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First, the matter of Friday's. I ended up doing nothing, and received in the mail $32 worth of coupons. Very nice. This is why I complain (with reason): most of the time you just get a letter of apology and meaningless ass-kissing. But sometimes you get a company that puts its money where its mouth is.
~*~
Neighbor troubles again, and this time I don't mean Tracey. The woman for whom I house-sat last year, the crazy one with five cats and highly dubious health standards in her home? She now has a sixth cat, a shy little girl, midnight black. That isn't the problem. The problem is she for god knows what reason is setting her sights on a puppy.
Her place is about the same size as ours. This is too many animals for a place that small. Who am I to point fingers? Well, the two ferrets in size and activity level equal just about one young cat. And one of our cats has three feet in the grave and essentially sleeps all day and night. Which just leaves the very manageable Kitten and the bird, who hangs out on the top of her cage. Six cats and a puppy is CRAZY TALK.
Again, really none of my business. Except she's a teacher with only about two weeks of vacation left to train this animal. And she asked me, because I work from home, if I would mind stopping in once a day to walk the puppy and play with it for 15 minutes. Of course I mind -- between working the hospital on the weekends and Tracey's fucking beasts, frankly I wouldn't mind never seeing another dog again as long as I live (except Babyface the greyhound. And Navi the I don't know what she is. And of course Beowulf).
But I didn't say that to her. I answered with a cheerful "Sure, no problem!" but I could feel my face telling a different story. Hopefully she read that story, or saw something shiny that took her mind off it, because it's been over a week and I haven't heard any more about it. It's enough to leave me in dread every time the doorbell rings though.
~*~
I finally saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Don't ever again say that I lack patience. Actually I was determined to see it in IMAX 3D, before realizing that meant waiting until July 29th. I can be patient, but I'm not SUPERHUMAN.
Especially considering how everyone in my HP circle was virtually fainting dead away at how Snape-centric the movie was. This surprised me -- I mean, Snape IS the Half-Blood Prince (see inside for my view on spoilers for this film), but I fully expected Warner Bros to gloss over this fact entirely in their ongoing campaign to ignore Rickman as long as possible.
So I compromised between going opening day and waiting until the 29th, and went Monday morning. Not a clever enough plan, it turns out, to avoid every asshole, but it could have been worse.
( ::What I thought:: )
The ending was a good setup to the final two films. It reminded me strongly of the end of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, sort of a "This was all well and good but we really need to start thinking about the next movie."
Despite going to a 10:30 a.m. showing (which still, with the help of 20 bloody minutes of trailers, consumed most of the day), I couldn't escape the assholes.
15 people in the theater, and a woman and her 20-something daughter (?) sat two seats away from me. Which wasn't a problem until we had barely arrived at Hogwarts and she flipped her phone open. She was trying to be discreet about it, shielding it in her purse, but that wasn't doing much to protect me from it.
I gamely gave her the few beats needed to check the time (but again, the movie had barely begun. If your schedule is this tight, what are you doing in a movie theater??) When she appeared to start scrolling through menus, etc. (just like the asshole in X-Men: Wolverine) I asked nicely, "Could you please not do that?" When she ignored me, I said louder, "You're being really rude."
At this her companion popped up on the other side of her and began whispering something angrily at me. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I really wonder what argument she came up with that she thought would make me say, "Sorry, my bad, don't let the movie interrupt you checking your Facebook." I put up with the mouth breathing. I put up with the constant pawing at your popcorn. Please, lady, give me just one tiny fucking break.
I'm getting to the point where I can see a future of avoiding movie theaters entirely. The stress of expectantly waiting for my fellow audience to become bored and restless is starting to outweigh any actual enjoyment of the movie. It makes me a little sad, because everyone should know by now that movies are my biggest joy in life. But the only solution that I can think of is to confiscate all phones at the door, and I don't see THAT going over well with everyone else.
