A damned funny movie

The last few movies that Melissa and I had seen were terribly disappointing, and I was ready to let Melissa have her way in picking a movie.  We saw The Land of the Lost, and Year One, two movies with very funny comedians that turned out to be very unfunny in reality.  You’d think that Will Farrell and Jack Black movies would be can’t miss funny, but you’d be wrong.  Melissa had been wanting to see The Proposal, which is a Sandra Bullock/Ryan Reynolds romantic comedy.  I’m not that big a fan of romantic comedies, so I was a little reluctant, but I had wasted all of my movie picking credibility, so I relented.  I’m not proud to admit it, but I loved it!  It was so funny, my stomach hurt afterwards.  I would have to say that the funniest actor in the movie was neither Sandra Bullock or Ryan Reynolds, it was Betty White.  Its just so nice to get such a good laugh out of a little white-haired old lady.  She’s allowed to be just a little blue, which goes a long way for her.  I suppose from now on I’ll have to respect my wife’s movie decision making a little more.

Week in review

Sometimes it seems as if I’m just trying to get through the week so I can enjoy the weekend, but recently it has felt like I’ve been just trying to get through the summer so we can get to Korea and start the next phase of our lives together.  I know that we should be enjoying our last summer at home for a while, and that we should be making the most of every moment, but it’s hard to ‘live in the now’ when the future looks so enticing.  At any rate, this week was a mixture of the mundane and somewhat unique.  On Monday, Weiler had a little event where they showed off a racecar they’re a minor sponsor of, and fed us hotdogs, chips and soda.  I always appreciate it when they feed us, and lunch was 10 minutes longer than usual, which was nice, but I’m not all that big into NASCAR.  Apparently, it was the car that Dale Earnhardt Jr. drives in the lesser racing league.  I was pretty ho-hum about the whole thing, but some people were really psyched.

Thursday was a unique day for Melissa and I, though not for entirely joyful reasons.  Melissa went to the dentist, and I stayed home to take care of her.  Normally, this wouldn’t be necessary, but Melissa has dentist anxiety, so she goes to a sedation-dentist.  I drove her there, and stayed until the dentist put her under.  The cool thing about sedation dentistry is that while they have you under, they do a whole bunch of work at once, instead of dragging it out over a longer period of time.  After it was over, I picked her up, drove her home, and took care of her for the rest of the day.  She was pretty groggy until the next day, I guess they use some pretty potent stuff.

On Friday we had a date night, which was nice.  We usually have dinner and see a movie on Saturday, but Melissa wanted to do it on Friday night, so we did.  We had dinner then saw The Land of the Lost, which was funny but seriously disjointed.  There were a lot of funny skits, but the plot was total nonsense, which didn’t really make as much difference as it normally would.  Will Ferrell is just so damn funny, that the total lack of plot didn’t matter.  We didn’t enjoy it as much as we enjoyed Up!, but it was worth the price of admission.  Other than that, we really didn’t do a whole lot this weekend.  We got trivial pursuit for Wii, which I totally own Melissa at, 9 straight wins and counting.  I know she’ll beat me eventually, but I can’t willingly give an inch to her.  She’s so competitive that it would drive her nuts if she knew I let her win.

A very eventful day

Melissa and I had a very eventful day today.  It started out a little earlier than normal as Melissa was running in a 5k race at the elementary school.  It was half-way out, then it doubled back on itself.  Ironically, the run from here to the school and back is also 5k, so I suppose we could have just slept in and then she could have run that, but apparently there is something special about running with other people, getting timed and then getting a souvenier t-shirt, so that’s why she did it.  After the race began, I went to get breakfast at McDonald’s.  I know, I know.  But I’m not into running, and I was hungry!  I did meet her at the half-way point and encouraged her onward.  At that time she was about 100 yds in front of a 3 year old and his mother.  I told her that so long as she beats the toddler, I’d be proud of her.  I then went back to the start/finish line and waited for her to finish.  I got it on video.  When she comes into frame, she’s behind the little boy and his mom.  Check it out

After the race, we went out to the UPS Store in Honesdale to get our S.M.O.E. paperwork faxed and UPS’d.  We knew it would be time-consuming and expensive, but Holy Crap!  It took over an hour and cost us more than $120.00, including copying, faxing and shipping.  I know it’ll be worth it, but it still made us cringe a little.  But the ball is in their court now, and hopefully we’ll hear good things from them soon.

