Sick

Why is it that every time I go on vacation, I end up getting sick? I'm not very sick right now--just a bit of a head cold--but it would be a lot nicer if I wasn't sick at all. Watched two movies the past day or so. No links today, because I'm feeling lazy. The first (Sliding Doors) was . . . interesting. Gwyneth Paltrow in a movie about two different possibilities of a person's life. Kind of difficult to explain, and definitely thought provoking, but the movie was just sort of not fulfilling at the end. I'm thinking a middle of the road two stars for this one for me for now. But probably worth checking out.

Second movie was Kung-Fu Panda, which I watched in Blu-ray this morning. Fantastic film, and great picture. Gotta love those CG movies in high def. TRC has been running around the house all day pretending to be the panda. Very cute. A strong three stars.

Anyway, time for me to get some sleep and hopefully recuperate.

Why I Failed to Post Today

It was because I was busy. On my vacation. But on the plus side, my parents' house now has heat and working cable. It just took eight hours to get to that point. Such is life sometimes. Maybe tomorrow I'll have some time for a vacation. :-)

Off to PA

Heading out this afternoon to go down to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. I'll have worked a whole day at the library, then it's time to get in the car and drive for nine hours. Think I'll be tired when I get there? I'm betting yes. Tomorrow's the big BYU/Utah game . . . I've got a bad feeling about this. Be interesting to see how it turns out. The last two years have been nail biters that we've eked out--maybe we can't keep dodging bullets. We'll see how it goes.

I got my latest Netflix movie yesterday, and . . . I ended up stopping it in the middle. Sin City. Yes, I'd heard it was pretty out there, but it just looked too cool for me to stay away. But in the end, it was too much for me. Sin City vs. Bryce, and Sin City won. Oh well, even I have my limits, it appears. Next up is Kung Fu Panda, and I'm betting that's one that I won't have to turn off.

Have a nice weekend, all--I'll try to keep you updated over the break. Till then!

Home Theater

I'm going to do it. I'm going to buy a surround sound system. How can I afford it? Credit card points. We've been buying everything we can with credit cards, then paying them off in full each month. And so I was able to order $300 worth of Best Buy gift certificates today. That's not going to buy me the best system out there, but it's going to get me something decent, which is all my living room needs. I mean, the kids sleep above the living room, so the idea of having ground shaking audio isn't exactly as appealing as it might have been to me in my single days. I just want something that can give me 5.1 audio, making all this blu-ray fun I've been having a bit more blu-ray funnish. So now I'm in the midst of figuring out makes and models--I enjoy this sort of thing far too much.

In Which a Great Deal of Time is "Wasted," but Not Much Relaxation is Accomplished

For how much I read and watched movies yesterday, you'd figure I'd be a lot more relaxed. You'd be wrong. Still, it was fun to watch them and read the book I finished. At work, while I was at the reference desk, I read Identity Crisis, a graphic novel that had just about every superhero I'd ever heard of in it. Well, all the DC ones, at least. One of the superhero's wives is murdered, and they all turn out to find out who's doing it. A very fast read, and very enjoyable. Three stars.

I came home and watched An American Tail: Fievel Goes West with TRC while DKC worked. It wasn't nearly as good as I remembered it--the animation was off, the plot was tiresome and the characters forgettable. A shame it was Jimmy Stewart's last movie. One and a half stars. The original was much better--go figure.

After TRC went to bed, I got to pop in my Netflix Blu-ray of The Forbidden Kingdom, which should have been a disc full of awesome, but ended up being only pretty cool. I mean, come on: Jet Li and Jackie Chan, with action choreographer Woo-Ping Yuen (the guy who did Matrix and Crouching Tiger)? How could you miss? Well, you could rewrite the script five times, many of those times right in the middle of filming. The story is basically: kid from Boston gets thrown back in time to ancient China, where he has to help mythical Chinese figures overcome an evil warlord. In the process, he learns Kung Fu. Riiiight. The fight scenes were great, the cinematography fab, but the acting of the American kid left much to be desired. Watch it for the fights--just don't expect much from the story. Two and a half stars, because Jackie Chan would show up and wallop me if I gave it any less.

