I got home last Saturday night (today is Friday). Driving through the Berkshires Friday morning was a bit dicey, a bit of snow was falling but I took things a little slower than the speed limit and other than one tiny skid.
Had a pretty good time in Massachusetts. Was great seeing my older sister, spent about 4 days in a row with her, then she, I, and younger sister whom I drove out with Lyra had movie night at OS's home. Watched As Above, So Below, which was better than we expected, and then The Orphanage. That was an excellent horror movie best one I've seen in a long time. The 3 of us had a great time, ate popcorn, and chips with onion dip goldfish crackers. Didn't have room for the ice cream, alas.
Ate out a lot with both sisters, did a little shopping, went to Friendly's a lot and ate lots of my favorite black raspberry ice cream. Gosh I have missed that. I brought some home with me though I didn't have a cooler because it was supposed to be in the single digits to low teens for the trip across Canada and Michigan. The forecast was wrong the temps kept climbing till they hit 37 in Michigan. Ice cream got a little soft, I stuck it in the freezer as soon as I got home. Haven't opened it up to see how it survived.
Gained a few pounds while I was gone. I blame myself for over indulging in all that ice cream. I will work it off eventually. At least that's the plan.
It's sure nice to be home though. I think the pups are happy to be here. Ziggy was a pretty good little traveler for his first big road trip, he only whined a little. On the ride to MA my pups were in the way back and Lyra shared the back seat with all our luggage. On the way home I put mine on the back seat. After a fewwe hours Ziggy decided he would sleep on a folded up dog bed on the floor, That gave Luna the whole back seat to pace back and forth and pant, a lot. I now remember that I used to get tranquilizers for her. I'll have to get more before out next trip.
Been walking a lot since I got back, also went to Alpena with Hal's sister for the first 2 days I was here so hadn't gotten much done except laundry since my return. However since then I've been sorting through some of my clothes to donate as well as some household items, vases, knic knacs, etc. I've also been dusting and just picking up stuff. Rearranged the living room a bit, too.
Supposed to snow a bit this weekend. I don't expect to get much. Most of it is going to slide underneath as unusual. It's going to whack MA again though. It just keeps snowing there since I left.
I've not been in the mood to blog lately, maybe that will change once I get used to being home again.
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Friday, February 6, 2015
Saturday, February 20, 2010
A Beautiful Day
Another fine, sunny blue sky day today. Temperature reached 39 degrees fahrenheit, a good 7 degrees warmer than the prediction the other day. Took a couple long walks with Luna, a shorter one with Rocket to drop him off at Uncle Butch's, of course. It was such a nice day I closed the gates to the front yard fence and let the chickens and guineas out to free range. Not the ducks though, I'm not sure I can trust them to come back inside yet.
The birds enjoyed their freedom, making a bee-line to the chimney on the west side of the house where they found dry, fluffy dirt and had themselves a bath. Could they pack themselves in any tighter?
The birds enjoyed their freedom, making a bee-line to the chimney on the west side of the house where they found dry, fluffy dirt and had themselves a bath. Could they pack themselves in any tighter?
They were very well behaved birds and followed me back into the run a few hours later when I shook the food can. For once it wasn't any yelling and chasing and trying to get them off the coop roof to get them inside.
I made a pizza tonight. It had pepperoni and broccoli and venison sausage and mushrooms for toppings. We had some red wine with it.
The birds are now shut into their coop for the night, Luna and Rocket are asleep on their beds, Hal and I are watching a fairly bad scifi movie on the SyFy channel (taking a break from the Olympics tonight). When it's over I may go read my book by Kelley Armstrong, Haunted. Yes, that's what I will do. I think I'll start on the afghan for a twin bed tomorrow. (I have started the chain, but I'm still thinking about what stitches to use.)
Toodles.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Hal's Going Hunting Tomorrow
He's off to the wilds of New Hampshire with my younger sister's boyfriend. He's got his SUV packed except for his lunch and over night bag. They were originally heading to Maine but the guy with the cabin had to cancel so the backup plan was the BF's place in NH. They had a good time there last year so I suspect they'll have a good time this year.
