Category Movie Reviews

So I decided late Thursday afternoon that I was going to take Friday off.  I figured with my having the dogs it would be a good thing, plus it would allow me to get a big jump on what needed to get done this weekend.

It was funny how quickly the dogs jumped right back into their routines.  The new furniture didn’t bother Sadie at all, she was quite happy to nap on it just the same.  Of course Nicki, the sensitive one, was more mindful of the different surroundings.  She has not gotten up on the new furniture as of yet.

On Friday I got started on work around the house bright and early, heading outside to weed and attend to other items outdoors.  The weeds were bad since I skipped the process last week.  I also harvested a number of items out of the garden including the last rutabaga, some nice heads of broccoli, 3 good sized carrots, leeks and onions.

Once I was done with the outside work I grabbed the girls and we headed over to Ali’s place.  I had a number of to do’s over there.  I first set up her new TV.  Wow, what an improvement over the temporary 15 inch TV she was using.

Before she left town Ali had bought a cherry shelf unit and a rolling laundry cart, both requiring assembly.  Although Ali could have probably muddled through the assembly process I thought I would save her the hassle.  The shelf unit was the far more challenging of the two projects.

I then grabbed the mountain of flattened boxes she had at the top of her steps and lugged them out to the party van to transport to the one of the community recycling dumpsters.

After I was finished I decided top stop at the Super Target right up the street.  I figured I could kill a couple birds with one stone.  I needed cutting boards for the new dog food stands I was planning to build, a new hammer (gave old one to Ali), and groceries.

I was pumped that not only did I find cutting boards of the correct size, 14″ x 17″, but they were also black, a nice fit since the new stands would be black as well.  Grocery shopping at Super Target was ok but not a great experience.  I didn’t know the layout of the store so finding things took longer than if I was at my normal Publix.  I also found that the selection of items was somewhat lacking in comparison to Publix.

I was able to find the Bud Light Platinum, one of the important items on my list.  Even with buying two cutting boards and a new hammer, my bill with the groceries came out to $100.  Yes my new food budget is pretty minimal.

Friday afternoon I decided to start work on the new dog food stands.  I actually only bought enough black shelving to make one stand at first.  I wanted to make sure it turned out ok before I bought more shelving.

As in most of my construction projects I sort of winged it although I have made two other dog stands in the past so I had a basic game plan in my head.  I pulled my rarely used table miter saw out of the shed for the work.

The biggest issue I had was the shelving was a foot wide so I was unable to cut through it in one swipe.  After making the first cut I had to spin the board around and then get down at eye level and line up the blade with the existing cut.  It worked surprisingly well.

Here is the first table after it was done.  I actually went a step further, later removing the 2″ green decking screws, (all I had), and replaced them with black drywall screws.  I knew the green screws would be like a little pin prick for Ali since she loves when things match.

Friday evening I called my mom and told her I wanted to drop off some of my garden harvest for her.  It also would give her a chance to see the dogs.  Of course the girls were very excited to see grandma as always.

My trip was two fold, I also wanted to stop at the Home Depot in Bonita to pick up more black shelving for the second food stand.  I was quite annoyed when I found that this location does not stock the black variety, only white and natural wood grain.

Saturday morning I decided to pull myself out of bed at 4:30 to head to the club group run.  I hadn’t really thought about it beforehand, but I think I have not done any significant distance running since the Hooters Half Marathon.  There has been a lot going on in my life since then that has precluded running.

I went into the run thinking I would just do the shorter 7 mile run at a pretty casual pace.  Well I wound up running most of the distance with Matt who makes me pick up the pace just because I know how fast he can run.  I wound up covering the 7 miles at about the same pace as my PR half marathon.  It felt pretty tough.

After the run I swung into the near by Home Depot where I got my original black shelving to grab some more for dog food stand number two.

When I got home I attended to the indoor chores that were yet to be done which didn’t take all that long to do.

Later I built the second stand.  Of course it went much faster than the first attempt and I didn’t have to do any guesswork on the sizes of the individual pieces, I just used table number one as my template.

Saturday night I decided to take myself to the movies.  I wanted to go see Hunger Games.  I went to go see the film at the pricier but closer Silverspot Movie Theater.  When I figured out the cost in gas of driving up to Coconut Pointe to see the movie I realized I actually come out a few dollars ahead seeing it locally.

Some people may think it is odd to go to the movies yourself, I guess it is in a way.  A movie is one of those things that is better as a shared experience I suppose, however it isn’t the first time I went to see a flick with me, myself and I.  I am sure it won’t be the last.

