And Um So Yeah

I Brake For Lush

2009-04-11T21:57:00.004-06:00

Yesterday was a good day. I went to the Pacific Ocean Marketplace (closest and biggest Asian market in the North Denver Area) and did some grocery shopping.

(I really need to incorporate my Japanese studying more into my daily life so I can learn it better, so feel free to ignore the hiragana (ひらがな) characters in parentheses. It's possible that they aren't entirely correct, anyway.)

Starting on the far left and then going in a bit of a z-like line: Furikake (ふりかけ), seasoned seaweed paste (which sounds unappetizing but is quite good as an onigiri (おにぎり) filling), aloe drink (tasty enough), sushi (すし) vinegar, almond crunch pocky, mochiko (もちこ) rice flour, bubble gum assortment, enoki (えのき) mushrooms, baby eggplants, tofu (とふ), ginger candy, grape tomatoes, snap peas, bean thread, yakisoba (やきそば), green tea and red bean paste daifuku (だいふく), gyoza (ぎょうざ) wrappers, quail eggs, miso (みそ) soup, pretty spoon, soup flavoring.

Closeup of my pretty soup spoon which should match the new bento bowl set I bought on JList.

I found a blog that posted about how easy it was to make daifuku and really daifuku is incredibly cute so it's perfect for bento (ぼんと) so I bought the mochiko to use for that. I also bought the pre-made daifuku hoping that I would like it more this time. But I didn't. I'm terribly disappointed in that too - should pretty food taste great? I don't know if it's the filling that I don't like from the premade daifuku, so I'm going to try to make the mochi (もち) dough myself and then put raspberries or strawberry filling of some sort inside and hope that I like that better.

I bought some eggs to try to make tamagoyaki (たまごやき) which is a Japanese rolled omelet. It's pretty useful and perfectly suited to bento, so I figured I'd give it a shot. It turned out darker than most tamagoyaki, but I think I like it that way. It was tasty and I think it will go very well in my bentos.

I was home from work so I didn't have to prepare my bento lunch in a box before eating it. I like arranging food on a plate too - it's very satisfying.

Avocado slices, grape tomatoes, green tea daifuku, tamagoyaki, leftover Hawaiian teriyaki (てりやき) tofu rice bowl from Rumbi Island Grill.

I messed around online, put up some books I found at the thrift store on Swaptree then got ready to meet Kyle. I stopped on the way to get my passport photos taken at Walgreens. Not happy with how they turned out at all. My face has cleared up considerably in the past few weeks and I was thinking it looked great and pretty and so I thought it'd be a great day for the passport photos. Except they just use a stupid digital camera with bright flash and then print them. So the flash made my (shiny, oily skin) super white so all my blemishes, even if they were slowly disappearing, turned out very red. I'm contemplating getting another set taken at the Postnet I have my private mailbox at. They at least have an official sort of passport camera set up. I don't know if I want to spend an extra ten bucks on it though. It's just a passport photo. Like any ID, it's supposed to be crappy, right?

Once I got to Kyle's we gathered up the rest of the materials for The Great Brake Job of '09. It didn't go quite as quickly as planned, but Kyle did a fantastic job and my brakes are grind-less and fantastic. I didn't even want to turn the radio on while driving today just so I could revel in their silence. (Eventually I did turn the music on because as fantastic as it is, it's still just silence.)

By the time I got to his house Thursday it was getting dark and cold already so we decided to just do them Friday afternoon since I didn't have to work and could get to his house earlier than normal. We went and bought new rotors too because really, the driver side one on my car was being shredded to hell.

Penny waiting for her check up.

The front brake. See how the rotor is not really shiny at all? Bad times.

Passenger side rotor - very shiny! This will be replaced too, though, just because it's good to do them both at the same time to prevent uneven wear. (So I am told by a trustworthy fellow.)

He changed my oil too, which desperately needed it. So gross, but not too sludgey so that's good.

The reason for the wear on the rotor and the grinding - there was no pad left! No idea how it happened, but we suspect a foreign object of some sort to be the initial cause.

