I’ve gone geek. June 13, 2009

     We just got back from our anniversary dinner date (Goodwood BBQ and Star Trek).

 

     Yum and yuh-huh-huh-huh-mmm.

  

     Never having been much of a fan of ANY of the Star Trek realms (except for Generations…  for some reason, I LOVED that movie!), I have to admit that my interest was peaked way back in January when I saw him in a Star Trek commercial:

(Oh, Sylar, you bad, bad man.)(Also, the casting director was PURE GENIUS.)

 

     Then I saw the trailer in April, and I told Kenny that I actually might consider seeing it.  Maybe even for our anniversary.

 

     I have seen a lot of really unpleasant movies in the name of our anniversary.  (Gladiator, anyone?)  Thank you, J.J. Abrams, for giving me a movie I could enjoy, even if my reasons were completely different from my husband’s.

 

(You’re welcome.)

 

 

     I have jumped into the cult of Trek with both feet. 

 

     Live long and prosper.       l\/l

Come on in and sit a SPELL September 22, 2008

     We woke up this morning to clouds and rain. 

 

     I LOVE days like today, but they tend to make my kids antsy, because they can’t run outside and burn off their energy.  (This morning has proven to be no exception.)  We got Alex and Kendra off to school, Kenny off to the dealership, and Abbie down for a nap, and the little kids decided they wanted to watch a movie with the lights off.  Specifically, they wanted to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

 

     We made popcorn and shut off all the lamps, and I had a blissful 48 seconds before I heard,

What a waste! April 28, 2008

     After doing three loads of laundry, tending Abbie for half the day, making a pretty-darn-good dinner (baked potatoes with a choose-your-own topping bar and sparkly lime jello parfaits), holding Family Home Evening (planning for May’s activities), helping Alex with his book report* and making a last-minute dash to Michael’s for the perfect-sized stickers to adorn it, I sat down with Kenny to relax for the night.

 

     I pulled out my newest splurge, a bottle of OPI “Argenteeny Pinkini”, and set out to paint my nails.  Kenny turned on “Cloverfield” (I didn’t really enjoy it…  slept through most of it), and the motion of the camera was too much for me to take.  I was cold, so he covered me up with a blanket, and somehow I pulled my arms under it.  When I woke up for the last two minutes of the movie, I had to literally peel my fingernails away from the blanket.    So much for cute, summery nails.  Now they’re all bumpy and textured.

 

     Wait, is that the new look?  No?  Darn.  I didn’t think it was.

 

     And this would be the reason my fingernails are always the same boring shade of natural…

 

 

*He chose “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” for his report.  (He had to create a bookmark.  A fancy one.)  We’ve been reading that book a lot this month, since it’s Anthony’s new favorite.  (All my kids loved it.  It’s a great book.)  He made the coconut tree with the letters marching up the trunk and into the leaves, and when you hold it at the bottom, the weight of the leaves make it bend, which is exactly what happens in the book.  It’s really cute, and he did all the work himself. 

I hope his teacher doesn’t care that he didn’t choose a chapter book.  Because this is the same nine-year-old kid who read “The Hobbit”. 

Movies We Love to Watch Together March 12, 2008

     So, I promise that this is the last movie-related post I’ll do for a while.  I wanted to leave my readers with one more glimpse into our movie-viewing habits.  This list is full of the movies we own that we watch the most often.  There are some that one of us likes more than the other, but it’s pretty fair to say that if we don’t have something DVR-ed, or we haven’t rented a new release from Hollywood Video, we’re watching one of these.

1. Forrest Gump     (This one has history– we saw it on our third date and as cheesy as it is, it’s “our” movie.)
2. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy     (The extended versions, of course!)
3. Mr. Holland’s Opus
4. Galaxy Quest
5. Evolution
6. Erin Brockovich
7. Field of Dreams
8. Elf     (I can watch this movie ANY month of the year!)
9. Bye Bye Love
10. The Birdcage
11. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
12. Deep Blue Sea
13. Duets
14. A Knight’s Tale
15. Moulin Rouge
16. Rent
17. A League of Their Own
18. O Brother Where Art Thou
19. Three Kings
20. The Man in the Iron Mask
21. The Princess Bride
22. Shallow Hal
23. The Wedding Singer
24. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
25. The Sound of Music
26. Independence Day
27. Heart and Souls
28. The Day After Tomorrow
29. Chances Are
30. Sneakers     (“Say ‘passport’.”)
31. Guarding Tess
32. The Rainmaker
33. Jurassic Park     (series…  Kenny was very specific about that.  I enjoy 1 immensely, and 2 and 3 were just *okay*.)
34. The Patriot
35. 10 Things I Hate About You
36. Goonies
37. Titanic
38. The Sixth Sense
39. Cars     (It’s Pixar, so it’s okay!  LOL)
40. Love, Actually
41. Kiss the Girls
42. Back to the Future     (series, although I’m more partial to 1 and 2)
43. The Mummy     (series, although again, just 1 for me)
44. The Holiday
45. Across the Universe
46. A Night At the Roxbury
47. Liar, Liar
48. Apollo 13
49. Oceans 11    (and 12 and 13)
50. Men in Black

