Tag Archives: movies

03/23/12

{365.83} I Watch Movies & Eat Pizza, Etc.

We were busy all day getting David ready for tomorrow’s imminent departure to New Mexico. Another nice day out here today, warm and sunny. We cleaned out both of our cars and David packed bags and such. Then we ordered a $10 dinner box from Pizza Hut (pizza + cheesy bread + Cinnastix = I know I’m going to hell but I’ll be laughing all the way down there) and watched our last episode of Sherlock. Which was awesome. I LOVE SHERLOCK. Where has this series been all my life? Why will it not be airing on BBC America until May?? Seriously a brilliant show and I think everyone should watch it. Also I’ve become enamored of the idea that the actor who plays Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) should be first in line to play The Young Severus Snape if there is EVER anything made along the lines of a prequel. I mean, I know there probably won’t be, but he would be the BEST EVER. It totally suits him. Watch 15 minutes of Sherlock and you will see the light.

My next TV show endeavor: Downton Abbey, which is on Netflix, and which I will be amusing myself with while David is away. I wouldn’t go so far as to inflict Edwardian drama on him. I happen to have a bizarre fascination with the Victorian/Edwardian eras, as well as the Titanic and everything World War II, but this doesn’t mean I would expect others to share my historical obsessions. (Just bumped up to the top of the DVD queue: The Young Victoria starring Emily Blunt. *fangirl squeal* I have sooooo been meaning to watch that one!!!!) And now that everyone is staring at me because I’m super weird, I will slink away so as to avoid being judged.

Oh yeah, since I’m stepping out of character and talking excessively about watching TV (I rarely ever watch TV of my own volition, ask David), let me just say that today’s BIGGEST disappointment was missing Tangled Ever After on the Disney Channel. I had no idea it was playing until I saw a post from Tangled in my Facebook feed saying it would be on, and by then it was already over. SUPER LAME. I play to comb through the TV listings and DVR this if it gets played again. Grrrrr.

We also participated in the Tera Online beta for maybe an hour before becoming frightfully bored with it and reaffirming our belief that Guild Wars 2 will be the MMO to end all MMOs. I’m putting all that stuff under the cut.

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02/5/12

{365.36} I Enjoy Blizzard Wedding Remembrance Day

Let’s begin this anniversary post with an open letter to the state of Nevada:

Dear State of Nevada,

What is your problem? How can it be that you have no Cracker Barrel locations here???? I mean, our relationship was already beginning to sour when you turned out to be IKEA-less. I just don’t know how much more I can take at this point. I’ll have you know that I lived in a backwoods quasi-city called Wichita Falls for almost five years, and even THEY had a damn Cracker Barrel. Sure, there was only one Starbucks, the Target wasn’t Super, and I had to drive two hours for a Jamba Juice. BUT THEY HAD CRACKER BARREL. Now, on this happy day when we were supposed to go out for dinner & a movie as our anniversary date, we were forced instead to see a movie MINUS dinner because we couldn’t think of anywhere else we wanted to eat. Or anywhere that we would be able to still afford, considering how stupidly expensive it is just to see a movie and have some freaking popcorn. Also, we were nursing broken hearts because THERE IS NO CRACKER BARREL HERE. I realize that I sound crazed, strangely Southern, and mentally imbalanced right now, but I maintain that it is unfair for you to have a massive selection of restaurants and yet neglect Cracker Barrel. Two words: WHAT GIVES??? I don’t know that this is a forgivable offense, so please do not speak to me for the remainder of our time stationed here.

Disappointedly,
Paola

With that out of the way, we had a great anniversary~ We went to go see The Woman in Black starring Daniel Radcliffe, which we both really liked. It was super creepy and full of peeling Victorian wallpaper, creepy wind-up toys, a demented rocking chair, and D. Rad’s intense sideburns. Yes, I am addressing Daniel Radcliffe as D. Rad from now on. Maybe it will help me differentiate his future film roles from his ever-present association with Harry Potter. Seriously, 75% of the movie, I was like… oh come on now, Harry, shouldn’t you be out looking for Voldemort…? But all joking aside, it was definitely a fantastic horror movie. And we watch a lot of those, so we know what we’re talking about here. It was incredibly eerie, similar to Nicole Kidman’s The Others. We strategically went for a showtime that coincided with when everyone would (theoretically) be watching the Super Bowl instead of going to the movies. This worked, for the most part, except that of course there was the inevitable group of giggling teenagers sitting in the very top row who were whispering, muttering, and laughing through the whole movie. Oh, and here’s something else that I find annoying about going to the movies: as we were walking in, there was a man with two small girls going into the same movie we were. THIS IS A HORROR MOVIE. IT IS NOT FOR LITTLE CHILDREN. Ugh! I just hate when parents bring their very young kids to movies that aren’t appropriate for them!

Can you tell why we hardly ever go to the movies anymore??