Anyway, I had never even heard of The Hunger Games prior to the movie being released.  I had no idea it was a successful book.  However after hearing the premise and the positive reviews I thought it was worth seeing in the theater.

I thought the movie was quite good.  The concept of the poor enduring bloodshed to entertain the rich is one that is actually quite firmly based in human history.  It’s part of the twisted make up of the human psyche.

The film was very well done and I enjoyed it from beginning to end.  It gets a solid A in my book.  Speaking of books, it almost makes me want to go out and read the book version of the film which I hear is better than the movie.

Sunday morning it was nice and crisp out, I figured that was the best time to take the dogs for a walk at the swamp.  We were pulling into the parking lot a few minutes after 8.  I was kind of surprised there were 5 other vehicles in the parking lot already.

I was really surprised when I saw how low the water levels were in the swamp.  Most areas that in January were 4-5  feet deep with water are now bone dry.  As a result we didn’t see any gators until the very end of the walk when we spotted two big adults and one baby.

During the walk my phone rang, I thought it might be Ali.  Instead it was a guy that does race timing, he just started doing it a couple months ago.  He uses the same Ipico equipment I use for the club.  He was timing a race and was having a problem getting the finish times to publish.  I did the best I could trying to help him in the middle of a swamp.  I told him if I was in front of my PC I could give him more direction.  I gave him a few things to try but was not able to correct it over the phone.

The dogs and I enjoyed our walk in the swamp as we always do.  Afterward instead of heading home we went back to Ali’s place for the second time.  I had more things to set up.  Ali had me order an external hard drive for her to use to back up her pc.  She has seen first hand over the years what happens without a good back up.

I hooked up the drive and configured her pc to be backed up weekly.  I then started a full back up.  While that was running I headed out to the living room.  When I set up Ali’s tv on Friday I noticed that all of her shows she set up to tape on the DVR recorded in crappy SD resolution.  I went into the DVR with the intention of switching the shows to record on the HD channels which are up in the 400’s.

Wow the Comcast DVR interface isn’t even close to Tivo in terms of usability.  It is a huge pain trying to figure out how to do things that are dirt simple in Tivo.  After much futzing around I finally figured out how to make the change so Ali’s future recordings will be in crystal clear HD.

The rest of my Sunday was pretty relaxed, I had all of the house chores done.

Late in the afternoon I popped in “In Time”, a Netflix rental that has been sitting in it’s envelope for a few weeks.

The movie premise is one that is quite interesting to me.  The setting is one in the future where human beings have undergone some bizarre rewiring where once you hit the age of 25 you no longer age.  Wow, the fountain of youth, how fantastic would that be?  Well there is one catch.

At 25 a built in clock on your forearm starts counting down.  You only have one year of time to live.

Now it isn’t as bad as it may seem as there is no longer any cash in this future, time is the currency.  So at your job you are paid in time, adding to that clock on your forearm.  You also pay for everything in time.  A bus fare might cost two days, a new car, a few months.

Anyway I found myself very interested as the movie ramped up but by the end I was sort of done with it.  The movie was too long and it just got so silly at points.

They also bludgeon you to death with the, rich people are mostly evil, angle which got to be a little tiresome even for me, someone that mostly subscribes to that theory.

Anyway it was a fine rental but I wouldn’t have felt like I spent my “time” wisely if I footed the bill to see it in a theater.  B+

Tonight I am picking up Ali at the airport very late.  I will be lucky to get home before 11:30.

So Saturday morning Ali and I decided to cut ourselves some slack and instead of getting up at 4:30 AM to do the GCR club run we instead decided to just run by ourselves a bit later.  Before running we stopped by mom’s place.  We had a bunch of items from our garden to give her and I also needed to pick up her tax information as well as her artificial Xmas tree that we store in our smaller shed.

We decided to run around the water park, doing the big 10k outer loop.  About an 1/8th of a mile into the run I suddenly found myself crashing down on to the sidewalk.  I somehow managed to get the toe of one foot stuck in the shoelace loop of the other, tripping myself.  I was stunned for a second and Ali was worried I hurt myself seriously, I went down pretty hard.

A quick physical inventory turned up some brush burns on the side of right knee and some banged up palms but other than that I felt ok.  I got back up and told Ali I was good to go.