When the whole thing was done, it was too late to go up to Boulder and go to Lush and the Cheesecake Factory. We went to Three Margaritas just down the way instead. It wasn't very good food but when you've planned for the Cheesecake Factory, nothing really compares.

Today I slept in. A lot. I didn't intend on sleeping for almost 12 hours, but I did. It was nice, though. I finally woke up because I was hungry and had to pee. I got up, dilly dallied on the 'net, played with my new DS game that I got from Swaptree (Margot's Word Brain - it's not very good) and then Kyle and I made plans to have lunch together. We ate at Little Ollie's which he's had before because it's really close to the gardens and he wanted to take me there because of their tofu presentation.

I was impressed with that and liked the way the sesame (せさめ) seeds coated each tofu log, but the inside was basic Chinese food tofu. I was reading up on ways to prepare tofu and found a trick of sorts that is supposed to make the tofu insanely good - very crispy and with a great texture that even non-tofu-eaters enjoy. I'll be excited to try that out and hopefully I can get it to the point where I can use little slices of tofu for a brilliant bento idea I have. heh. =)
After lunch I headed up to Lush, intending on buying Jungle Conditioner, Vanishing Cream moisturizer and Coalface Cleanser. I totally got sucked into the allure of the bath bombs and bubble bars, though. Which is kind of silly considering I don't have a bath tub of my own! But I do have access to Kyle's, and will use these there. I guess that's one way to ensure they last for awhile.

Middle: Bathos Bubble Bar. Clockwise: Vanishing Cream, Jungle Conditioner, Youki-Hi Bath Bomb, Vanilla Fountain Bath Bomb, Big Blue Bath Bomb, Hot Milk? Bubble Bar, Coalface Cleanser.

The Coalface and Vanishing Cream should hopefully be THE combination that will rid my skin of its oily tendencies. All the reviews I read for both were really good and I'm crossing my fingers that I'll adore them just as much.

The Jungle Conditioner should last awhile. In some of the reviews people mentioned that they crumble the conditioner and mix it with water for a pomade of sorts to use after their hair was dry as well, or a sort of leave-in conditioner and it got rid of their frizz. Since my hair is crazy fizzy, I thought this would be good to try.

I've never tried their bath stuff before and I went a little crazy with it, really. The Youki-Hi has an intoxicating smell of jasmine and ylang-ylang. Gold glitter should be fun in the bath. Vanilla Fountain also smells great with spices and vanilla. Big Blue has an invigorating scent of lavender, lemon, lime and swirls of seaweed. Evidently it will turn the bath water blue so that should be fun as well.

The Hot Milk? Bubble Bar was recommended to combine with a bath bomb (bomb in first, then crumble a portion of the bubble bar). It has very subtle scents and the lady said it would turn the water sort of milky and creamy. I'm not sure if I want to try them together or just use one or the other. One bar is supposed to be good for 5 or 6 baths of bubbly goodness. The lady there said that the bubble bar makes far superior bubbles than conventional bubble bath so I grabbed the Bathos bar too. I thought I had gotten a bath melt (oils which will melt into the water) but I evidently did not. Probably better that way given the amount of money I spent anyway.

Heading to Vegas

2009-01-15T22:06:00.004-07:00

Tomorrow evening my boyfriend and I and some friends from work are heading out to Las Vegas. We're all very excited. The last time I went to Las Vegas, I wasn't old enough to enjoy it. We're lucky enough to be able to stay at a timeshare through my Grandpa so we're able to put more money toward whatever entertainment we decide to seek while we're there.

We'd like to go to a show of some sort, of course. We haven't decided yet and will probably end up looking at half price ticket booths for whatever. We'd also like to go to the Fremont Street Experience, but other than that we don't have anything else planned aside from hanging out, swimming a little if the weather cooperates, and just walking around and taking in the sites.

My camera battery is charging up right now and I can't wait to take as many pictures as possible. I've got to find my little camera case. I knit it up a few weeks ago and seem to have lost it the other day. It might be in my car.

I'm packing while listening to the Filmspotting podcast, which I've just recently been introduced to. I like it a lot.