Anyway, we had a fun anniversary, and I particularly enjoyed the warm, sunny, happy, SNOW-FREE weather. Even if Nevada is home to such travesties as no Cracker Barrel and no Ikea, at least it doesn’t have freakish winter weather like North Texas does. That, I will never miss. Snow is a hateful substance that is only slightly better than ice. Oh sure, you think it’s all exciting and awesome the first time you experience it. But then you realize that it’s actually super, unbelievably lame having to get up twenty minutes earlier than usual to allow yourself time to scrape ice off your windshield and also to drive slower because the roads are slick. And then you end up having a winter wedding during a freak storm that shuts down airports and leaves you standing at the window weeping hysterically that you aren’t going to have a wedding because some idiot had the bright idea to make winter one of the four seasons. These are the memories that make me appreciate living in this desert, even though you can’t even go to the movies without first walking through a casino full of secondhand smoke. I just think to myself: at least there isn’t a blizzard going on outside. (Also I like to comfort myself with the reminder that I will never, ever have to repeat my wedding day ever again. Ever. There will only be one wedding for me. The first one almost sent me completely off the deep end.)

By the way, we filed our tax return on Thursday afternoon. Contemplating using our refund to buy a proper-sized couch and finally let our battered hand-me-down loveseat go to its final resting place.

01/12/12

{Project 365.12} I Have No Idea Where My Day Went

I’m pretty sure I totally lost track of time today. I woke up at 9am, walked the dog, did some dishes, and baked a cinnamon streusel coffee cake (yum) before sitting down and playing Sims 3 for a while… manipulating the lives of others always gives me a deep sense of enjoyment. LOL. Read a book for while, spent some time rejoicing over the ahhhhmazing $20 promo coupon that Shutterfly e-mailed me, and then before I knew it David had sent a text message that he was driving home from work. Since we didn’t have anywhere we had to go today, or any chores to really accomplish, we just spent the evening doing whatever. Now it’s almost midnight and I can’t believe the high degree of “absolutely nothing” that I did today. Wow. But, I do have a really eventful week coming up, so I guess I won’t begrudge myself some overly luxurious I-have-no-obligations time.

I may actually get to send my certification stuff in next week since the last of my transcripts finally arrived in the mail today. I’m pretty sure that’s all I was missing, but I’ll need to send my paperwork in by certified mail and then wait for however long it takes them to process it. I already feel like they’re just going to send a letter saying I need to take the Praxis exams, since I doubt they accept the Texas-specific certification tests I took and already passed. Of course not, that would be too easy! Blahhhh. Oh, wait, now that I’ve been thinking on the subject, I do still need to get fingerprint forms before I can send this in. DAMNIT LOL. I’m not entirely sure how that’s done here, the website just said the blue fingerprint forms are available at local police stations but not if the fingerprinting needs to also be done there. In Texas, I got my fingerprinting done at a participating agency, which happened to be at a chiropractor’s office. Soooo another mystery to solve/hurdle to cross/annoying thing to deal with. I have my fingers crossed that they cover the fingerprinting part at that seminar I’m going to on Tuesday.

David used one of his free days off (his reward for working 2pm-9pm at the simulator’s check-in desk the week leading up to Christmas) for tomorrow so he’ll have a ridiculous 4-day weekend. We’re going to have a Studio Ghibli marathon in our living room~~ And spaghetti for dinner tomorrow. We really aren’t the kind of couple who likes to go out on dates all the time, nor do we have a designated “date night” or anything. We mostly like to be at home, something that a lot of my friends think is hilarious. One of them asked me yesterday why I pretend to be so antisocial when I seem like such an outgoing person, to which I replied that it’s true; I’m outgoing and I don’t mind meeting new people or spending time with friends, but only if I really have to. Mostly I just like to be left alone. Hahahaha. Sort of paradoxical, but whatever. Home is where we’re happiest, and I see nothing wrong with that, honestly.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to the kitchen to have a slice of that cinnamon streusel coffee cake I so graciously baked for us earlier~~

01/7/12

{Project 365.7} I Bore of Being Ill

I slept until 1:00pm today — so shameful! I am sad to announce that the Tylenol I took last night had absolutely no effect on me whatsoever. I stayed up super late reading (and finishing) Entwined by Heather Dixon and then working on a chapter I’ve been stuck on for days now. I only realized what time it was when David poked head through the bedroom door, half asleep, and told me it was 5am. Thus admonished, I went to bed and unsuccessfully tried to fall asleep for about another hour. As you may or may not know, it can be hard to fall asleep if you can’t breathe through your nose and have to keep sneezing/reaching for a Kleenex every 5 minutes. Thus immersed in misery, I sniffled and wheezed until I finally managed to sleep. Woke up with an aching neck and a nose that still refused to function properly. This time I reverted back to Mucinex… so far it has at least helped me breathe better.