We then went to Moosic to watch a movie and buy a Wii.  We saw Up!, and let me tell you, SEE THIS MOVIE!!!  It was without a doubt the best animated movie I’ve ever seen, and the best movie I’ve seen in years, period.  It was so well written, and so well animated, and the music was so good it was unbelievable!  It was everything it could possibly have been.  You’d expect the movie to be visually stunning and have a lot of good funny/cute laughs, but it was so much more.  I’m not going to ruin the story for anyone that hasn’t seen it, but it really pulls at your heart-strings.  This movie had far more soul that most movies that are predicated solely on emotion.  I would strongly recommend this movie to anyone, regardless of age or gender.  It was that good!

After the movie we bought a Nintendo Wii, as a sort of investment, really.  We figure that it will save us money when we get to Korea.  Every time we decide to have a couple of friends over, order in food, have a couple of drinks and play Wii instead of going out to dinner and drinks, it’ll pay for itself in a year or two.  And you can’t ignore the fact that it’ll be plenty of fun in the meantime.  Also, it’s the only game console light enough to be reasonable packed along, so that sealed the deal.  We already have it hooked up and I played Pikmin for about an hour, which was fun.  Hopefully we can have Howard and Shannon over soon and challenge them to a few rounds of golf, or bowling, or whatever.

As we were coming home, we decided to stop by our local grocery store to pick something up for dinner.  When we were leaving, I heard someone say, hi Frank!  It was my ex-wife’s friend Linda, who is an Indonesian lady of about 30 who used to be the hostess at the Chinese buffet in town.  My ex-wife and her were natural friends, since they were the only two English speaking Asian immigrants in Hamlin at the time.  Apparently, Linda has been quite busy the last few years.  She has a job in NYC, and is married to a nice Asian-American guy.  As it turns out, they’re visiting Korea and Japan in October, and would like to meet up with Melissa and I when we’re over there.  I think that would be great.  I hope it actually works out.

That’s about it for today.  As I said before, it was a super-eventful and fun day.  We hope to go to a baseball game tomorrow, but I’m not sure if we can because Melissa tweaked her knee this morning and its bothering her.  If not, then we’ll get around to it some time this summer.

Terminator: Salvation

Melissa and I went to see Terminator: Salvation, and we both came away happy, but from differing places.  I have been a Terminator fan since Terminator 2 came out when I was in middle school.  I bet I saw that movie at least 100 times in a single summer, and had just about the entire thing memorized by the time school came around in September.  I then watched the original Terminator to get the back story, and then waited, and waited…. and waited for the next installment.  Finally, Terminator 3 came out, and I must say that I was not impressed.  I didn’t think that the story was very good, the new Terminator very scary, or the casting to be very good.  I thought that would be the end of the Terminator franchise, but to my skeptical delight, I heard two years ago that they were making another.  At first I was pretty leery, but when I heard that John Connor would be played by Christian Bale, I was sold.  He may very well be a prick, but he’s just about the best action/suspense actor going right now.  The movie itself pleased me without blowing me away.  There were just enough references from the previous movies to please the long-time fans such as myself, but enough back story to please newcomers, like Melissa.  The special effects were top notch, and the plot was actually pretty good, but I guess I’ll have to wait until the next couple of movies to get closure.  I understand if this movie does well, which I suspect it will, they’re going to make a few more.  I’m sure we’ll be in line when they do.