     There are several more that I could have added, but we felt like 50 was pleeeeenty.  *grin*  Another point of (pathetic) interest?  We own all of the movies from our three lists.  And then some.  (Men should NEVER be allowed into Circuit City or onto Amazon.com or Columbia House unsupervised!)

     As I glanced through this list again, I realized that most of these were movies we saw before we had kids.  Maybe that’s why we enjoy them so much– it reminds us of a time that was less frenzied and more focused on the two of us.  Anyway, enjoy. 

     And as always, try to keep the giggles to a minimum.

Kenny’s Turn… The Movies HE Loves to Hate March 11, 2008

      Yesterday I posted about the movies my husband loves and I hate, so I thought it would only be fair to let him have his turn.  You’ll find his pathetic attempt below.  *wink*

1.  Clue
2. Miss Congeniality
3. Drop Dead Gorgeous
4. Disney movies     (Classic or new, if it has the castle and it’s not a Pixar cartoon, he’s out.)  More specifically, The Princess Diaries, High School Musical, The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band, The Parent Trap, etc.    He does love Mary Poppins and Pete’s Dragon, so maybe it’s just the movies with a girl theme?
5. Mean Girls     (although he DID buy it for me when it came out)
6. Addams Family
7. 13 Going on 30     (he bought me this one too)
8. Big Business
9. Bye Bye Birdie     (The Jason Alexander version)
10. Sister Act

     The funniest thing about this list is that my husband had to go stand at our movie collection to look through them (it was a stretch for him to come up with 10), and I was reminding him of titles I know he hates.  His criteria for judging which so-so movies made the list?  “If it was on right now, would I stop my Nintendo game to watch it?  I think not…  add it to the list.”

     It’s official!  I’ve turned him into a chick-flick guy!  *snort*

Top 20 Movies I Love to Hate March 10, 2008

     I asked my husband for a list idea, and this is what he came up with.  We are huge movie lovers at our house, although our tastes vary widely.  (Clearly, as you’re about to see.)  Now some of these movies I actually like (or liked);  my problems with them stem from the following reasons:   1) No matter the time or day, my husband manages to find ONE of these movies on cable, 2) he can repeat them verbatim, and 3) some of them were funny ONLY when he watched them with a group of his high school friends well past midnight.

1. High Fidelity *
2. Outside Providence *
3. Kill Bill (both volumes)
4. Dances With Wolves
5. Raising Arizona
6. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
7. Braveheart     (I loathe this movie with the heat of a thousand suns.)
8. Dune
9. Zombie movies– more specifically 28 Days, Dawn of the Dead, and any of the scores of zombie movies and/or remakes that have been released in the past 3 years.  Take your pick.  There are too many to count.
10. Kung Fu movies.  Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee…  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon…  and some other one with beautiful cinematography.  They all just blend into the same movie with kicking and punching and subtitles.
11. Good Will Hunting     (Tecnhically a great movie, but the language makes me cringe.)
12. Grosse Pointe Blank
13. What About Bob
14. Groundhog Day
15. Vampire Movies– Interview With the Vampire, Van Helsing, From Dusk ‘Til Dawn, Underworld, Blade  (Can you tell that vampires scare the bejeezus out of me?)
16. It’s A Wonderful Life
17. Gladiator
18. Fight Club
19. Legend
20. Ladyhawke

* I have to admit, these movies have grown on me.  Once you get past the language, the characters are hi-freaking-larious.  The names Alec Baldwin calls his son in Outside Providence make me want to alternately hug his son and pee my pants in hysterics.  And Jack Black steals the movie in High Fidelity.  Ssssh…  don’t tell Kenny.