End of December

Okay, so obligatory blog post here. Christmas has just passed, we’ve all got a new set of junk (thankfully a trimmed budget has left us(me) with things we(I) want.

Kim Jong-il is dead, surprise surprise replaced by his son Kim Jong-un. He won out that succession line when his eldest half-brother Kim Jong-nam was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport to visit Tokyo Disneyland. Is there any life Disney will not ruin? The even further shame is that nam’s son was Kim Han-sol, which is damn close to having a King Han Solo.

Beyond this I don’t think there’s anything newsworthy, or even noteworthy. Hence I’m not noting anything. We’ll see what two-weeks of vacation will produce… except maybe cabin fever – in a house.

What Kelly does to frisbees

Kelly's cute

This cute little girl is apparently being starved, because this is what she does to frisbees:

Kelly's frisbee

And all of the plastic from that frisbee has taken the day-long trip to the ground via Kelly’s innards.

Kelly's frisbee

And then she strikes again!

Review: Immortals

Okay so the review for Breaking Dawn beat out this review, but better late than never, although its usually never.

What was surprising about Immortals was that it actually had a decent story to it, not fantastic but engrossing albeit cliched in places, however that’s the territory you get with action movies. Furthermore the action was actually good, which can’t be said for many action movies ironically. The cast acted well and it wasn’t a name fest either.

As mentioned before there were several blatant clichés that occur in the movie. The virgin oracle being the love interest was one, however I’ll give at least that one because the god Apollo at least appeared in it.

The other problem was that there were several instances of really poor 3d direction as there was seriously bad focus. Also almost every major scene change had awful morph transitions, which just became aggravating by the end as there was no need for them to exist.

Overall I enjoyed it, it was at least worth the couple extra bucks it costs for 3d. I’d say 7/10 with ease.

Review: Breaking Dawn

Okay, we went to see breaking dawn last night so I’m going to do a quick review of it. As it’s a two-parter it’s a little unfair to give a complete review to only half of the story.

First up are the cons, my primary problem was just a major pacing issue. There was no particular urgency about Bella’s predicament despite multiple complaints that she was at serious risk. Furthermore the opening was exceptionally slow and didn’t accomplish much except “hey look they’re leading a normal life”, which I know is the primary phase of any story, but hey we all just spent 5 hours with the previous movies so it felt very excessive.

What’s good is that Robert Pattinson is actually becoming a remarkable actor, which to his credit was Water for Elephants. Taylor Lautner really didn’t get much beyond emo teen angst, which was a detriment to his character.

The story was there, it’s just not exactly what you expect after the whole vampire battle.

Finally you got to see Kirsten Stewart look more like she was strung out on heroin or coke than you did in The Runaways, which was more just amusing and further proof that you can make your lead female look even worse than when she was just the plainest looking actress in Hollywood.

Overall I’d say 6/10, you’re better off waiting on this one, although my guess is that any guy seeing this had very little choice in the matter.

Hey look two posts in a month…

Hey look two posts in a month, who would have thought it. We just went to see Immortals, which had a surprisingly decent story for an action movie, a few cliche scenes but it worked. I’ll avoid spoilers outside of a review.

Oh well looks like the iPhone strikes again.

Nik has an iPhone

I now have an iPhone, which will allow me to blog from anywhere. Now if only there was an app to make me blog or to blog for me and then there wouldn’t be a problem with me posting.

Oh well, one less excuse at least.

An overdue announcement, AKA Winston

Winston

Our new arrival is the quiet and collected Winston, a true old gentlemen. The only problem being he’s 3 years old and is acting more like 13, but that’s what happens when you live your life with an old lady.

He’s been with us only a few short weeks and settled in very nicely, in fact so nicely that he seems to be keeping Kelly out of mischief, which is an endearing quality all of its own.

Kelly and Winston 1

Kelly and Winston 2

It’s certainly nice having the additional company in the house. Kelly having a playmate means there’s less of her demanding to play with us, which with her generally means jumping up and pawing your leg. That means first thing in the morning you’re generally getting nails dragged on your bare skin, but now she just antagonises Winston.

Absenteeism

It’s been an appallingly long time since my last post. Life just has that habit of getting extremely busy on you.

The house has finally accumulated its decorations; those curious things that make a house look like a home. Like it’s actually being lived in.

I built two bed platforms, so we’re no longer sleeping on a bed with a broken leg. I must say, eBooks will never be capable of propping up a bed like a stack of hardbacks do. Paper 1, electronic 0. My wife upholstered two headboards, which are now on my to-do list to hang (pictures should follow when they’re up).

We’ve also seen a few good movies. Notably Captain America, which being great in and of itself, it also managed to kick Harry Potter’s ass out of the top spot, which makes me even more fond of it. Yet, the excellent setup for The Avengers was perhaps what I liked the most. The other notable was Thor, which was excellent in and of itself. The pacing wasn’t excellent, but then it’s got a lot more plot depth than the latter superhero movie and it covered it all elegantly.

I can’t particularly think of anything beyond this right now. Oh, the Foo Fighters new album Wasting Light rocks the shit. I think that’s everything worth expressing immediately. Hopefully I make a return appearance within the next few days.

MIA for a month

Okay, so I’ve been missing from my blog for over a month now. I’d send myself to bed without supper for being a bad blogger, but that really wouldn’t help the situation. Plus I’m really hungry so it’s absolutely out of the question.

So why have I been so busy? The big move, and a lot of other shit tacked on for good measure, because you know moving isn’t a big enough time sink that we just had to add in frequent socializing too.

We got out around mid-month. Spent the next weekend up in Bobcaygeon for The Tragically Hip concert, the highlight of that poorly arranged concert was actually Bobcaygeon, thankfully the sound lasted throughout and it didn’t turn into a riot. The 2 hours people had to wait for a beer on a Saturday afternoon really didn’t help matters.

Anyway, we returned to the apartment that week to do our vacate clean, to find our landlords had absolutely trashed the place, and conducted illegal entries to allow their contractors in. They then had the gall to tell us we could be back charged for them ruining our carpet with paint and solvent.

That month essentially ended with my wife terrorizing their legal department and myself terrorizing their office staff when they decided it was acceptable for them to refuse to do their jobs and hang up the phone on us. I still don’t grasp why people in this century, over 130 years since the telephone was invented, haven’t figured out that there’s a feature called redial.

We’re now into the new place, with nice and pleasant management. No more elevators, no more frequent police visits to our building. Heck I haven’t seen the police here and we’ve lived here a month, it’s a goddamn miracle! We have a pool that actually has decent times and a dedicated adult swim, plus it’s supervised with life guards so they can have more than 8 kids in the pool at once.

We also went to one of Brad Pattisons classes, which was great fun. It was a brutal onslaught on the humans, the dogs seemed quite pleased. I’m honestly not sure it even phased Kelly, but that’s the Jack Russell monster in her genes. More on that in another post, maybe. No promises. I’ve got writing to catch up on too.

When the Dog is Gone, the Rabbit Runs

Kelly is in overnight at the vets for surgery tomorrow to remove her hind dew claws as one is detached and one is extremely loose. So while Kelly is gone, Baxter is ruling the roost. He’s free to run and making the most of it. There’s blurs of his cotton tail and the ruffle of his claws scratching the carpet as he binks.




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