I’m sitting in my papasan chair by the windows in our living room, listening to the wind howling outside. You’d seriously think there was a hurricane going on, it’s that loud and alarming. Yet, the sun is shining (beginning to set now, actually, since dark comes astonishingly early here in Nevada) and there’s no sign of a torrential downpour anywhere. It just sounds like it. I have no idea if it’s cold or not, since I haven’t been bothered to check on my phone for the weather, but David did mention on Monday that we were going to have a drop in temperature this weekend. I hate being cold. It’s going to be fun walking the dog this evening T-T

Wow, I am being really boring today. LOL.

Later, we’re planning to watch Inception again since we bought it on sale from Amazon during the holiday season. For some reason, we never bought it before then, even though we both thought the movie was amazing. Of course, we have no idea what to have for dinner since we still haven’t gone grocery shopping and the house is sort of devoid of food. Well, we have snack food… but nothing to really make a meal out of. A common dilemma. I said I was going to cook more this year as part of my (nebulous) New Year’s resolution, but so far I haven’t ventured out to buy ingredients in order to try my hand at anything. I really need to do that. We can’t just continue eating the way we ate in college, halphazardly and without any kind of nutritional value at all. It’s just sort of hard when we’re limited in what we eat by how picky we are, lol. Neither of us is fond of vegetables, we are NOT adventurous eaters, and we tend to order the same things over and over again in restaurants: chicken, chicken fried steak, french fries, mashed potatoes, et al etc. So it’s really a challenge to come up with things to learn how to cook, when essentially it would be the same menu over and over again unless we expanded our horizons a little bit T-T

Change is hard to initiate, that’s for sure. One change I would like is for this bout of illness to pass, because I grow weary of being attached to my box of Kleenex at the hip. I hope I’m right in surmising that I’ll feel more motivated to pursue activities like cooking and making the bed when I’m not feeling like crap. Ugh.

01/2/12

{Project 365.2} I Talk About Books Some More

Today’s photo is of my dog, whining at me to finish washing my face so he can be taken out for his morning walk. He’s definitely clear when it comes to informing us that he wants to take a stroll. Most days it’s like clockwork. I’ll drag my heels a little less when it isn’t cold outside. Of course, I’m always cold, so really I don’t know when that would be. In the middle of the day, halfway through June maybe? We haven’t had a Nevada summer yet, but I hope the season isn’t as intense as it was in Texas. It’s fairly warm here early in the afternoon until maybe 3 or 4, but there’s so little daylight and since we live in the desert, the nights are pretty chilly. It is not a delight to walk Bubba at 11pm when he should be curled up in his little dog bed, sound asleep. Haha.

Definitely didn’t do ANYTHING productive today, which is bad because I had planned to bake some blueberry muffins and watch my Netflix movie at least. (So what if those things are more for pleasure than productivity…lol) It’s the newest remake of Jane Eyre, which I added to the queue when I realized that Michael Fassbender was playing Mr. Rochester. Hello, how could you miss The Young Magneto portraying Mr. Rochester?? Exactly. Duh. You may laugh, or cry, but I only read Jane Eyre in the summer of 2010 while I was staying in San Diego with my parents for three weeks before my college graduation. My mom drove me to the library, knowing what kind of pursuits I prefer whilst on vacation, and I finally convinced myself that I needed to read some Bronte before I died ignorant. I was very leery of this because I tried reading Pride & Prejudice a few years ago and it bored me to tears. I have no idea how people come to love Jane Austen as much as they do, honestly. I just don’t get it. Anyway, Jane Eyre was, thankfully, not boring. I appreciated Jane for her strong character and her intense survival skills. She may not be in a jungle, or on a battlefield, but her life wasn’t a cakewalk. (And can you imagine finding out that the man you were marrying had a secret wife hiding in his mansion who was insane?? I mean COME ON!) Which is why I’m looking forward to finally seeing a Jane Eyre film. This newest incarnation has some pretty good reviews. Also, MICHAEL FASSBENDER/THE YOUNG MAGNETO!

I have to mention that I read a novel told from the point of view of Charlotte Bronte, which gave some insight into the creation of the infamous Jane Eyre herself, but I was more beguiled by the character of her sister Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights) than anything else. Charlotte as narrator of her own life was super boring and alternated between bouts of sulking and whining. She was supposed to have modeled Jane after herself, which she did in a way because the character’s world strongly mirrored that of the author. But I just didn’t see any of Jane’s spark and drive in Charlotte, who seemed mostly pissed off that she and her sisters couldn’t make more money from their books and that her former schoolteacher didn’t love her back.

Random, but today’s Nook Daily Find happened to be The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley, and I’m still super excited that I got it for just $1.99. Since it was supposed to be $9.99, I feel justified in how giddy I was while downloading. LOL. I’ve had this one on my wishlist for a while, so now I own it and I started reading it this evening. I don’t know why I usually answer the “What kind of books do you like?” question with, “Oh, I’ll read just about anything.” Really, I should say that I will plunk down cold hard cash for Historical Fiction in a heartbeat. Closest to my heart, however, is historical fiction about World War II. But The Winter Sea centers around the Jacobite rebellion way way back in like the 1800′s or whatever, which my husband the history major might be able to enlighten me about tomorrow when I bug him over dinner…