In Any Place You'll Allow

2008-07-25T17:54:00.001-06:00

I have quotes come up on my iGoogle page. I like quotes. This one from today is pretty funny:

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of. - Burt Bacharach

I was trying to figure out why I've been so tired lately and so I asked Dr. Google for some advice on how to counteract whatever it is that might be afflicting me (bad diet, dehydration, etc). Someone had posted a whole essay thing about dehydration and how it leads to fatigue, blah blah blah. Her solution (or one of them) was to drink two glasses of water first thing in the morning. I thought it sounded like BS, but figured I'd try it out because what did I have to lose? If nothing else, I'd start off my day by getting enough water at least.

So all week I've had a 12 oz (10 oz?) glass next to my bathroom sink to remind me to drink two glasses right away. I've done it either before or after my shower each morning. And honestly, there's a huge difference. I haven't felt tired all week except for those few minutes from when I turn off my alarm to when I stumble to the bathroom. Today for instance, I was SUPER tired and even though all week the two-glasses-of-water-in-the-morning trick was working, I thought for sure it was not going to work at all considering how tired I was. But it did. I don't know if it's the water, or some psychological Pavlovian placebo effect. I don't care too much because it works and that's what

The only downside at the moment is that toward the end of the second glass, I feel like I could probably vomit if I put any effort into it. I might want to try drinking them more slowly instead of guzzling them both down so quickly, but the momentary gag reflex is easy enough to quiet. I think it's just a lot of fluid in the morning that my body isn't used to. Maybe it'll go away after awhile when my body gets more used to that.

It's kind of freaky how the two-glasses-of-water-in-the-morning trick works. I'd say it's better than coffee, but I don't drink coffee so I can't compare it. I'll definitely continue with it, though.

The X-Files movie comes out tonight and as I am a total geek, I can't wait to go see it. I'm kind of bummed that I don't have all 9 seasons on DVD so I wasn't able to go through and have a X-Files marathon the past few weeks, but oh well. If it's a good movie, the background will be covered decently enough that a marathon of all 9 seasons won't be necessary. But we'll see how it plays out.

Also, Canada on Tuesday! Woot!

My Lyrics Are Bottomless

2008-06-29T20:04:00.001-06:00

Curb Side Appeal
Currently, I'm renting the second bedroom in a two bedroom condo. This is the front door, which is oh-so-impressive.

And from the curb, which has my bedroom window in the middle part of the picture. (The bush is cleverly blocking the torn venetian blinds - they were like that when I moved in, though.)

Junk Drawer
The kitchen isn't mine, so I don't have a proper junk drawer. Half of my desk fits the bill, though.

Blogging Space
This is where I blog when I'm at home (the other half of my desk, if you didn't piece that one together). But to be honest, most of my blogging happens at work. I don't have a picture of that though.

Best Feature
I decided to be a smart ass and say that my best feature is my brain. As I cannot take an actual picture of my brain as it is, I altered a basic image of the brain found on the web to more closely resemble my own.

Favorite Jewelry
This was tough. I love the rings my sister got me that have "Sisters by Chance, Friends by Choice" engraved on the inside. And even though I don't wear a lot of jewelry, I actually have a lot of it. (Even more now that all the pieces I made during my jewelry business venture are no longer in my storage unit.) I decided on two pieces. The earrings and necklace my Grandma bought for me at one of those at-home jewelry parties. I love these and wear them probably more often than any other set I have.

And my favorite set that I made. Sometimes I can't believe that I actually made it. I've only worn it once, to my Grandma's funeral, which is another reason it has a special place in my heart.

Close up. The colors are mostly true, here.

And for more pictures, I present return of the Weekly Bento Pictures (with added Ratatouille Bonus)!

Thursday. Turmeric-laden flower-shaped onigiri, tomatoes, nectarine slices, skewer of blueberries, cubes of colby cheese, kalamata olive filled onigiri. All on a bed of spinach.

Hummus, kalamata olives and olive tapenade. The hummus is in paper baking cups which did not protect it from the oil that sort of oozed out of the tapenade. I was tempted to buy silicone baking cups to prevent such things and then when cleaning out my storage unit discovered a cupcake tin made of silicone, so I just cut out the cups to use.
On the right there are Triscuit crackers, Keebler caramel filled fudge covered graham crackery goodness. And an Andes mint, from a whole box that I had completely forgotten I bought like two months ago.

