Wow, did that weekend fly by or what? Seems like it was only yesterday that we were all worrying about having enough time to wrap all the presents and making sure we had presents for everyone. Now the presents are unwrapped; paper and boxes overflowing the trash cans. One holiday is over and another is right around the corner (unless you're Jewish or follow that Kwanzaa stuff).
So let's set the way-back machine and go over all the stuff I haven't been blogging about for the past 5 days. Yes, I took a break for the holidays, sue me :-)
Friday was the first day of CC's vacation so that's as good a place as any to start with. We did our food shopping early because I KNEW that the stores were going to be packed and I was right. From the size of the crowd I would say that CC wasn't the only one who had the day off :-)
My parents came by earlier to drop off their presents to us. We didn't open them until Christmas morning of course, but they wanted us to have them so we wouldn't have to wait until the afternoon on Christmas to open everything.
Friday was also my sister's birthday so we all got together at 6 for Chinese food. After dinner we came home and that was about it really. Nothing worth blogging about anyway.
Saturday was a little more eventful. We went to see Memoirs of a Geisha at 1 (just barely made it in time in fact. We sat down right as the opening credits were rolling). At 3 or 3:30 we went to a little Japanese place across the street from the theater. They have great food and we'd sort of planned on wanting Japanese food after the movie.
I don't know why the critics are being so hard on the film. Honestly, I thought it was great! Of course, having read the book I knew what to expect. Memoirs of a Geisha isn't what you'd call the definitive work on being a geisha. Hell it isn't even all true. I guess the easiest way to put it would be to compare it to another movie. Take any of your Vietnam movies. The things those soldiers encounter in your average Vietnam movie are NOT representative of the usual experience of soldiers from that war. Hell if they made it all accurate we'd be too bored. Writers string stories together, a little bit from what happened to this guy thrown in with what happened to this other guy. In the end you get a pretty interesting fiction but not a very accurate history (insert John Kerry-Vietnam joke here).
What the movie does do is put on one hell of a great visual show. You've got a group of really talented, really cool actors all wearing really great clothes and there's even a bit of a plot. Can't go wrong with that right? :-)
Yes, the story is a bit on the soap opera side of the romance scale but so what? What's wrong with having a happy ending? What's wrong with the bad guy characters being bad? Not everything in life is a shade of gray you know. Sometimes it's nice not to have a conflicted bad guy or a good guy with bad qualities.
I enjoyed it a lot. CC enjoyed it too. Everyone I know who's seen the movie has enjoyed it. Ignore the critics. They're all just trying to show their great outrage over Chinese actresses playing Japanese characters. What a load of rubbish. Michelle Yeoh had a great line about that. She asked why no one ever makes much of a fuss when an Irish actor plays English (as in Bond, James Bond) or when Irish play Scottish or the other way around. There's a lot of bad blood there too right? So why no fuss? You've got to admit, she's got a point.
We came home after eating and really didn't do much else worth note. It was Christmas Eve of course so naturally we were excited about that.
Sunday . . . where to begin? CC did a great job going over most of it. Yes, it's true, I was up at 5:30 on Sunday. Surprised myself in fact. I had planned on sleeping in until at least dawn but what the hell, it's Christmas right?
Great presents this year. CC won't say what they were but there's nothing really stopping me :-) I got some DVD sets from my family plus a set of what you'd call old-fashioned games. For those of you young'uns that means games that don't plug into anything. Games where you throw dice and move pieces around a board. Games that I can list my win-loss record for on the side bar :-)
Got a great sweater! I look COOL in that thing. Nice and comfy too, which is a nice change in a sweater :-) Usually the sweaters that look the best on me are bulky or itchy or something. Anything but comfortable.
CC got me comics! Not just ANY comics mind you, but some that I've been looking for. No, I'm not one of those weird comic geeks that runs around calling them GRAPHIC NOVELS and wearing black and smelling funny. There are some really great books out there now, mostly from Marvel. You've got the reprints of the old comics, which is wonderful. They come in softcover books about an inch thick or so and they usually have an entire year's worth of issues. My favorites are The Avengers, Captain America, Iron Man, The X-Men and, at the top of the list, or at least in a tie with the X-Men are the Fantastic Four. Oh I love reading those old FF comics.
