Amazon was having a sale on games. And since I got a gift certificate to Amazon for my birthday I loaded up. I got de Blob (which is a puzzle game that I've heard good things about and wanted for a while) and Wario Land Shake It. Those were my "big ticket" items. Then I picked up 3 more games that were around $10 a piece: Sega Superstar Tennis, Spider-Man 3 and Mercury Revolution. I don't really know anything about those games except they were pretty cheap (actually, I've heard nothing good at all about Spider-Man 3, but one of these days I'll realize life is too short to be spending it playing bad games). A couple of the games (de Blob and the Sega Tennis) are multiplayer, so I'm hoping those will be fun for all of us to play. They had We Love Golf on sale also, but I know the kids don't like golf, so the only way I would ever play that one is online with Barry or something, which from his blog sounds like he's not going to have any free play time anytime in the near future.
I watched Role Models the other night. This movie is crude. It's inappropriate at times. Possibly even slightly politically incorrect. It's down there with stuff like Superbad, but with a bit of gratuitous nudity thrown in. Having said that, this movie is also really funny. Maybe it's Paul Rudd. These days I seem to like most of the stuff he does. I don't know, but it's funny and mostly unapologetic. I know there's a love story subplot in this movie, but they're not fooling anyone. This is much more of a guy movie than it is a chick flick. The plot is pretty weak, two guys get in trouble and to keep from going to jail they have to sign up for 150 hours of community service at Sturdy Wings, which for all intents and purposes is Big Brother (given some of the stuff that happens in the movie they probably were legally required to use something other than Big Brother since I doubt that organization wanted to have their name associated with the movie). From there it basically turns into the two guys and crazy hijinks they get into with their assigned kids. The movie isn't for the easily offended, but I found it highly entertaining.
So Ginger's been working on putting together some movies for the upcoming school auction using iMovie on her Mac. The problem is it's been slow going. I mean really slow. Her machine had 2 Gig of memory and it was still running like a dog. Now the machine itself is a couple years old, but still it shouldn't have been running this slow I didn't think. Turns out part of the problem is the memory footprint of one of the applications she was running, specifically iPhoto. Normally I suspect this program isn't that bad, but when trying to run with iMovie, which wanted close to a Gig of memory all by itself running iPhoto is just the computer's Achilles’ heel. That's because iPhoto apparently has a large number of photos on the computer resident in memory at any time. Unfortunately since Ginger's got all my pictures from the past four or five years of digital pictures this ends up being about 33,000 pictures that iPhoto is tracking (which in turns has it wanting almost 2 Gig of memory all by itself).
So to alleviate the problem I bought more RAM for Ginger's computer. Another 4 Gig. She only had one paired slot left though, so I had to remove some of the memory to add the 4 Gig. Now after the memory upgrade she's running with 5 and a half Gig of memory, and it runs a lot better. I think it can still slow down a bit if she has iMovie and iPhoto up and running simultaneously, but it definitely runs a bit better in the normal case now. All this has me amazed at how well Picasa runs under Windows, because before last Christmas I was running that on a Windows machine that only had 1 Gig of memory and it handled tracking all 33 thousand photos of mine fine for the most part. The other thing that sort of surprised me was the cost. I figured since it was for the Mac I was going to be paying an arm and a leg, but I got the memory from Crucial and got it for only $43 a Gig, which I don't think is all that bad.
So lately one of the things that's been talked about around the house is the concept of a last will and testament. I know, not exactly what you would call light conversation, but you work with what you've got. Anyway, ignoring for a brief moment the reason behind why the topic came up, the kids quickly steered the conversation to being all about them. Basically it became them asking who gets what if Ginger and I were to pass away. The big ticket item wasn't the house (which is what I was expecting), but rather Ginger's car. Both kids are adamant that they should get the car. In fact, no one wanted my car, they both were just fighting over who would get Ginger's. I believe mine was too dirty to want(although mine's been a lot cleaner lately than any car I've had in the past). Then they started basically calling dibs on everything else. Catherine claimed all of Ginger's jewelry. Quinn decided he would get all my comic books. The one bright spot was they decided to actually share the Wii. I have to say it feels a bit weird them having these conversations while we're still here. On the other hand I guess it lets us know what they consider important (and that would be Ginger's stuff for the most part).
The photo is another leftover from the snow a while back so no one panic thinking another winter storm is coming through.
Above you see a photo of Catherine showing off her ability to "do a handstand". Since I almost never go to see them at gymnastics, this is as close as I get to seeing what she can do. Quinn attempted to show me how he could do one also, but I can tell that's an area he really needs to work on. Not that I can talk, not sure I could do one either. In fact, I would probably throw my back out if I tried.
Just a leftover shot from back when we had snow. Really hard to believe the temperature has been in the 80s since this shot was taken a little over a week ago.
Today Catherine decided Ginger needed some pony tails and took steps to correct that deficiency. I don't think you can tell from the photo, but she had six ponytails (none of which were symmetrical, not that non uniformity bothers me, but well, I guess it kind of does).