While they're gone I plan to read a lot of books, (reading Mailman by J. Robert Lennon at the moment), watching old movies, having some chips and dip, hot dogs, garlic bologna sandwiches, and just lazing about. I still plan on walking my dogs every day, of course, it's not as though I'm going to lay about and eat bonbons all day long.
Perhaps I should get into the spirit of the season and hunt some squirrels while he's gone? Brunswick Stew, yum!
While they're gone I plan to read a lot of books, (reading Mailman by J. Robert Lennon at the moment), watching old movies, having some chips and dip, hot dogs, garlic bologna sandwiches, and just lazing about. I still plan on walking my dogs every day, of course, it's not as though I'm going to lay about and eat bonbons all day long.
Perhaps I should get into the spirit of the season and hunt some squirrels while he's gone? Brunswick Stew, yum!
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Movie Review: "Megafault" - Mega Stupid
So once in a while Hal and I have nothing better to do and end up watching the Saturday night Scifi (now SyFy) movie on the same named TV channel. This one stars Eriq LaSalle, of ER fame and some female whose lips seem over botoxed. This movie is BAD. It reeks. it is beyond stupid. And we're not even going to get into the poor CGI.
An earthquake starting in West Virginia devastates Washington D.C. where a botoxed seismologist (BS) is giving a speech while her daughter and husband watch. She races in a helicopter to WVA where Eriq's character is a miner blowing up mountains that look suspiciously like the Rockies and is now buried in a sandy crater. She and the burly copter pilot rescue him.
In the meantime the USAF sends her family home in a C-130 because all commercial planes will be grounded since a new fault is racing west from WVA. All the airport control towers in the midwest are broken so all of the planes are "flying blind!" Apparently, GPS and pilots looking out of windows has been conveniently forgotten by the writers.
Eriq and BS then race in the copter to KY to save his mom, but too late, the new quake has hit and blown up the very gas pipeline in her street and destroys his mom's house. Then the shrapnel somehow hits the wing of the C-130 way up there in the sky and takes it out. Only the dad and daughter survive and are picked up by a trucker driving a gasoline tanker that looks suspiciously like a dirt hauler. Of course, the quake chases them and the Alaska pipeline, which seems now to run through the midwest right next to this trucker's road starts exploding, sets the tanker of fire and dad has to crawl outside and release the tanker from the cab.
While this tense tanker truck action is leaving us breathless, Eriq blows up an outhouse to distract the chopper pilot who rushes to put the fire out with his handy dandy fire extinguisher and Eriq and BS steal the chopper to find her family.
But then the air force forces them to land in Kansas where the general tells her of the super secret ice quake satellite weapon (used to destroy the enemy from beneath) but now will be used to stop the quake at the Grand Canyon. SB must tell them where to fire the ice laser.
But wait, it gets more ludicrous.
The military keeps giving BS priority to find her family so they put her in an Osprey "the world's fastest helicopter" but then, of course, first must rescue a family in an RV, the only people apparently driving across the midwest, and risk being in the laser's line of fire, etc. Of course, they survive, narrowly, but then not only do they not stop the quake, they just sent it north toward Yellowstone's buried super volcano caldera! Now Earth is threatened by an "extinction event"! So now Eriq, the great miner he is, must create a new Grand Canyon between the fault and the caldera to stop all hell breaking lose.
Next, a long, drawn out, bad CGI depiction of 20 million (??) tons of explosive making this new canyon (where the hell is the dirt and rock actually going? I didn't know the Earth was hollow! As Eriq and BS race away in a jeep while yet another helicopter chases them with a rope lowered towards them (that can only save one of them, of course), Eriq sacrifices himself because his rear wheel gets stuck in a rut and is sucked into the "Newer Grand Canyon". BS finally makes it to Denver (by car, apparently, the copter couldn't take her the whole way?) where the quake, has destroyed their home after her husband and daughter get there. After much shouting and crying and gnashing of teeth, they are found unscathed (oh there should have been slow motion when they ran toward each other!) The camera pans away inot orbit showing that the new earthquake fault was just the other side of their yard and crosses 1/3 of the United States.