Friday. Both onigiri are filled with mushroom flavored seaweed paste, slices of nectarines, blueberry skewers, tomatoes, two cubes of colby cheese. On a bed of spinach.

Hummus with kalamata olive smiley face which turned out a lot more demented-looking than originally intended. Triscuits and Andes mints on the side.
Ratatouille Bonus!
I made this last Sunday. It smelled DELICIOUS while it was cooking and I was pretty impressed with how tasty it looked when it came out of the oven. Note the freshly grated parmesan.

And after dishing it out for dinner. I had another portion when I was finished with this because it was so damn good. It lasted me most of the week for dinners.

And I'll leave you with my New Funny Thing:

Flight of the Conchords, check them out.

Rockies Game

2008-06-22T17:46:00.001-06:00

Yesterday we went to the Rockies vs. Mets game at Coors Field. My Grandpa's company has a suite so he reserved it for the family. It was a really fun time.

You can see the mountains in the distance.

There's this really neat area of the field that's set up like a rock garden with fountains and things. I was surprised to see it there, but really liked it. I guess the fountains get turned really high when one of our guys hits a home run. (They did that twice during the game, back to back, but I wasn't watching the fountains when it happened.)

Since my Grandma passed away, I've been trying to take more pictures of people, not just scenic landscapes. I realized I have far too few pictures of the people that I love and too many of things, even if they are gorgeous. So, in the above picture we have my cousin Erika (12), niece Denae (15), Aunt Kathy (by marriage) and Uncle Curt (dad's younger brother).

Kendra trying to get out of the suite and see what all the commotion was outside on the balcony. She's 17 months already!

My nephew Aaron (15) in the back and my cousins Brittany (10) and Erika sitting at the bar inside watching the game through the window. The suite was, well, sweet. They had food and drinks provided for us, it was air conditioned and there were comfortable chairs and the neat bar overlooking the balcony seats.

My older sister Heather taking a picture of me taking a picture of her taking a picture of me...

My mom and Grandpa sitting outside before the sun got too intense. Derek, my brother-in-law, is inside, eyeing me and my camera suspiciously. (He hates getting his picture taken, though he has gotten better over the years.) My Uncle Curt is standing behind him, barely visible.

Heather and Kendra clapping for our team.

One of my younger sisters Amanda (20) is in the pink, dancing to something or other. My other younger sister Cory (19) is on the far right sitting with her boyfriend, and their friend Kerry is on the right, dancing.

There was a little girl a few months older than Kendra in the suite next to ours. They played together for a bit.

Matt Holliday up to bat. I guess he's a big deal or something.

It's kind of hard to see, but if you look toward the top row of seats, you'll see a purple stripe. The purple row of seats goes all the way around the stadium and that row is a mile high.

It didn't take me too long to realize we'd be there to see the sun set behind the mountains. I was excited for it and tried to get various shots of the sun sinking toward the horizon.

My dad and his girlfriend both tried to get Kendra's attention and make her laugh or smile. She was too tired by the time the game was winding down, though.

Driving around Colorado, you may see bumper stickers that say, "If God isn't a Broncos Fan, why are sunsets orange?" It seems that a similar one for the Rockies could be used considering the violet hue of this sunset.

Denae and Kendra, dancing to the final music.

Her future's so bright, she's gotta wear shades. (Also, pay no mind to the swollen lip - she busted it earlier during the night on of the seats.)

The Rockies won and the teams are on the field showing off their good sportsmanlike behavior.

Denae, Kendra, Grandpa, Aaron, Mom, Heather.

We stayed kind of late and most of the field had cleared out. We couldn't use the elevators so we went through the stadium and I was able to get a better picture of the field.

The Rock Garden thing on our way out - even prettier up close.

Uncle Curt, Derek, Kendra, Erika, Aaron.

The full set of pictures can be seen here.

Bento and Kittens

2008-05-09T16:53:00.001-06:00

So here's what I had for lunch this week:

Monday was yakisoba with soy sauce, broccoli, celery, mushrooms. Spinach bed with fresh mushrooms and grape tomatoes tossed in for fun (and color).