Ali kept up with me for the entire run although she was really struggling during the second half.  The worst part of the run just happened to be the last part of it when we turned onto Livingston Road and got smacked in the face with a wind tunnel that lasted all the way back to the park entrance.

There were a few points where I thought Ali was going to stop.  I can normally tell when this will occur based on her breathing which gets uncontrolled and heavy.  To her credit she pushed through those spots although she later admitted to me that she did want to stop multiple times. One advantage of Ali running with me is I can push her to run harder than she would run on her own.  She has been making some strides in her pace lately, running her first sub 8 (7:59) speed mile ever at track practice earlier in the week.

When we completed the 6 miles Ali was spent.  I took a Goo and a drink of water and ran the 2 mile loop inside the park myself, I wanted to make sure I at least upped my mileage from the 7 miles we did last Saturday.  Despite already running 6 miles I trekked the last two at a decent clip right at or under a 9 minute mile pace.

By the time we got home it was close to lunch time.  After eating lunch Ali retreated to the bedroom for a nap. I attended to the remaining house chore items before sitting down to do mom’s taxes on the TurboTax web site.  I have used the TurboTax online version for several years to do mom’s taxes and have had no complaints.

Mom was concerned about her taxes for 2011, figuring she would have to pay into the system since she had to pay taxes on her SS benefits.  When she was collecting unemployment she at least had the taxes taken out up front.  With mom’s current income stream the last thing she needed was a big tax bill.

Well by the time I was done I had good news.  Instead of paying in, mom instead was getting a refund, a sizable refund, probably the biggest amount she ever got back.  Mom of course was very happy to hear the news and was very surprised.  I told her it was because of her low income level, sort of a bitter sweet situation.  Yea it is nice to have a super low tax rate but it would obviously be better to pay more taxes if you had more of an income stream coming in.  Anyway, the extra cash will certainly be a good thing.

Saturday night Ali and I decided to go out for our official Valentine’s Day dinner.  I suggested to Ali we do it Saturday and then on the actual holiday I would treat Ali to pizza since that is her favorite meal of all.

We decided to go somewhere that we knew would be a madhouse in season on a Saturday night, the Naples Carrabbas.  We thought we would be “smart” and get there relatively early at 5:30.  That put us at the beginning of happy hour so we have plenty of time to take advantage of 2 for 1 drink pricing and also hopefully put us ahead of the Saturday night dinner crowd curve. Well one of the two things worked out.

5:30 may be early for traditional dinner goers but it is right in old person prime time.  I was a bit shocked when after I parked the SSR Ali reported a 60 minute estimated wait time. Oh well typically they will overestimate the wait so they can deliver an actual wait time that is less so I figured we would have a seat in 40 minutes or so.

Ali got the happy hour kick started by getting my 2-1 Bud Light taps and her double serving of white zinfandel.  The area around the bar was quite crowded so I suggested to Ali that we head outside to sit on a bench, which we did, briefly.  The cold front had already started rolling in and it was too cold for Ali’s tastes outside, we decided that being warm but crowded was a better alternative.

Well we found a small section of floor that was out of the main flow of bodies.  We entertained ourselves by people watching, primarily old people watching.  I would estimate that 75% of the patrons were 65 years or older.  Seeing what potentially waits down the pipeline for me is pretty depressing although I told Ali I certainly hope to expire well before things would progress too far.  I just have no desire to simply exist where the highlight of my day is a meal.

The four beers I downed did a good job of making the wait tolerable, even as it extended past what we were originally told.   We wound up standing around for 70 minutes until our buzzer lit up. Eventually we got seated and were greeted by our polite but rather generic waiter.  One thing that we typically enjoy at the Naples Carrabas are servers that make an effort to engage the customers in a very friendly way.  Well this guy was not up to snuff in that regard.

Our meal itself was good as normal.  Since it was “Valentine’s Day” I didn’t even make a fuss about getting desert after a caloric bulging pasta and bread filled meal.  Ali I shared  some chocolate desert that went well with my coffee.

Saturday night I started watching season 4 of Breaking Bad.  Randall had given me the season on a set of DVD-R’s.  Well the 360 can be weird when it comes to playing content on DVD-R’s.  Although I watched Dexter on burned DVD-R’s as well, for some reason the BB discs absolutely would not play.

Well after futzing around unsuccessfully with it for a bit I punched “breaking bad” into the 360 Bing search to see what my online options were.  I saw I could get episodes on Vudu, a service I never used before.  If I signed up for the service I got a $5 credit which was enough for me to “buy” the first two episodes.

