Movies, Group Pain, Frozen Hot, No Lunch Meat for YOU
Friday afternoon and all of Monday I was at the tax sale. It wasn’t much fun. They keep the thermostat in the conference room at a ridiculously low 71 degrees so everyone was freezing. I prepared for the cold temps Monday by wearing long sleeves. Well wouldn’t you know it, the AC in the entire building broke mid-morning. The temps in the huge building soared quickly getting up to the mid-80’s. It was miserable. I and everyone else in there was sweating our asses off. I’m glad I am out of there today.
So let me back track to the weekend. I never managed to find a partner to play the tournament on Saturday. I thought about it repeatedly as I was out on the mower instead. It would have been pretty brutal playing conditions, it felt like mid-summer with high temps and high humidity. I wanted to get most of the house chores done so we could go see the Indiana Jones flick.
We got cleaned up and headed out to the movie, once again making the road trip to Coconut Point so we could watch the film in comfort with hopefully not many others around. Once again the place was nearly empty which I didn’t expect but I was happy to see. The biggest negative about the Muvica theater is they submit you to nearly 25 minutes of solid commercials and previews before the film. It really is annoying, especially considering we paid $9.50 a head to see a 4 o’clock showing.
I was a bit nervous about seeing the flick. I love the Indiana Jones series. I had heard the negative grumblings about this film. I didn’t want the last in the series to be the worst. For the first half of the film or so I felt good about it. The film to that point was entertaining without being too ridiculous. Then it just got stupid. For me they could have left Shia LeBouf out of the film, he was just annoying. The action at that point crossed over to the lunacy category. I think the description I heard of “Indiana Jones meets Close Encounters of a Third Kind” is pretty accurate. The script was written by George Lucas. Man talk about a guy living off of past successes. He hasn’t written a good movie in the past two decades.
On the positive side I think Harrison Ford did a good job of reclaiming his role as Indiana Jones even with him being old enough to collect social security. For the most part, he seemed like the same character, just 20 years older. The action and special effects are top notch but that almost comes to be expected nowadays, it’s so commonplace. I’d give the movie a B probably which is a disappointment for sure.
On Sunday morning I went to Group Power with Ali at the gym. I have done the class a few times before. It’s a class where you use light weights while doing very high numbers of repetitions. There also is very minimal rest as you bounce around from body part to body part. The catch is you can make the class significantly easier or harder based on how much weight you use with the exercises. My problem is I don’t do the class regularly enough to know how much weight I should realistically be using. In the past I used the weight other people were using as a judge. I would see what they used and try to do significantly more. Well that was a mistake.
This time I was more conservative in my weight usage. I wasn’t happy seeing some women using more weight than me on certain exercises but I justified it by remembering they are regulars. I’m sure if I did the class two or three times a week I would be using a lot more weight. The girl teaching the class wasn’t what you would imagine an instructor of such a class to be. She was very chubby. You could tell she was working harder than the instructor I had seen before. However she did the entire routine and used more weight than me on several exercises all while barking out the routine, I was impressed. Even though I tried to be conservative with my weights I still managed to fry my legs. Even today they are still so sore that I am postponing doing a 300.
Ali was gone most of the day Sunday. While she was gone I finished up the housework and then sat down and watched another movie that Ali wasn’t interested in watching, The Brave One. I roughly knew the plot of the flick ahead of time, basically Jodie Foster turns vigilante after some punks beat up her and her fiance, in the process killing her fiance as well as abducting her dog. Jodie snaps and goes on a killing spree, killing a bunch of people that all deserved it. It was very well done and had a surprise ending that I didn’t expect. I’d give it an A-.
Late Sunday night I got a call from our neighbor saying he had a family emergency and had to head out. He asked if we could watch Zoe which I agreed to of course. The interaction between Nicki and Zoe is funny. You can tell that after awhile Nicki gets tired of sharing her food, toys and attention with another dog. It was no more apparent than this morning when I was preparing lunch. Part of my normal routine in the morning is when I make my sandwich with lunch meat, I take two or three slices over to Nicki’s plate, tear them up and then she devours it in a few seconds.
Well this morning I was getting the lunch meat out and Zoe was by my side, hoping to score scraps of food. Well Nicki had no interest in Zoe moving in on her lunch meat score. She walked over to Zoe, growled and barked menacingly at her, warning her that lunch meat was OFF LIMITS. I yelled at Nicki to knock it off. I went over to her plate and started putting the lunch meat down. Instead of waiting until I was finished putting it down like she normally does, Nicki instead started scarfing down the meat as I was placing it to prevent any possibility of Zoe getting a single meaty morsel. I had to sneak a couple small pieces to Zoe on the down low.