Cucumber slices, carrots, and quail egg resting on bed of spinach. Kiwi, raspberries, blackberries and Hello Panda chocolate creme treats.

Tuesday we have onigiri covered with furikake, spinach, carrots, grape tomatoes, quail egg, filled onigiri (soy sausage, celery, red bell pepper). Lower right has cucumber slices, avocado, raspberries. Lower left has blackberries, granny smith apple slices.

Wednesday was payday and also double reward points day at Qdoba so I had a vegetarian taco salad, which was delicious, of course.

For Thursday there was plain onigiri, spinach carrots, grape tomatoes, plain onigiri with furikake. Lower right hand has yakisoba with baby corn, mushrooms and broccoli. Upper right has blackberries, raspberries and granny smith apple shapes (made with my new cute mini shapers). The yakisoba was inedible. Okay, so it was edible, but not tasty which made it inedible in my book. I think the baby corn made it taste kind of icky. I'll have to rinse that crap off better next time or buy a different brand or something. Or just douse it in sauce, which this yakisoba did not have as I ran out of soy sauce on Tuesday and hadn't bought any by this time.

I didn't go to work today, so I didn't make my lunch in the morning to be packed. When I did make lunch though, I still made it bento-ish. So we've got the same yakisoba from Thursday but with teriyaki sauce and that made a WORLD of difference. Much much better. I ate it all this time. Avocado slices, quail eggs, flower-shaped onigiri rolled in furikake (the shape got messed up in the furikake rolling), grape tomatoes, babybel cheese, kiwi slices shaped with mini cutters.

Also, for gratuitous cuteness, I went over and saw Kyle's kittens last night. I wanted to smuggle them back to my home with me.

Playing with the string to my hoodie. The orange one is QT (Quentin Tarantino) and the dark one is Spielberg. (He's a movie fanatic and named his kittens accordingly.)

All tuckered out from playing. They slept in my lap for quite awhile, it was terribly cute. I had forgotten what it was like to not move even if you're uncomfortable because you've got a pile of furry cuteness on your lap. It's a nice feeling.

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

2008-05-04T11:31:00.000-06:00

I read this for my book club. It honestly isn’t something I would normally read, but it was very good and I’m glad that I read it. It’s a quick read and The Last Lecture is available as a video at www.thelastlecture.com. Even if you just watch that I think you’ll get some good from it.

44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith

2008-05-04T11:30:00.000-06:00

Great book. I love the way McCall Smith writes and in conjunction with the format of the book it comes across brilliantly. Slicing into the lives of the characters and seeing how their paths cross eventually is fantastic. I believe he has written more in the series and I would very much like to read those as well.

Creativity and Food

2008-05-04T11:16:00.000-06:00

So Friday night I worked on some Artist Trading Cards. I don't think these will be for trade, though. I wanted to do a series, as I've only done completely unrelated ones before, so I set out six cards in two rows and sat thinking for a bit. I decided to make little reminders about what I enjoy and am proud of in myself. I wound up only doing four, but I like them anyway.

I'll probably take these down in a few days because it's kind of creepy having the corners of the mirror masked, but I thought this was a particularly good place for them for the time being.

Caring, Loving, Kind.
This is my least favorite, but that's okay.

Optimistic.
Yes, those are little jingle bells on the card. It's very fun.

Open-minded.
I was going to put a pair of open hands in the white space, but I like the idea of leaving it open, for whatever happens to come along next. (No, I didn't mean to stamp the E on backwards, but it turned out well anyway.)

Creative.
This is my favorite.
Last night I started pulling all my altered book/scrapbooking stuff out so I can start working on an Altered Book Swap/Round Robin thing. I couldn't find any of my hard back books that I had saved for the purpose of altering them, so I figured I'd go get some today. I couldn't for the life of me remember where a good place to get alterable books was though and couldn't think of a used book store to go to. Then I was reading about them online and remembered that thrift stores are the best place for them. I couldn't believe I had forgotten that! In any case, I went this morning to scour for alterable books and found a handful (four) for $2.34 total, so I'm pretty pleased with that. I still don't have a theme for mine, but maybe the books will inspire me.
Then I went over to the Pacific Ocean Marketplace to see if they had anything for my bentos. They did!