Locked Out of the House

I had memories of high school come flooding back yesterday. Not because I was meeting with my old high school friends, or because I saw something that I used to watch in high school. No--it's because I got locked out of my house. DKC forgot I come home earlier than I have been for the past year, and she and the kids were gone when I came home. House was locked, and the three house keys I had didn't work. (Long story. Don't ask.) So I was on my own for a half hour, waiting for her to come back. Of course, one advantage I had yesterday that I didn't have in high school was that I had a cell phone and could call her and remind her that I needed to get in. That wasn't the case in high school. I was part of a very busy family, and with so many schedules up in the air, it's inevitable that now and then, people end up getting locked out of the house. (Usually because I forgot my keys, I suppose. Did I even have keys? I don't remember.) In any case, I DO remember many a time hanging around outside until someone showed up.

That's what I did yesterday.

It was cold.

You'll all be happy to know that I now have ditched the keys that don't work and have one key that does. I checked it, just to be sure. No more getting locked out of the house.

Beta Readers Wanted

The second draft of ParkerBoy (now tentatively titled Cracker Jack Magic) is finished. If any of you faithful readers out there would like to see it, and can get comments back to me by the beginning of December, I'd be ever so obliged. Email me or add a comment below. Thanks!

Brain Fried

Feeling a tad brain fried right now. Yesterday consisted of nine and a half hours of church meetings, so it was nice to be able to come back to work and take a break from church. :-) I managed to watch three movies over the weekend: two on Netflix and one in person.

The first one I went to with TRC: Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. Actually, I really enjoyed this movie, even if it was a tad heavy on cheese toward the end. The laughs kept coming throughout, and TRC had a great time at the movies. (Or the "Thee-A-ter," as he calls it.) Two and a half stars.

Then DKC and I watched Leatherheads, which while I enjoyed it, it felt a bit too much like George Clooney trying to do his best Coen brothers meet screwball comedies impression for me to really get into it. For those of you who don't remember, it's the fictionalized depiction of the origin of pro football. I watched it right after watching BYU beat Air Force in a good game, so I was already in the football mood. And for fellow football fans, please add half a star to the rating. It was fun to watch and see some of the jokes in there. I had a good time watching it. Two and a half stars--almost made it to three, but didn't quite get there. Sorry, George.

DKC and I also watched Run Fatboy Run, which I'm happy to say was the best of the lot. It tells the story of a guy who left his pregnant girlfriend at the altar, and how he tries to win her back later on by showing her he's changed. How? By running a marathon in under three weeks' preparation. They turned the cheese up to 11 at the end, but I liked it in spite of it. Three stars, unless you don't like British movies, in which case knock it down to two and a half, but smack yourself in the head first for having no taste.

And now, my break time is done. Just as I come out of a brain fried state, I have to go back to work. Such is my curse. 1,700 words left to revise of ParkerBoy. One chapter. Oh yeah.

Netflix Report: Positive

So I've now watched my first two Netflix movies. Blu-rays, actually. And I'm totally digging the setup. I get movies in the mail, don't have to do anything, talk to anyone, go anywhere--this is my kind of scam. And the picture quality on Blu-ray makes the quality of hi-def Dish Network pale. Very pleased. What did I watch?

The first film was watched with DKC: Get Smart. I never saw a whole episode of the original series, but I'm a Steve Carell fan, and we really enjoyed this film. Funny and fast-paced, even if it was predictable. Still a blast to watch. Carrel didn't disappoint, and I actually liked Anne Hathaway, which bucks the trend for how I usually think of her in movies (with the exception of The Devil Wears Prada). Maybe she's actually growing on me. Three stars.

The second was a me-only movie: 3:10 to Yuma--the remake, not the original. I had heard good things about this movie, but it totally blew me away. I'm a big Western fan, and this one was a throwback to the good ol' days. Good and bad were completely blurred, and the boundaries of both were strongly questioned through the film. What really made the film pop for me was the ending--this was Unforgiven good here. The acting jobs were all spot on--loved Christian Bale and Russell Crowe. I can't recommend this movie enough. Four stars. And seeing it on Blu-ray? Awesome. Now I just need a sound system, and my movie watching days will be about as great as my budget will allow.

