Were she not in stage 4 of her cancer I would have liked to have Elizabeth Edwards in the presidential race. I like what she says in her speeches, she’s a little more liberal, and she seems like a strong and forthright person.
Jan 062008
First I have to say that I like having both the Democrat and Republican debates back to back. I also liked there being distinct discussion and direct question sections. All that said, watching four hours of debates is pretty tiring.
Republicans:
I  haven’t really kept up to date with the Repuiblican candidates except blurbs I hear in the news. I knew next to nothing about Huckabee, Romney, or Thompson. The biggest surpise of the night for me is that out of the Republican field I liked Huckabee the most. He seems the least like a follower of the Fox News platform and most sincere in his answers. McCain was my second favorite overall though I like the moderate non-campaigning McCain a lot better than the campaigning McCain. I wish Rudy Giuliani would go away, fortunately I don’t think it’ll take too long. He seems to be a lot less important than early in the campaign season. Ron Paul was asking good questions and I’m glad he’s there for that. Hopefully he’ll get some other people to think about those things when making policy. Mitt Romney comes off to me as being too slick. Like he has the answer for everything already and nothing needs new thought. Who cares about Fred Thompson? Well I guess he thought he was being clever by suggesting that Mitt Romney liked man dates.
Democrats:
I think Clinton was strong throughout and will probably get a boost from it. I think Obama held his own but who knows how it will affect his outcome. Edwards came across to me as wanting to be president but at the same time positioning himself to be a vice-presidential candidate. Richardson seemed to start out slowly but by the end he was able to list all his experience and explain how that will help his presidency. His list of experience is indeed impressive and he managed to help make Clinton’s point that having the experience will help create change.
I still have no idea how it’ll all turn out but the coming weeks should be interesting.
Jan 052008
Yesterday morning there was about 5 minutes of wondering what was going to happen next. Nicole looked out to find her snowman (cloth) laying face-down in some water. She rescued it and pulled it inside to dry. I sat down to put on my shoes and there was a crash outside. Nicole looked and saw one of the pots with the horsetail was blown over. I finished with my shoes and laid the remains of the one pot and the still whole matching pot down. I was picking up the shards (noticed the trash can lid has been blown open) and Nicole can out to check on the damage. The wind gusted which blew down the door that leads to our attic space. It’s not a hinged door, just kind of in place. I went to go put that back in place to find that there were lightbulb shards behind it from a lightbulb that I forgot to throw away. Picking up the door to set it back in place showed me that some of the shards ended up on top of the door and were now dropping to the floor.Nicole found the pieces and I got the door back in place. Oh yeah, some time during the goings on the power went out as well.
Leaving the driveway we went towards the intersection with power on the way to work and quickly came across the freshly downed branch blocking both lane that took out the power line also blocking both lanes. Â There’s the power outage. Luckily being in the same power block as Dominican Hospital meant that power was restored in a couple of hours. I need to replace the UPS battery that died in December. Without it when the power goes down access to 7thsign goes with it.
At work there was power and I got stuff done, but then the power went out for about 30 minutes. In the second wave of power I was almost able to complete what I went to work to work on but then the pwoer went out again and didn’t come back until about 7PM apparently. I gave up around 1:15PM, went home, and relaxed.
Jan 022008
Grover had his final cancer check up this morning and is now declared to be free of cancer! We didn’t really expect anything to suddenly to pop up at this point but it’s still nice to have the official word. Now we just need to get the weight off of him and Sage.
Jan 012008
Movies:
Protocols of Zion – A documentary about “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” and a look at who believes it to be true. Well mostly about who believes it to be true. If you know about the protocols then it’s mostly seeing how far and wide they have been taken up by people as what is going on.
Zone Troopers – A Full Moon video starring Tim Thomerson (Jack Deth in the Trancers movies) as a WWII sergeant helping his squad trapped behind enemy lines. Eventually the aliens help out. It’s not great, but I’ve seen less entertaining movies certainly.
Hitman – Another movie based on a game. I’ve never played this game, but these movie adaptations are getting better in general. It has some fun action and gun action, but if you really want a fun action/gun movie I think you should check out Shoot ‘Em Up.
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry – A lot of stereotypes here but it’s still pretty funny and handled fairly well. It stops making much sense towards the end but there was enough laughing throughout so I didn’t care too much.
Atonement – WWII period piece with great costumes and sets. Why is this rated over 8/10 on IMDB? I think people are desperate for war stories or something. Yes it’s all well done but I’ve been better told stories.
Bad Santa – Finally this years I saw this movie, and I’ve seen it twice now. It genuinely is a good spirit of x-mas movie, though it takes awhile to see how it might get there. According to the IMDb the “badder” version has about 20% more swearing.
Juno – This one was just good from start to finish. See this one!
Poltergeist III – Hey, it was on. I saw it long ago and didn’t think it was that great then but now I see the best part about this movie is the mirror effects. The movie revolves around them so it should, but almost every time they are pulled off perfectly. Watch it to learn mirror effects.
Loser – Hey, this was on too! This movie isn’t inherently bad, but there is absolutely no chemistry between Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari. It seems like this should have been an easy one to get right but something fell apart along the way.
HD Notes:
The Wizard of Oz in HD doesn’t just give you better colors, you get to see things like the burlap texture on the scarecrow’s face!
Flash Gordon in HD let me see that the shiny costumes weren’t just shiny fabrics, many of them were multitudes of beads sewn on.
Jan 012008
It was a mellow stay at home NYE watching movies and comforting the dogs as the explosions sounded. Unlike previous years where there are a few fireworks, this year there were a lot of explosions. Deeper and louded booms than you normally get on the 4th of July. The dogs weren’t freaking out but they weren’t really appreciative either.
Now that we’re in the new year I can get back on a more regular eating schedule that consists of more regular foods. I didn’t do too poorly over the holidays though; I gained 0.4 pounds from the day before Thanksgiving (November 21) through today. Now I just need to get myself to the gym.