Anway, I had volumes 1 and 3 but not 2. 2, for some reason, is hard to find in stores. CC tracked it down through Amazon and got me a copy. She also got a copy of the new version of The Inhumans. The Fantastic Four run into them in one of the early issues. Johnny Storm developes a crush on Crystal and follows her and through a series of unfortunate events, the FF end up finding the Inhumans which means that the Inhumans now have to move. Yes, I know, it's corny, soap opera stuff but I still love it :-)
We also have some new appliances in the house. CC got her fancy, pod coffee maker. That thing makes coffee QUICK. I really don't know how the thing works but just making a guess, I'd say it has something to do with heating the water up under pressure. One of them physics things I vaguely remember from high school says something about water heating up faster under pressure. Doesn't really matter. What does matter is that she really loves it and uses it and it makes good coffee (for her of course. I can't stand coffee myself and stick with tea).
And we have a grill now. We've been wanting to grill. In the summer all you have to do to smell burning meat is step outside. Grilling is big in these parts but the city has a law against grilling on the balcony of an apartment. Makes sense. That's how a LOT of fires start. Next best thing is an electric grill, which we got for Christmas :-)
And the dishes. Ah, how glorious. When we moved in we had one set of dishes. That's service for four people. We got another set, same pattern, so now it's service for 8. More importantly, it means we don't have to run the dishwasher quite so often because we've run out of bowls or plates or something. You've got to love THAT :-)
CC is a bit of a Beatles fan. She also plays the keyboard for fun. When we got the keyboard (it's written up in a previous post somewhere) she got a HUGE book of songs. She loves that book but what she really loves to do is play Beatles songs. So, I got her a book of JUST Beatles songs. It has all the popular ones, all the favorites, it even has all the songs that left you scratching your head asking, "What?" She's been playing keyboard quite a bit this weekend. Two hours or more on Sunday and another 2 hours or more this morning. She's one happy bunny :-)
It was a slow day today (Monday). Part of me was still trying to make up for lost sleep. The other part of me was so used to being active that it wasn't sure it was supposed to rest. Plus, tomorrow we all have to go back to what we were doing before the holidays, at least for a few more days. That means back to work or looking for work or avoiding work, whichever you were doing before. It's sort of like the last day of summer vacation when you're a kid. You're not sure how to spend the time but you know you need to do SOMETHING.
I did know that I was NOT going to take down Christmas decorations. Sorry but for me, the rule is that they stay up until after New Year's. THEN they can come down and be boxed up and so forth. We only get a few weeks of these nice decorations so I really want to enjoy them while I can.
Today we had a domino re-match. I won on Sunday and won again quite handily, thank you :-) I have to be smug and brag about this because let's face it, CC is REALLY whupping my butt at Boggle :-) I also taught her how to play Pachisi. That one came down to one roll, literally. In the end, she had three pieces home, I had three pieces home and we both had our fourth piece sitting two spaces from home. It came down to who rolled a 2 first and that was me :-)
After that, we watched a little TV, had lunch, then we took a nice long walk along the Wolf River which is across the street from the apartment complex. There's a long nature trail down there that is very scenic. It probably looks even nicer in the spring when the trees have leaves on them but it was still pretty scenic for winter.
Came home and that was about it for the day. CC went to take a nap at around 4:30 or so. It's now almost 8 and she's still asleep. Quite honestly, I think she's down for the night. Maybe she'll wake up for a snack later but she won't stay up for long. She's probably worn out from the weekend, poor thing. She needed it though. For four whole days she did almost NO office work. That always feels good :-)
So there you have it, our Christmas. Don't expect a big blog entry like this for New Year's though. I've never really done much for New Year's and neither has CC. Maybe if my parent's have everyone over we'll go there but otherwise, it's looking like we'll spend it here. I'll keep you posted of course. :-)
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One gift I got that wasn't on any of my lists is the latest book by Lynne Truss. For those who don't know, or don't recognize her name, she wrote a REALLY funny book about proper grammer usage called Eats, Shoots and Leaves. It's all about REALLY bad punctuation errors, tense errors, that sort of thing. Some people call it being overly-picky with language but hey, the rules are there for a reason.
Her new book is called Talk to the Hand. The sub-title says it all: The utter bloody rudeness of the world today, or six good reasons to stay home and bolt the door.
I've only read the introductory chapter but I already know this is going to be a favorite of mine. It came out a few months ago so it's certainly available wherever you are. If you're in a book store, try and find it and have a look. You might enjoy it :-)
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