The Loot. Please ignore my roommate's giant martini glass filled with gum and assorted breath fresheners in the background. heh. I spent about $45 on all this.

Yay for molds! I couldn't find any sauce bottles though, but I'll still keep looking.

Sweets and Quail Eggs. I picked up more sweets than I needed, probably, but they looked fun. The quail eggs are way cute, but I still have to figure out how to hard boil them since they're so much smaller than regular eggs.

Baby corn (whole and cut), seaweed paste for onigiri fillings, furikake (rice seasoning), black sesame seeds.

Cute shaped macaroni, 50-sheet pack of nori, japanese style noodles.

I made this for lunch when I got home from the stores. 7 gyoza, one onigiri with soy sausage, red pepper and celery filling, 7 grape tomatoes, three Hello Panda choco-cremes and a vanilla wafer. The Hello Panda treats were way better than the wafer.

This was Thursday's bento. Flower-shaped plain onigiri, cucumber slices, broccoli, leftover salad, grape tomatoes, avocado slices, gyoza.

I think I'm going to do a weekly bento entry with pictures from all my bentos for the week there. Sounds good to me.
Anyway, I'm going to go try to figure out a theme for my altered book.

Rock Band

2008-04-08T20:19:00.000-06:00

Guitar Hero is fun, but as I’ve never really wanted to play guitar, it wasn’t a huge thing for me or something I found easily addictive. I have, however, always had a small spot inside of me that wanted to be a singer. Not necessarily a rock band singer, but maybe in a musical or something like that. I don’t sing in the shower or along with the radio in the car, though. I wasn’t sure I’d like Rock Band, but I totally dig it. It’s addictive and I wish they had songs from musicals in it, but I’ll stick with pop culture songs I guess. They’re still a ton of fun. And I get to be Kitty Kaos, Rock Star for a while when I play, so that’s pretty neat too.

Estes Park

2008-04-01T22:32:00.000-06:00

On Saturday, Kyle and I went up to Estes Park. We had originally thought we’d do a picnic for lunch on
Saturday, but a drive up to Estes Park, some walking around the shops, a nice visit to the Stanley Hotel and a nice dinner out sounded a bit more interesting for both of us. Not that picnics aren’t great, of course.

We left town around 2pm. We tried to leave earlier, but got side tracked with homemade quesadillas, iPod transmitters and a car wash. It wasn’t a problem though - we had just enough time up there to do what we wanted.

I’ve heard people talk about going up to Estes Park and walking around the shops my whole life. I’d never gone myself, but figured this would be a great opportunity to see what all the hype was about. I still haven’t seen it though. The scenery is gorgeous, but the shops left a lot to be desired. I mean, how many souvenir t-shirts and how much turquoise jewelry can one person look at in a single day, anyway? I think I may have seen enough for the rest of my life, actually. Hiking and a picnic may have been a better way to spend our time, but at least now we know that for next time.

The Stanley Hotel is the hotel Stephen King based The Overlook on in The Shining. It’s on the national register for historical landmarks (or is it historical hotels?) for other reasons, but I think most people go there because of the horror aspect. While we were there there was a rather large group of “ghost hunters” which were kind of annoying. I mean, really. You don’t need to walk around the place with your video camera at three in the afternoon trying to catch an apparition when there are people everywhere. If ghosts didn’t make themselves scarce when large groups of people were milling about you wouldn’t need to try to catch one on video.

You can’t go upstairs and walk around the hallways without a room, so next time we’d like to get one. There’s also a tour that we didn’t know about ahead of time that we would like to sign up for next time we go up there. Next time, we will not eat dinner at the Cascades Restaurant on the main floor of The Stanley, however. For all it’s impressiveness outside, the dinner menu was lacking. I’m sure it’s a great place for snacks and drinks, but not a dinner meal.

The Stanley Hotel

Kyle on the shore of Lake Estes with The Stanley in the background.