Well of course I had no intentions of buying all of the episodes. I later figured out a work around.  I throw the dvd into my computer and create a 4 episode AVI file that I can stream to the 360.  I tested it out last night and it works well.  It goes without saying that so far the current season of Breaking Bad is outstanding.

When I woke up Sunday morning I felt crappy.  Basically the lower half of my body just felt shitty.  The spot where I fell not only had painful brush burns but also some bruising as well.  Me left knee didn’t feel fantastic either.  I was walking around like a stiff 80 year old for a good portion of the morning.

Sunday was very low key for the most part.  I was feeling unmotivated plus it was damn cold outside, in the 40’s for a good portion of the day.  I did have one suggestion, to take the dogs out to the swamp for a walk, since the cold temperatures would help prevent them from getting overheated. We headed to the swamp after lunch.

As expected, the dogs definitely had more endurance walking in the cold air, we wound up going the furthest into the swamp on foot than we ever had.  I sort of expected to see a lot of gators out trying to warm up in the sunshine.  I was surprised that we saw no adult gators at all, only 3 baby gators up on a log.

We did have a swamp first as we were on the way back.  A decent sized animal, a little smaller than Nicki, darted out on the path in front of us.  It paused for a few seconds before the barking of the dogs scared it away, it was a bobcat.  Ali and I knew that bobcats were a pretty common Florida predator but they are typically nocturnal.  This was the first time we ever saw a bobcat in the wild.

After the dogs settled down we continued walking until we ran into two women walking into the swamp that Ali happened to know.  We were surprised that after we told them of the bobcat sighting, pointing back to where we saw it, the bobcat had reappeared, standing in the middle of the path, interested in something. It was a cool way to wind up the hike.

Sunday evening I watched the Planet of the Apes movie, the new one of course.  Ali started watching the movie with me but soon bailed.  The theme of the chimps getting abused was not something that she was interested in watching. Of course the abuse lays the groundwork for some payback later on.

I liked the movie overall although there were some loose ends that were sort of left dangling in the wind.  I couldn’t help but think about that woman that had her face ripped off by a chimp repeatedly through out the film.  I’d give the flick a B+, worth a rental.

I have outlined once or twice the annoying problem I have with toenail fungus.  It has been an issue for a long, long time, probably pushing 10 years at this point.  Thankfully it has been isolated to only 3 of my 10 toes.

Well over the years I have been trying various things to clear it up.  I have applied various creams to the affected toes before bed and then covered it with a sock.  I have soaked the feet in warm water and epsom salts.  I have cut the nail super short and tried to file the affected area.  None of it has really worked.

Now I think part of it is a lack of patience and consistency on my part.  It takes a long time to treat this sort of thing and an even longer time for the affected nail to grow out.  I think I have not been diligent enough.

Well anyway I recently did a search for home remedies for the problem and hit on this page.  Two of the suggestions I had not heard before, using vinegar and/or WD-40.

WD-40 is truly a magical substance.  I have heard it suggested for all sorts of applications outside of it’s intended automotive lubricant designation.  Anyway I read multiple reports of people treating their fungus successfully by simply applying WD-40 to the affected area twice a day, simple enough.  Hey I have nothing to lose.

On a related foot subject, when I was at Sam’s Club Friday I got the inspiration buy some new socks.  My sock drawer has been filled with mostly older socks that are the varying shades of off white / gray that socks go through during their lifespan.

Well I saw packs of BLACK socks and was inspired.  Black socks make so much sense. If black socks get dirty  they still look black, what a brilliant invention.  I had two choices, Burlington socks and New Balance branded socks.  Seeing the Burlington socks were made in the USA and the NB socks were made in Mexico made the decision a no brainer.  I threw out any even slightly questionable old white socks I had in my drawer and added my 11 pair of fresh black socks to the mix.

Next week my dad, step mom, my brother, his girlfriend and the two dogs will be arriving for an extended visit.  I am taking all of next week off as a result.  I am hoping to get all of the SSR radio upgrade stuff ordered so I can use some of that time to do the installation.  Dad is always looking for a project to help me with when he visits anyway.

Oh yea, I forgot to mention Whitney Houston died.  As you can tell I am really broken up about it.  I have little sympathy for someone with so much talent that threw it away and basically turned into a crack whore.  I have a very Amy Winehouse’esque attitude about it.  If you are going to keep playing Russian roulette with your life, don’t be surprised when you finally hit the chamber with a bullet in it. See ya later Whitney.