The End
I forgot to mention the best part! The people near Yellowstone have their feet, hands and heads suddenly erupt into flames from the heat of the caldera. Such stunning visual effects!
Can I stand the wait till next Saturday?!!
An earthquake starting in West Virginia devastates Washington D.C. where a botoxed seismologist (BS) is giving a speech while her daughter and husband watch. She races in a helicopter to WVA where Eriq's character is a miner blowing up mountains that look suspiciously like the Rockies and is now buried in a sandy crater. She and the burly copter pilot rescue him.
In the meantime the USAF sends her family home in a C-130 because all commercial planes will be grounded since a new fault is racing west from WVA. All the airport control towers in the midwest are broken so all of the planes are "flying blind!" Apparently, GPS and pilots looking out of windows has been conveniently forgotten by the writers.
Eriq and BS then race in the copter to KY to save his mom, but too late, the new quake has hit and blown up the very gas pipeline in her street and destroys his mom's house. Then the shrapnel somehow hits the wing of the C-130 way up there in the sky and takes it out. Only the dad and daughter survive and are picked up by a trucker driving a gasoline tanker that looks suspiciously like a dirt hauler. Of course, the quake chases them and the Alaska pipeline, which seems now to run through the midwest right next to this trucker's road starts exploding, sets the tanker of fire and dad has to crawl outside and release the tanker from the cab.
While this tense tanker truck action is leaving us breathless, Eriq blows up an outhouse to distract the chopper pilot who rushes to put the fire out with his handy dandy fire extinguisher and Eriq and BS steal the chopper to find her family.
But then the air force forces them to land in Kansas where the general tells her of the super secret ice quake satellite weapon (used to destroy the enemy from beneath) but now will be used to stop the quake at the Grand Canyon. SB must tell them where to fire the ice laser.
But wait, it gets more ludicrous.
The military keeps giving BS priority to find her family so they put her in an Osprey "the world's fastest helicopter" but then, of course, first must rescue a family in an RV, the only people apparently driving across the midwest, and risk being in the laser's line of fire, etc. Of course, they survive, narrowly, but then not only do they not stop the quake, they just sent it north toward Yellowstone's buried super volcano caldera! Now Earth is threatened by an "extinction event"! So now Eriq, the great miner he is, must create a new Grand Canyon between the fault and the caldera to stop all hell breaking lose.
Next, a long, drawn out, bad CGI depiction of 20 million (??) tons of explosive making this new canyon (where the hell is the dirt and rock actually going? I didn't know the Earth was hollow! As Eriq and BS race away in a jeep while yet another helicopter chases them with a rope lowered towards them (that can only save one of them, of course), Eriq sacrifices himself because his rear wheel gets stuck in a rut and is sucked into the "Newer Grand Canyon". BS finally makes it to Denver (by car, apparently, the copter couldn't take her the whole way?) where the quake, has destroyed their home after her husband and daughter get there. After much shouting and crying and gnashing of teeth, they are found unscathed (oh there should have been slow motion when they ran toward each other!) The camera pans away inot orbit showing that the new earthquake fault was just the other side of their yard and crosses 1/3 of the United States.
The End
I forgot to mention the best part! The people near Yellowstone have their feet, hands and heads suddenly erupt into flames from the heat of the caldera. Such stunning visual effects!
Can I stand the wait till next Saturday?!!
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Christmas, Calories, Cameras, and Cinema
It's a Saturday night and I'm sitting in my husband's creaky, slowly disintegrating la-z-boy rocker watching the Empire Strikes Back on commercial TV though I have it on VHS tape (the original version, not the enhanced one). I've consumed a multitude of m&ms and a few pretzels and 2 or 3 glasses of milk. I did stop eating before 9 pm, it's my first attempt at getting back to more "normal" eating after the insanity of the holiday season.