Anyway--I now have Leatherheads waiting for me at home, and The Forbidden Kingdom should be here by tomorrow, too. Life is good.

Mice Strike Back

Sorry about the late post. A mouse chewed through some fiber optic cables that supplied internet to the university. The result? Twenty hours without internet there. Mice never cease trying to be the bane of my existence. Today was no fun whatsoever. I'm addicted to being connected--what can I say? No time right now--I need to do my writing. But I wanted to poke in and explain my absence. See you tomorrow!

Foundations and Have You Seen It

First, the day to day life description: I was under my house for a while yesterday, working on the foundation. It's amazing what sort of junk was under there. Shoe inserts, milk jug caps, kid pants, shirts . . . and lots of spiders and dirt, but that was to be expected. Did I mention I'm claustrophobic? Not really bad (or else I wouldn't have gone under there), but enough to dislike elevators, cramped caves and crawlspaces. But I survived to blog another day, for which you're all tremendously grateful, no doubt.

Also, I'm very happy that today is the last day I have to go do these student workshops at the library in the evening. So far, no one has shown up for one of the evening workshops, so it ends up being a tremendous waste of time. At least I get to talk to the other librarians who show up to waste their time with me. After tonight, no more!

And now, for the real reason you're all reading this: your chance to take the lead in Have You Seen It? When last we met, the score was dead even: 1-1. But now, we go into round 3. Not sure what's going to happen here. On the one hand, I know some of my readers have seen their fair share of British films. On the other, Netflix has over 100,000 movies available through its site--but not this one. It's an Alec Guinness: The Scapegoat.

A gem of a film, really. The set up is simple: two men meet in Paris and discover their practically identical twins (just not related). Think Prince and the Pauper, except the switcheroo is forced, not voluntary; one of the men wakes up to find the other has left him with his identity. I don't want to give away too much here, but the way it all played out was fascinating. The one man hated his life because he had too many troubles and needy family. The other disliked his situation because he had too few. And when he was saddled with someone else's problems, the way he responded was very thought provoking. Three and a half stars. If you haven't seen it, you really should. Did I mention it has Bette Davis in it, too? What are you waiting for? Well, maybe you're waiting for it to come out on DVD. The way I saw it was on Turner Classic Movies (love that channel!).

Anyone else seen it? Do tell.

Veterans Day

Being forced to take today off from work, so I'm at home watching the kidlets while DKC goes and buys groceries. Once she comes home, I'm going to be working on the house some--we had our basement foundation fixed last week, and there's still some work remaining to be done on that, so that should keep me busy until 4, when DKC has work and I'll be watching the kidlets again. No time to be blogging--I'll be happy to get my writing done today. 12,000 words to go and counting. Beta readers, on your marks!

Netflix and Three Movies

To celebrate my promotion at work, I took the family out last Friday evening for dinner, then had everyone go to Walmart (the equivalent of fine shopping here in our neck of the woods) to pick something out for themselves. DC got a bell rattle elephant toy thing, TRC got an erector set and a Transformer, and . . . DKC and I had no idea what to get for ourselves. DKC eventually ended up getting a canning pot the next day, and I decided to sign up for Netflix. I had originally wanted to get a blu-ray movie, but I couldn't decide which one I wanted. The problem was that I could only get one, and there were lots that I wanted. That's when I decided to look into Netflix. Three movies at a time, including blu-rays, for $18 a month. Sure, that seems steep, but I'm looking into downgrading our satellite to make up for the difference. If Netflix really works out for us, then I think it might not only save us money, but it'll mean we watch less TV, which would be a good thing, too. (Right now, our television habit has ballooned from just Lost and Mythbusters to Lost, Mythbusters, Survivor, Amazing Race, Eli Stone, The Office, 30 Rock, Fringe, The Mentalist . . . see a problem there? I do.) I'll tell you how my Netflix adventure goes.

