics and the like. I even managed to resist the temptation to have fast food for lunch (although not to get sale price CDs and DVDs). The afternoon's move entertainment was Kill Bill, and while I'm not going to rave about it to the degree that some of my friends list has, it was a good movie. Burly brawl + samurai swords - gratuitous (and obvious) CGI = ka-ching!
Sunday was a completely stay-at-home affair. Some laundry, a bit of coding and a couple of Star Trek DVDs - the first two movies, in fact. Both of these were the re-edited Director's editions. Alas, the tightening up that had been done was still insufficient to salvage The Slow-Motion Picture - I'm fairly sure that another half hour could have been carved out of it without really losing much, and the plot remains a plodding mysterious-gas-cloud-of-the-week affair. The Wrath of Khan, however, is a different kettle of fish - Trek at its best. A nicely maniacal villain, phasers and photon torpedoes, a minimum of mumbo-jumbo (technical or otherwise) and they even dared to bump off a major character (albeit only until the next movie). The reused effects shots from the first film were kinda obvious when seen this way, though...
Chicago - the city, not the movie. Or Chicagoland, at any rate. Last weekend saw me jetting off across the Atlantic again. My cunning pre-selection of a bulkhead seat was thwarted by a helpful check-in lady who swapped me to an aisle seat. Sans extra leg-room. Thankfully, the More Room on American meant that I was fine anyway - the 'plane was sufficiently empty that I could move across and avoid being reclined on. This meant that I could use my laptop in peace for a change, allowing me to catch up on some fanfic - y'all can safely post your DV13 spoilers now. Oh, and I picked up a copy of Reloaded tax free in the airport, so it got to make a transatlantic round trip before I ever watched it. hermorrine picked me up at O'Hare and spirited me back to her swanky new apartment for a weekend of Rest and Relaxation.
Fairly quickly I got my initiation on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy - something a fair portion of my friends list have been squeeing about over the last few months - and I have to admit that it was most entertaining. And I'm sure Vicki wasn't really suggesting that I could use some assistance from the Fab Five ;-) We also watched a bunch of movies over the weekend (no cinema this time, but we've got a bunch lined up for Thanksgiving), both new (such as the ... different ... Dogma) and old favourites, including the newly-released DVD of The Lion King. Before the film itself, there was a promo for TLK 1½ with Timon & Pumbaa MST3King bits of the movie, and the menus featured a Zazu very obviously not voiced by Rowan Atkinson. This put me very much in the mood, so when it started it was very much Nants *blink* ingonyama *blink*blink*blink* bagithi baba *rapid blinking* etc. At this rate, by the time it's out over here I'll probably just break down completely and be unable to put the disk in the player :((
We also played a game of Trivial Pursuits - for added fairness, I'd brought a pack of British questions so that, for example, I would get questions about British sports about which I know very little rather than American sports about I know even less and likewise for history, and so on. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony - my British cards turned up a bunch of questions about American sports and history... There was, of course, food as well - Chilli & Mac, Chicago-style pizza, quality burgers (note to self: skip the starters, especially when the stack of onion rings is that big) and stonking shakes. Alas, all to soon it was time to abandon my lady and fly back home to England - amply armed with Mountain Dew and Reese's, of course...
I did manage to catch a bit of sleep on the flight back - the bulkhead/aisle seat helps a little, but cattle class seats never really recline enough for serious snoozing to be a practical proposition. Monday afternoon was for jet-lag recovery - vegging out in front of a stack of Matrix DVDs, a long hot bath and some reading. Oh, and catching up on what you lot had to say over the weekend. Later in the weekend, some new toys arrived, allowing me to play around with some Xbox hackery. No, I haven't installed Linux on it yet. Yes, it's only a matter of time.
This weekend was a little more typical. Saturday took me into town to do some shopping for such exciting items as pyjamas and slippers. Very important items for one's comfort around the home though, especially as winter sets in with earnest. As, indeed, are the Lush bath ballistics and the like. I even managed to resist the temptation to have fast food for lunch (although not to get sale price CDs and DVDs). The afternoon's move entertainment was Kill Bill, and while I'm not going to rave about it to the degree that some of my friends list has, it was a good movie. Burly brawl + samurai swords - gratuitous (and obvious) CGI = ka-ching!
Sunday was a completely stay-at-home affair. Some laundry, a bit of coding and a couple of Star Trek DVDs - the first two movies, in fact. Both of these were the re-edited Director's editions. Alas, the tightening up that had been done was still insufficient to salvage The Slow-Motion Picture - I'm fairly sure that another half hour could have been carved out of it without really losing much, and the plot remains a plodding mysterious-gas-cloud-of-the-week affair. The Wrath of Khan, however, is a different kettle of fish - Trek at its best. A nicely maniacal villain, phasers and photon torpedoes, a minimum of mumbo-jumbo (technical or otherwise) and they even dared to bump off a major character (albeit only until the next movie). The reused effects shots from the first film were kinda obvious when seen this way, though...