Still on the shore of Lake Estes, facing into the sun this time. We were laughing pretty hard because it was so bright and neither of us knew when the automatic timer on the camera would go off exactly. He keeps his cool much better than I do, evidently.

Southland Tales

2008-04-01T22:30:00.000-06:00

This had a lot of promise. With an all-star cast and “dystopian future” in the description, it was right up my alley. However, it turned out to be way too long and, though science fiction, too far-fetched for my likes. The cinematics were spectacular though, so even when I wasn’t enjoying the plot, I could enjoy the scenery. I recommend it if you’ve got three hours to spend on a movie you may or may not like. Actually, you may not even know if you like it immediately.

Rating: TBA

21

2008-04-01T22:25:00.000-06:00

The previews for this made it seem like the movie would be pretty good. It was even better than that.

The lead female wasn’t all that impressive, in my opinion, but Jim Sturgess and Kevin Spacey did a great job, I think. I’m a fan of Texas Hold ‘Em myself, and haven’t actually been to Vegas when I was old enough to gamble (except for that $1.50 a friend and mine snuck into the slot machines once), but this made me want to hop a flight to Vegas immediately and take a bunch of cash with me.

Of course, I don’t go to MIT and let my optimism get in the way all the time of my betting strategy, so I’m sure I’d promptly lose it all. But the movie made it look fun, and relatively easy to get at least a decent bit of a profit. I’d love to read the book it was based on just to get deeper into the characters as they were all very likeable. Except the antagonists, of course, but even those had their appeal.

Rating:

Dreamcatcher - Stephen King

2008-03-26T21:08:00.000-06:00

I listened to the audiobook version of this. The problem with audiobooks is sometimes the narrator is not right for the part. Luckily, the narrator here, Jeffrey DeMunn, is perfect. He can not only do four or five different Maine accents so that you really can tell who is talking in the story just by his voice, but he conveys the emotion for all the characters pretty well, too. And I would definitely say conveying emotion for an alien and a kid with Down's syndrome is a pretty good accomplishment.

This is by no means my favorite Stephen King book, but I enjoyed the story. The childhood friendship between the main characters made me feel nostalgic and wistful. I had heard some people say that it was hard to get into, a little slow at first, and while I can see why that might be the case, I didn’t have any trouble with the momentum of the story at all.

Rating: TBA

Shutter

2008-03-26T20:54:00.000-06:00

My boyfriend and I went and saw Shutter on Monday night. It was against our better judgement, but he had seen a preview that he thought made the movie look worthwhile. Unfortunately, all the worthwhile conveyances were in the trailer. It was amusing in that we were able to make fun of the movie at least. I personally enjoyed the Tokyo skyline and repeated images of Mt. Fuji. But since it wasn’t an IMAX film, the scenery should not have been the highlight of the movie.

I do think it would probably be a better short story than a movie. It’s possible the original Japanese version is better, but I’m not eager to find out.

(Ratings will come later, when I figure out what sort of scale I want to use.)

Wordplay

2008-03-25T23:57:00.000-06:00

I just watched a documentary on crossword puzzles. I’m sure quite a few people would find that beyond boring, but I thought it was a lot of fun. And besides, now I know what Will Shortz looks like and more about the whole crossword puzzle construction, which is fun. I wanted to go into puzzle making when I was a kid, or somehow solve puzzles for a living, but somewhere along the line that dream or idea fluttered away. I think I’d like to call it back and nurture it. Not that I expect to make money doing them, or even create any that are worthwhile for other people, but they’re fun and I want to foster that amusement and keep my brain working in high gear.

Besides, now that I know there’s a tournament every year, it might be fun to go to one, as soon as I feel more comfortable with the puzzles. I’ll have to start doing more and more and more and timing myself and figuring out what exactly I need to work on. I wouldn’t really expect to win at a tournament, but it would be a lot of fun to go, I think.

Maybe that’s what this journal will be for - chronicling my crossword puzzle journey. For posterity’s sake, just in case I ever do get so far as even the top three at the tournament. ;)

I just did a Monday puzzle in 9:33 - no errors or blanks. I’m definitely going to have to get that one down. But this will be fun!