I can fill you in on my first impression right now, though. There's this nifty feature that lets you rate movies, and then based on those ratings, it makes a guess about how you'll rate other movies. I. Love. This. So far I've rated 900 movies, and the feature is getting pretty good at predicting what I'll think about a movie before I even watch it. I tested it out this weekend three times. (My Netflix movies aren't here yet, but I would look a movie up on Netflix before I watched it in real life.) It was three for three. (None of these movies are obscure enough for me to want to play a round of Have You Seen It? with them. I'm still nursing my wounds from my first defeat. Score's tied, 1-1.)

Network was a fantastic movie. It tells the story of a TV reporter who goes nuts after he's fired. Totally nuts. And some cutthroat TV execs decide to try and profit off his insanity. Very disturbing, and freaky how closely it predicted the direction television would start to go. Great performances--nominated for a slew of Oscars, and won Oscars for three Best Acting categories. Three and a half stars.

Unleashed (Danny the Dog in other countries) is a Jet Li vehicle about a boy trained to be nothing but a fighter, and an old blind man (Morgan Freeman) who teaches him about humanity. Throw into this some cool fight scenes, and the movie's not half bad. Only problem is, it's not half good, either. Right in the middle. Written by Luc Besson, the same guy who brought us the much cooler Transporter, I enjoyed the scenes with Li and Freeman, but some of the fighting just was too over the top. When the big bad villain at the end is a random albino who walks around in a Karate outfit, then you've pretty much jumped the shark at that point. Still, I hung around for the ride, and I can give it two stars.

Pennies from Heaven is the 1936 Bing Crosby musical comedy about a traveling singer who ends up helping out a little girl and her grandfather, after he gets a letter to deliver to them from the man who murdered her father, who gave the letter to Bing in prison, where Bing was wrongfully incarcerated for a crime he didn't commit. (Why is this suddenly sounding like an episode of the A-Team?) I get a kick out of some old movies--they can be as contrived as you can get, but I just don't mind for some reason. This one has too many stretches in it for me to really get into it, but it's got some good music, and a great role and song by Louis Armstrong, so that's forgivable. Plus, it's pretty much always fun to listen to Bing sing. Two stars for those two things alone.

Anyway--Netflix was spot on for all three of these movies. Way cool. Of course, now that I've rated 900 movies, I'm really interested in seeing how many movies I can rate overall. What's my limit? Where will that number end? How many movies have I seen, exactly? I know it's well over 900--I got there with little effort. But maybe that'll start to slow now that I've entered so many. It'll be interesting to see . . .

Any of you Netflixers out there? How many movies have YOU rated?

Have You Seen It? Round Two

I've never been so happy to not get any responses to a post. I'm going to say Round One is over, and we're on to Round Two. Maybe Hot Millions was too hard of a movie for you all. I'm betting that today's round will end up going against me, but that's the risk I take, and I don't want to make things too easy on myself. Ready to play? Current score: Bryce 1, Rest of the World 0.

Three Days of the Condor was a fantastic spy thriller. It stars Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway, directed by Sydney Pollack (who also directed Redford in Jeremiah Johnson, an adaptation book about a mountain man who killed Native Americans and then would carve out their livers and eat them raw--something which the adaptation left out, might I add). The film is an adaptation of a James Grady novel entitled "The Six Days of the Condor" (which really is an excellent example of the editing process a book has to go through in order to become a film. Six days down to three.) The basic premise is that a two-bit reader for the CIA comes back to his office from lunch to find that the entire department has been assassinated. He's then thrown into espionage far above his pay raise, and thrilling tension ensues. Very adroitly done, by a team of very talented people. Three stars.

So have you seen it? Don't let me get a two point lead here. Speak up. And if you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and watch it. It's rated R for a steamy scene, some violence (tame by today's standards) and a couple naughty words peppered throughout. So don't watch it with the kids.

And now, back to my reference duties.

Promoted

Well, I suppose I can announce this publicly now. Today is my first day as the Interim Library Information Services Manager. That's a promotion from Information Technology Librarian. I'm excited for the change, though it will no doubt prove quite challenging, especially since we're not hiring a replacement for my old position just yet. Anyway--forgive me if this post is brief. I've got a lot to get done today still.

