To Whom It May Concern:

If you call my grandmother’s cell phone and she does not answer, calling back EVERY TWO MINUTES FOR THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES IS NOT GOING TO MAKE HER PICK UP THE PHONE.

I’m this close the saying, to hell with cell phone etiquette, I’m going to answer the phone and say “SHE’S IN THE SHOWER! IT TAKES HER AWHILE! BE PATIENT! WAIT!”

Ahem.

Unfortunately, that wouldn’t t do any good, so I’ll just come down here to the basement where I can’t here the phone ring.

See? There’s a solution for every problem.

While doing laundry, I realized that I had “We Three Kings” running through my head. Only not the whole song, just the dark verse that you probably only know if you were raised Catholic.

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes of life of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb

As I type I am installing MS Vista onto my work laptop (the one that’s been a PITA since day one.)

I’ve become comfortable enough with Office 2007 to say that as different as it is it’s not the horrific nightmare I was expecting.

We’ll see how Vista goes.

ADDENDUM the First
Not impressed so far. Couldn’t figure out how to access the network. We’ll see how things look on Monday when I’m not thinking so much about going home.

That’s IT. That’s ENOUGH already. Really.

No more bad news. I mean it.

Otherwise I’m going to just hide in my basement and stop talking to people.

It’s almost 8:30 and it’s 0 degrees F. We’re waiting for my Dad to come by to jump start our car, so we can go buy a new battery.

Yup.

It’s Monday.

When The Departed first came out, Michael and I were in the middle of getting the house ready for my grandmother to move in, so we didn’t make it to see any movies for about three months, so I was pleased to see that because of the Oscars, the local theaters brought back The Departed (despite the fact it comes out on DVD in little more than a week.)

Yay for that, because I loved The Departed.

I went in expecting to dislike Leonardo diCaprio. I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t been impressed with him since What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (Mind you, because of that I also tend to avoid movies he is in.) I also went in expecting to like Matt Damon, who I’ve loved since Dogma.

I ended up surprised, in that I was really impressed with Leonardo di Caprio. I thought he did a fantastic job, and I ended up really enjoying his character.

I was also thoroughly unimpressed with Jack Nicholson. He didn’t seem Irish. He didn’t seem South Boston. He instead seemed transplanted in from elsewhere, while everyone else seemed like they belonged where they were. Maybe I’m missing something, and maybe I’ve been watching all the wrong movies, but I just don’t understand why everyone likes Jack Nicholson so much. He always seems like the same person to me in the movies I’ve seen.

And also–yay for Mark Wahlberg! Once I got past the fact that every other word out of his mouth was “fuck” I really liked his character.

So thanks to the theaters for bringing back The Departed so we could see it in the theaters. Now I have to figure out all the other movies I missed in the fall and want to see…

They finally have a release date for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I’m torn as to whether I want to pre-order it or not. I didn’t last time, but ended up buying a copy the first day it went on sale (but not at a midnight sale thank you) and reading the whole thing in almost one sitting.

If I pre-order it from Amazon, at least I won’t have to leave the house to pick up my copy. But the release date is Saturday, so maybe I should just pre-order it from a local bookstore.

Or maybe I’ll forget to pre-order it, and pick it up the first day it comes out like I did with the last book.

Of course the best part about all of this is seeing people all excited about the release date of a book.

Guess with Pantheon of Gods I should be worshiping…
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Just for the heck of it, I went to Amazon to see if they had a release date for the second season of The Wild Wild West.

They DO!

I’ve pre-ordered!

Now I have something to look forward to in March–Jim West and Artemus Gordon. In COLOR!

I hope I liked it in color. We had a black and white TV when I was watching reruns of The Wild Wild West, so I don’t think I’ve ever seen an episode in color.

These are some of the wireless networks available from my living room.
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More bits and pieces.

Yesterday my Great Aunt–my grandmother’s sister–went into the hospital. They’re still not sure what happened, but she should be stepped down to a regular room tomorrow.

Michael’s grandmother is still in the skilled care facility, and her kidney function is still poor.

On a positive note, we just started watching season 6 of Deep Space Nine. My all time favorite.

Everyone needs something to look forward to.

Helped our friend Kim rewire her basement on Saturday. She needed a new outlet for a chest freezer, so it made sense since we were already adding a new breaker and outlet, to go ahead and have more outlets (you can never have too many electrical outlets) and fix some of her lights, so they were all on a switch.

I was startled to discover just how much I’ve finally learned about wiring and electricity and other household maintenance. Michael installed the breaker, cut a length of wire to the junction box and then on for the new outlet, and then said, “Michelle, go ahead and wire up this outlet for me,” and without a second thought I did it.

Then I ran the wire for the second outlet and wired up the second outlet, explaining to Kim everything I was doing, and then helped Kim wire up the third.

Then I realized that I’d managed to do it all without having to ask Michael anything.

I felt so… useful!

As an added bonus, Kim (who does not particularly like Science Fiction) did not kill us, when Michael, Mike, and I (yes, that does get a bit confusing) kept saying, “Aziz! Light!” anytime a flashlight was needed.

But I do think she was starting to consider it.

Michael and I went to see Curse of the Golden Flower last night. (Why we got that and not Fearless [despite the fact they had a huge poster up for Fearless] is beyond my comprehension.)

It wasn’t bad. But it was even more depressing than The House of Flying Daggers. So it wasn’t precisely what I was in the mood for.

However, the thing that really surprised me was the costuming. The costumes were incredibly lavish. Beyond anything I could have imagined.

And that was really the problem. I simply couldn’t imagine these costumes as fitting into the proposed time period.

Now if I’m wrong, I’d love to be corrected–I’m fascinated by history, and love to learn little historical details–but the dresses seemed almost Elizabethan to me, what with the smooshed breast look.

Which I found quite distracting, since every time I saw someone trying to do something– anything– in one of those dresses, all I could think was, “Ow! Ow! Ow!” and “How is she not falling out of that?!”

Nor was I sure about the armor. Could someone really fight–and fight well–in that armour? If it was metal–and it certainly looked like metal–wouldn’t have it been too heavy for them to move easily?

The other thing that surprised me was that there was very little marshal arts in this movie. There were huge, giant, monster, gory battle scenes. But very little of the gorgeous hand-to-hand fight scenes that I was expecting. So instead of skill and technique, that I like and find fascinating to watch, I got gore and blood and lots of hacking and slashing.

Which I don’t like.

Additionally, some of the scenes were pretty obviously CGI. Which isn’t bad in and of itself, except that whenever I see CGI battle scenes, I always think, “Look! Orcs! They’re too dumb to run away from the battle!” Which was also distracting.

So, it was interesting, but it was no where near is good as House of Flying Daggers or Hero. Mostly because my disbelief kept being unsuspended.

Grandmom and I just got back from visiting Andy’s parents, where I got to finally meet Natalie!

Cute! Cute! Cute!

Hard to imagine that Andy of all people has such a cute baby!

Unfortunately, I left the camera in the car, so no pictures. Sorry.

But seriously.

Cute! Cute! Cute!