I got a report from Ginger today that Catherine can now ice skate for a while on just one leg. Too bad Ginger didn't take a camera with her. If only in the future she would take a camera. Maybe next time before she goes I'll mention to her that she should take a camera. Anyway, it seems like Catherine has really taken to the whole ice skating thing. The couple of times I've gone to see her ice skate she has a group of friends that she ends up skating around with, so at this point I don't think she really needs for me to be there.
On a completely different subject, I got to watch the movie Body Of Lies last week. This movie stars Leonardo Decaprio and Russel Crowe. At a high level it's about how the CIA functions and positions it's operatives, one in particular (played by Decaprio), around the globe. It also serves as an examination of policy decisions that drive the CIA as an organization, such as do you acquire information via technological means and sift through that or do you have to have operatives on the ground that know the area and the people. It's pretty apparent from the film how they feel that decision should be made. It also casts the American intelligence community, or at least the one higher up person (Crowe) they show representing it, in a fairly negative light. It's a film by Ridley Scott, so just knowing that you can already expect it to be a bit on the preachy side. It's an okay movie, nothing spectacular in my mind. The most interesting aspect to me was seeing how low tech methodology could outwit and defeat high tech toys. I think it's more interesting as a springboard for discussion on policy direction more than anything else though. My personal opinion is if you skip this, you won't be any worse for wear as it's a decidedly average to less than average film in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, the acting is fine for the most part (if you like Decaprio) and the actual filming seems to be top notch, but the story is a bit weak and as I mentioned seems to have been produced to promote an agenda.
One of the Mom's at the kid's school (who is also a friend of Ginger) has had a family emergency and has to go deal with an ailing parent overseas. This means that for the foreseeable future we'll be having her daughter Antoinette come by after school and hanging out until her Dad can come by and pick her up. Catherine is thrilled since Antoinette is one of her best friends. Quinn is excited also, but not thrilled since this means there's a definite chromosome imbalance at the house.
And I know a while back I said there were no pictures of me on my actual birthday, but I was mistaken, I found a batch of hidden pictures on the camera. Unfortunately all the pictures suffered from the same problem of having been taken while in bracketing mode, I also found I had taken some all of us together as a family but none of the normal exposure ones were any good.
Ginger's grandmother ended up getting taken back to the hospital last night. So Ginger's still down there. The circumstances behind it sounded a bit dire, but at the same time, the hospital is waiting until Monday to run some more tests, so they obviously aren't overly concerned. While Ginger and the kids were gone I made arrangements to go see Watchmen.
Before she left I was telling Ginger my plans to go see it with Ben and she said "Ah, so you guys have a man date."
To which I had to reply, "No, it's not just me and Ben. Ben and Katylin were going and they invited me."
To which Ginger replied "Wait, so you're the third wheel?"
On to the movie itself. It's long. Close to two and a half hours. But given that it's adapting a 12 issue series written by Alan Moore it would have to be. They cut out a lot of stuff (again, because of time constraints they simply had to), but the parts that are left are extremely faithful to the original material. Overall I liked it, but I knew what I was going into beforehand. Anyone that goes to this expecting something like Spider-Man is going to be sorely disappointed (which is why I believe it may not resonate with some portions of the regular viewing public). Now they did change some aspects of the original novel to make it more appealing to the general populace, such as they made the heroes much more competent. All those slick partially slow motion action scenes really didn't occur that much in the actual book. At the same time, they left some stuff in that I was sure wouldn't make it onto the screen (such as some Dr Manhattan full frontal). Overall I liked the movie and given the source material I can't really think of ways things could have been done differently and stayed faithful.
So tonight Ginger and the kids headed off to Richmond so Ginger could visit her Mom and Grandmother again. Her grandmother had been sent home so Ginger thought she would be able to help her Mom some and basically allow her to take a break. Since it's the First Friday (first Friday of the month) the kids were only in school until noon. After that they attended a play date for a couple hours and then they were all off to Richmond. Since I had the place to myself it allowed me to watch Kung Fu Panda. While this looks like one I should be watching with the kids, I can't because we have a rule where Ginger or myself has to watch it first. Now this movie is made by Dreamworks and their CGI movies always come across as looking and feeling like Pixar Light. I think they got lucky out of the gate with Shrek, but then they had a long list of decidedly average films like Shark Tale, Madagascar, Flushed Away, Over The Hedge, etc. Well, I'll admit to being more than a bit surprised at how well this one turned out and I typically don't even like Jack Black (he does the voice Po, the main character). I think going in with the lowered expectations really helped my enjoyment of this movie. There's a lot of big name voice talent in this film (the only time I even really noticed a voice that stood out was Seth Rogan's character, but that's probably just because he has such a distinct voice), but none of it distracts from the film itself (and I might even say because of that they probably could have gotten away with lessen known voice talent). Overall I found myself laughing during this film a lot more than I have in previous Dreamworks films. The film still isn't quite Pixar quality, but it's not that far from it either.