Progress and a Movie Recommendation

First of all, I'm happy to say that the book revision is going in leaps and bounds right now. At 49,000 words and climbing. The whole thing is around 67,000 words total at this point, so not much left--though the climax scenes will likely have to be retooled a fair bit, it's nothing compared to what I did at the beginning.

Second, I have a challenge to you all. We're going to play a game of Have You Seen It? This is a game I just thought up, and mainly it's here to give me a chance to highlight movies that you really ought to go see, and that I'm betting no one out there has seen. It's me vs. the rest of you. Every time I put a movie out on this challenge, if someone has seen it, please post. If any of you readers has seen it, then you all get a point. If no one has seen it, then I get a point. Sound fun? Sure. Why not. First group to 5 points wins . . . the undying adoration of the masses. Or of me. Which is pretty much even better, I know.

This round's movie is . . . Hot Millions, starring Peter Ustinov. Really a delightful movie. Have any of you seen it? If you haven't, you ought to. Ustinov does a fantastic job, playing the part of an embezzler who's been exposed by computer security (this is back in 1968, so "computer security" is a mite bit different than it is now). He decides to prove to himself that he can outdo that new-fangled computer, and he cons himself into a job to do just that. On the way, he meets Minerva McGonagall--uh, I mean, Maggie Smith, who ended up getting old and playing McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies much later on--and they develop a relationship. The movie also has Bob Newhart in a supporting role, and a cameo by Cesar Romero. The film is well acted and written, and I was never entirely sure what was going to happen next. Three and a half stars from me. I love finding movies I thoroughly enjoy this much, especially when they're such a surprise.

Anti-Politics Post (AKA Halloween Pictures!)

Because I've already voted, I can use my post today to give you what a lot of you really only want out of my blog: family pictures. So here you go. Five pics from the last few months. Enjoy.



TRC goes on the Merry Go Round at the fair. He had a blast.



DKC and DC at the fair. DC was happy now. A few hours later, she was pretty much just stunned by all the noise.


TRC before his first day of preschool. Check out the wood and the fall foliage!


DC was a pumpkin for Halloween. She didn't get any candy, but she did enjoy the experience, more or less.


TRC was Lightning McQueen--or a Lightning McQueen driver, at any rate. He had a complete blast, literally hopping from house to house.

Voting (Warning: Politics Ahead)

I've already filled out my ballot. Going to take it to the town office this afternoon on my way home from work. In the end, I ended up voting for Obama. I'll admit that even up to the point in time when I was about to mark my choice, I still wasn't convinced. The man's a little too bright and sunshiny when it comes to the promises he's making to America, and I really wonder what he'll actually be able to get done in office. That said, McCain's campaign has left me pretty disgusted even since the primaries. Faithful blog readers know that I was rooting for Romney, and my distaste of McCain started back then. But even since the primaries ended and the "real" campaigning began, McCain has done nothing to convince me to vote FOR him. He's just tried to convince me to vote AGAINST Obama, and his reasons weren't persuasive enough, in the end. But even with all of that, I still might have voted for the man, if it hadn't been for Sarah Palin. The woman has struck me as nothing if not unprepared. She has trouble stringing together a coherent sentence at times, and . . . I could go on, but I'm just not up to it. I want this election over, one way or the other.

I honestly think my vote won't end up mattering, though. I don't think it's going to be close tomorrow. Obama consistently draws crowds around 100,000 where he goes to speak. McCain's lucky if he gets above 10,000. To me, it's simple math. The only way this goes to McCain is if all Obama's supporters decide not to vote, and I don't see that happening.

In any case, I'd like to encourage you all to go out and vote. If you're all McCain supporters and this post makes you want to go counteract my vote, please feel free. The more the country can start taking interest in and caring about the political process, the better. I don't care who wins--so long as in four years, the country's in a better place than it is today. I think Obama gives us the best chance of getting there, but as long as that's where we end up, hooray.

And that's all I want to write about today.