Luna lays at my feet (under one in fact) while Rocket has retired to his twin mattress on the floor in the loft. I am using Hal's laptop which he inadvertently left at home when he left for his camp today. It's possible he left it on purpose as he has 4 new books to read, one of them by Neal Stephenson (Anathem) and rather large. I'm currently reading another of his books, The Diamond Age, a bit of cyber punk SF I'd say, very interesting.
I took the Christmas tree down a few days ago, I still have some odds and ends that need putting away as well. I do a little bit every day but I also have some housework to catch up on. Nothing like holiday chaos to slow one down.
I weighed myself on Wednesday, something I've been avoiding. I was pleased to find I'd only gained back 3 of the 6 pounds I had lost last fall. Perhaps trudging through the deep snow helped fight against the extra calories I've been consuming. I'm not going to lose them too quickly as long as I keep eating m&ms though.
I did have a wonderful time this Christmas. With my mom and younger sister here and 3 dogs, one of them being a puppy, there was plenty to do. The weather was messy so we didn't get out much, one day of shopping before Christmas and one day a few says later we went to Harmony Acres in Mikado. (The guys spent they're time hunting, we hardly saw them at all.)
Christmas dinner we had roast duck and chicken, baked potatoes, green beans, creamed corn (homemade by me and my MIL last summer), home baked bread, the ubiquitous Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce, gravy, an orange/raspberry sauce for the duck, and of course, a white wine. Or was it a pinot noir? I can't remember. My sister made chocolate cream pie for dessert. Oh, and there were cookies, too.
The photos I'll be posting from now on will be from my new camera DH gave me (with a little help from me, I did all the research and bought it so I got exactly what I wanted). It's a Panasonic Lumix LZ-8 and it's been fun learning how to use it. It has no viewfinder which is a minor disappointment, but the viewfinders on other cameras, the Canons for instance, are nearly impossible to see through anyway. Since I bought rechargeable NiMH batteries I also don't have to worry about ripping through AA batteries dozens at a time per month. My old Fuji used 4 AAs at a time instead of merely 2 and they weren't rechargeable but as I almost never used the the LCD screen (it has a decent viewfinder) they lasted a pretty long time. But after 5 or more years that camera became inadequate and a little less reliable (kayaking is not a good thing necessarily for electronics). There simply were too many negatives. I wanted an optical zoom, more manual control of things like shutter speed and aperture, things I used when I still used a film camera. It only had 1.3 mega pixels, 8 is much more impressive though I'm only using 5 of them regularly as 8 is overkill for what I do.
Star Wars #5 is almost over now, Han is a carbon cube and Luke is about to have a family reunion. I should wind this up so I can go to bed at midnight. I've got lots of things to do tomorrow.
Luna lays at my feet (under one in fact) while Rocket has retired to his twin mattress on the floor in the loft. I am using Hal's laptop which he inadvertently left at home when he left for his camp today. It's possible he left it on purpose as he has 4 new books to read, one of them by Neal Stephenson (Anathem) and rather large. I'm currently reading another of his books, The Diamond Age, a bit of cyber punk SF I'd say, very interesting.
I took the Christmas tree down a few days ago, I still have some odds and ends that need putting away as well. I do a little bit every day but I also have some housework to catch up on. Nothing like holiday chaos to slow one down.
I weighed myself on Wednesday, something I've been avoiding. I was pleased to find I'd only gained back 3 of the 6 pounds I had lost last fall. Perhaps trudging through the deep snow helped fight against the extra calories I've been consuming. I'm not going to lose them too quickly as long as I keep eating m&ms though.
I did have a wonderful time this Christmas. With my mom and younger sister here and 3 dogs, one of them being a puppy, there was plenty to do. The weather was messy so we didn't get out much, one day of shopping before Christmas and one day a few says later we went to Harmony Acres in Mikado. (The guys spent they're time hunting, we hardly saw them at all.)
Christmas dinner we had roast duck and chicken, baked potatoes, green beans, creamed corn (homemade by me and my MIL last summer), home baked bread, the ubiquitous Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce, gravy, an orange/raspberry sauce for the duck, and of course, a white wine. Or was it a pinot noir? I can't remember. My sister made chocolate cream pie for dessert. Oh, and there were cookies, too.