Quinn seemed to have some issues at ice skating today according to Ginger. He basically had a small meltdown after he was the first one caught playing sharks and minnows. He's probably still just overly tired and hasn't caught up on the sleep he missed from the weekend. Anyone know how long until we no longer have to deal with these type of meltdowns? I mean he's almost eight, I would have thought at this point we would be well past this type of behavior (obviously I would also be wrong). Ginger didn't get any pictures of him ice skating, so I included one I took out back on Monday while the ground was still pristine before we started sledding and walking all over it. Check out that tree shadow over on the left. Either the ground is incredibly uneven or that tree is a bit on the crooked side.
Nana did a drive by today just to take me out to lunch for my birthday. Then after work Ginger and the kids treated me (although I'm pretty sure it was with my credit card) to a dinner out at Coastal Flats. After that we retired to home where I got some ice cream with candles on it. Strangely enough there were no pictures taken. Guess I'm normally the one taking all the pictures, so there aren't a lot of me. Since I don't have a picture of me from today when everyone took me out, I figured I would post one from when we went out for Catherine's birthday a couple weeks ago. Close enough. And I really like the photo below, you can tell Catherine really likes me. It's like, sure, I'll take a picture with you, but I really need to get my Nintendog home from his walk.
As I mentioned yesterday, the snow wasn't especially good packing snow. But that didn't stop us from managing to build a snowman anyway. We used snow off the driveway that was partially melted and thus stuck together better. For some reason when I was looking at the snowman we created the head seemed disproportionately smaller than the rest of the body giving it the look of a witch doctor shrunken head feel, but in the picture the head doesn't look that bad. Maybe it's the angle.
The kids had school, but it started an hour late. Amazingly the road in our cul-de-sac was better than the main road in our neighborhood (which was a disaster to try and drive on).
I promised the kids I would come home early from work so we could get in some more sledding. I figured in all likelihood this was going to be the last snow of the season so I should make an effort to go out with them.
We had to switch sledding paths. The path we created yesterday had been just missing one of the trees as they came down, but today something had shifted just enough so that every run they were doing was heading straight for that tree. So we tried a new starting location. This new one required navigation between more trees further on, but had less trees near the start.
In the above picture it might be hard to tell, but Quinn is heading straight for a tree. Sadly I didn't keep taking pictures because I was afraid he was about to get seriously injured and was preparing to run down to him, but I wish I had been able to get a photo (or film) of what happened next. He was moving at a fairly good clip, so when the tube hit the tree, it collapsed and bunched up. Then it rebounded and snapped away from the tree. The unbunching of the tube actually shot Quinn about a foot or so into the air (much like he had just bounced on a trampoline) while the sled sped out from under him causing him to come crashing down into the snow. He was a pretty good sport about it (first being a bit upset about it, but then once he thought about what had happened I think he decided it was rather cool).
Eventually I was forced (forced I tell you!) to try it myself. As you can see I was frantically trying to steer the thing from the start to avoid the trees. I managed to successfully avoid them both this time and on subsequent runs where I had Catherine with me.
And speaking of Catherine, she didn't want to do the sledding so much as just play in the snow. Her favorite thing seemed to be throwing snow balls (or just handfuls of snow) at me. I would tell her not to throw it at me while I had the camera, and she would say "Ooookay" in that sweet little voice, then soon as I would turn around she would throw more at me.
For some reason Catherine's idea of fun was to roll down the hill instead of sledding. She would act like a log rolling down the hill. I can't imagine why that's fun, but she kept doing it (you can tell she got snow everywhere).
The kids even tried using those newer sleds that Ginger bought for them. They didn't work quite as well as the tube, but they didn't seem to mind. Quinn would intentionally maneuver his so that he would go over a drainage pipe on the way down and perform a minor jump.
All in all it was a really fun time, and I'm really glad I came home to go out with the kids.
There's a storm coming. You can tell, because earlier today the grocery store was an absolute madhouse of people buying those essentials. I mean, that's why I was there. I think I picked the absolute slowest checkout line too. It didn't seem bad when I first got into it. But then the people at the front contested a price. And then once that was dealt with and they were gone the next couple decided use a ton of coupons. Now don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge anyone trying to save a buck, I mean, this is me. But do you have to use all those coupons on the day before a big storm where the everyone is trying to buy stuff? I'm more than likely overreacting to the situation, but only because then they started contesting the amount or why some of the coupons weren't scanning. Which then required a manager's intervention. Then to really pour some salt in the wound they paid by check, and it felt just like those Visa commercials, where everything that as already moving slow now just came to a complete stop. Right as I got to the front they also switched cashiers. And the one the put in was top notch and was moving at about three times the speed of the previous guy. I'm thinking the previous guy might have been a trainee or something.
Anyway, unlike previous predictions of snow they're pretty sure this is going to be a big one. In fact they've already canceled schools. That allowed me to be able to stay up and work until close to 3 AM without worrying about having to get up to take the kids to school the next morning. And that was good, because I'm pretty sure I'm not going to try and make it in to work tomorrow and this let me get some work done so I can spend time tomorrow at home in the snow with the kids. I took the above picture just after I stopped working at 3 AM trying to get some feel of the snow coming down, but it was just too dark, even with attempting to bracket the shots.