Not that renting a movie at home is any guarantee of pleasure. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ( ::Lost Boys: The Tribe:: )
Not as terrible as you'd expect. Not as good as you'd hope. Probably better than the Lost Boys 3 that's threatened on IMDb.
~*~
Neighbor troubles again, and this time I don't mean Tracey. The woman for whom I house-sat last year, the crazy one with five cats and highly dubious health standards in her home? She now has a sixth cat, a shy little girl, midnight black. That isn't the problem. The problem is she for god knows what reason is setting her sights on a puppy.
Her place is about the same size as ours. This is too many animals for a place that small. Who am I to point fingers? Well, the two ferrets in size and activity level equal just about one young cat. And one of our cats has three feet in the grave and essentially sleeps all day and night. Which just leaves the very manageable Kitten and the bird, who hangs out on the top of her cage. Six cats and a puppy is CRAZY TALK.
Again, really none of my business. Except she's a teacher with only about two weeks of vacation left to train this animal. And she asked me, because I work from home, if I would mind stopping in once a day to walk the puppy and play with it for 15 minutes. Of course I mind -- between working the hospital on the weekends and Tracey's fucking beasts, frankly I wouldn't mind never seeing another dog again as long as I live (except Babyface the greyhound. And Navi the I don't know what she is. And of course Beowulf).
But I didn't say that to her. I answered with a cheerful "Sure, no problem!" but I could feel my face telling a different story. Hopefully she read that story, or saw something shiny that took her mind off it, because it's been over a week and I haven't heard any more about it. It's enough to leave me in dread every time the doorbell rings though.
~*~
I finally saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Don't ever again say that I lack patience. Actually I was determined to see it in IMAX 3D, before realizing that meant waiting until July 29th. I can be patient, but I'm not SUPERHUMAN.
Especially considering how everyone in my HP circle was virtually fainting dead away at how Snape-centric the movie was. This surprised me -- I mean, Snape IS the Half-Blood Prince (see inside for my view on spoilers for this film), but I fully expected Warner Bros to gloss over this fact entirely in their ongoing campaign to ignore Rickman as long as possible.
So I compromised between going opening day and waiting until the 29th, and went Monday morning. Not a clever enough plan, it turns out, to avoid every asshole, but it could have been worse.
( ::What I thought:: )
The ending was a good setup to the final two films. It reminded me strongly of the end of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, sort of a "This was all well and good but we really need to start thinking about the next movie."
Despite going to a 10:30 a.m. showing (which still, with the help of 20 bloody minutes of trailers, consumed most of the day), I couldn't escape the assholes.
15 people in the theater, and a woman and her 20-something daughter (?) sat two seats away from me. Which wasn't a problem until we had barely arrived at Hogwarts and she flipped her phone open. She was trying to be discreet about it, shielding it in her purse, but that wasn't doing much to protect me from it.
I gamely gave her the few beats needed to check the time (but again, the movie had barely begun. If your schedule is this tight, what are you doing in a movie theater??) When she appeared to start scrolling through menus, etc. (just like the asshole in X-Men: Wolverine) I asked nicely, "Could you please not do that?" When she ignored me, I said louder, "You're being really rude."
At this her companion popped up on the other side of her and began whispering something angrily at me. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I really wonder what argument she came up with that she thought would make me say, "Sorry, my bad, don't let the movie interrupt you checking your Facebook." I put up with the mouth breathing. I put up with the constant pawing at your popcorn. Please, lady, give me just one tiny fucking break.
I'm getting to the point where I can see a future of avoiding movie theaters entirely. The stress of expectantly waiting for my fellow audience to become bored and restless is starting to outweigh any actual enjoyment of the movie. It makes me a little sad, because everyone should know by now that movies are my biggest joy in life. But the only solution that I can think of is to confiscate all phones at the door, and I don't see THAT going over well with everyone else.
Not that renting a movie at home is any guarantee of pleasure. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ( ::Lost Boys: The Tribe:: )
Not as terrible as you'd expect. Not as good as you'd hope. Probably better than the Lost Boys 3 that's threatened on IMDb.