The photos I'll be posting from now on will be from my new camera DH gave me (with a little help from me, I did all the research and bought it so I got exactly what I wanted). It's a Panasonic Lumix LZ-8 and it's been fun learning how to use it. It has no viewfinder which is a minor disappointment, but the viewfinders on other cameras, the Canons for instance, are nearly impossible to see through anyway. Since I bought rechargeable NiMH batteries I also don't have to worry about ripping through AA batteries dozens at a time per month. My old Fuji used 4 AAs at a time instead of merely 2 and they weren't rechargeable but as I almost never used the the LCD screen (it has a decent viewfinder) they lasted a pretty long time. But after 5 or more years that camera became inadequate and a little less reliable (kayaking is not a good thing necessarily for electronics). There simply were too many negatives. I wanted an optical zoom, more manual control of things like shutter speed and aperture, things I used when I still used a film camera. It only had 1.3 mega pixels, 8 is much more impressive though I'm only using 5 of them regularly as 8 is overkill for what I do.
Star Wars #5 is almost over now, Han is a carbon cube and Luke is about to have a family reunion. I should wind this up so I can go to bed at midnight. I've got lots of things to do tomorrow.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Another Pointless Post
Well, all the blogging advice sites say one shouldn't allow more than 3 days between posts and it's been 4 so to avoid the universe imploding I'll write something.
Luna is howling outside. I have no idea at what, but I suspect her Uncle Yogi may be barking back at her. DH is watching the last half of the movie "Nacho Libre" in the living room. Tonight's dinner was venison heart braised in tomatoes and wine with a sour cream egg sauce over a bed of white rice.
My dogs and I walked a couple times through the woods today, the temps finally achieved 30f again and ice melted here and there. I tried to help it along by chipping some off the deck and throwing it into the yard, but it's a futile battle. I am hoping enough melts before the predicted rain on Thursday to keep the garage from flooding for the 3rd time this winter. I've got to keep the straw bales dry for the duck pen.
The space shuttle is supposed to launch around 2:30 am EDT but I don't think I'll be able to stay awake for it. Hopefully, things will go as planned for it. I did remember to change the clocks to daylight savings time and am almost on the new time. At least I woke up at 9:30 am as usual though technically it would have been 8:30 if things hadn't changed.
Oh, here's something not pointless (well, I find dying pointless but there isn't a heck of a lot anyone can do about it yet), my uncle died last Friday morning. He was my mom's last sibling and was 90 years old. A very nice man, my older sister and I stopped in to visit him and my aunt at Christmas time. He will be missed. There aren't a lot of that generation left in my family. Death is a lousy way to end life.
Well now that was thoroughly depressing. I'll try to be more uplifting in my next post.
Luna is howling outside. I have no idea at what, but I suspect her Uncle Yogi may be barking back at her. DH is watching the last half of the movie "Nacho Libre" in the living room. Tonight's dinner was venison heart braised in tomatoes and wine with a sour cream egg sauce over a bed of white rice.
My dogs and I walked a couple times through the woods today, the temps finally achieved 30f again and ice melted here and there. I tried to help it along by chipping some off the deck and throwing it into the yard, but it's a futile battle. I am hoping enough melts before the predicted rain on Thursday to keep the garage from flooding for the 3rd time this winter. I've got to keep the straw bales dry for the duck pen.
The space shuttle is supposed to launch around 2:30 am EDT but I don't think I'll be able to stay awake for it. Hopefully, things will go as planned for it. I did remember to change the clocks to daylight savings time and am almost on the new time. At least I woke up at 9:30 am as usual though technically it would have been 8:30 if things hadn't changed.
Oh, here's something not pointless (well, I find dying pointless but there isn't a heck of a lot anyone can do about it yet), my uncle died last Friday morning. He was my mom's last sibling and was 90 years old. A very nice man, my older sister and I stopped in to visit him and my aunt at Christmas time. He will be missed. There aren't a lot of that generation left in my family. Death is a lousy way to end life.
Well now that was thoroughly depressing. I'll try to be more uplifting in my next post.
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