Well, yesterday I finally had a chance to see Indiana Jones 4.  Since all who read this blog have already seen it I won’t say too much about it and I may also feel free to mention possible spoilers.  Anyway, it’s been a long time since I saw the first three but I had no trouble at all getting into this one.  I had to remind myself that this whole series is meant to be a parody of old time action serials and all of their improbable problems and solutions.  A couple of my favorite parts were first when Indy and company have just escaped the commie’s camp thanks to a quick action by Mutt (the bait to get the younger crowd to see the movie if they didn’t already want to see it) and Indy and Marion get trapped in the sand (not quicksand- what did they call it?) pit.  Mutt gets sent to find a rope or something and the confused Ox goes to get help.  Mutt comes back, throws what he found, Marion climbs out.  He throws it again and we then see that whoops!  It’s not a rope…  Once Indy finds his nerve and allows himself to be rescued, here comes Ox back with, um, help…  Well just where did Indy think Ox would find the help anyway?

Another favorite part was when they were on the amphibious vehicles and they run off the cliff into… a really long tree branch sticking out from the cliff.  Down, down, down goes the branch from the weight until gravity takes over and the vehicle slides off and into the water.  The branch of course does what a branch does when it’s pulled and suddenly released, causing a really bad day for some of Col. Dr. Spalko’s militia who have been climbing down said cliff.

This isn’t to say these were the only good parts- I thoroughly enjoyed the entire movie.  All the action parodies from the bullets that never hit Indy and co., the nuclear bomb test, the giant ants (which made me think of those evil little bugs from the Mummy), the Soviet’s path making machine which strangely seemed to create long paths ahead of it which they all used after the machine was destroyed. etc.

Speaking of movies, there is this really cool science film I found from another site.  The narrator could use some lessons on how not to speak in monotone, but the visuals are really cool.  They actually make visible magnetic fields.  My description is pretty poor I know- just watch it, you’ll see.

Magnetic Movie

I have read some pretty scary stories of how politcally correct and bureaucratic the UK has become.  A recent story had some Muslims completely outraged at an advertisement for the police because it had a dog in it, which is considered unclean to them.  The proper response would have been something to the effect of “don’t be ridiculous- it’s just a dog.”  Instead the police apologized and said they would offer an alternative.  I guess it’s not surprising as the PC climate there is such that, if I heard correctly, the police aren’t even allowed to carry a gun with them- they must keep them in the trunks of their cars.

Anyway, the story I’m posting about leaves me shaking my head at where this world is going.  This couple has a teenage son who is epileptic (and has cerebral palsy) and often travels to school by means of a taxi.  Only mom and dad know how to use some special equipment they have if the boy goes into a seizure.  When driving their son to school, there is absolutely no problem whatsoever.  However, he usually has to take a cab due to the car not being available.  Mom has to go with him in case he has a fit, but get this, she isn’t allowed to because she hasn’t had a Criminal Records Bureau check.  Say what?  She’s the mom!  Apparently since the cab is provided for them, they have to follow the rules precisely- being mom doesn’t get her a waiver.  How ridiculous is that?  Of course, she’s going through the process, but really, why should she have to?  Anyway, here’s the link to the story:

Mother stopped from travelling with son in taxi to school

This is definitely going to be the hardest posting I have made… it is just so difficult to put into words what a great friend Chris is.  What he and Lisa thought would be a real downer on my birthday was the greatest present he could give me.  I have always known that you don’t always “get the part”, but to have him tell me what he did just floored me.  I really was touched and wanted to break down not because I was disappointed but because of everything he did when he told me.  He asked me if I was upset by not being cast in the show and if I was he would step down.  He also mentioned that he asked the director to consider double casting the part.  That would be very difficult as she is a first time director.  My Lord what have I done to deserve such an awesome friend.  I was not even tempted to take him up on his offer.  It sounds cliche but I really do mean that if I did not get the role, there is no one else I would rather watch in it.  Plus, I was asked to be the stage manager so I will be a huge part of the show as well.  Just still hoping for that time we get to share the stage in a show as actors only.  Thank you my friend… You have made my 35th birthday one I will never forget.

Work today just draggggged by, especially when 3.00 hit and I was still waiting to leave. I asked for some dollar bills to fill my drawer with thinking that would send a clue. I received by 50 singles and paid for them and still I waited. Finally, at 3.15 I had no line and I went to the time clock punched out and said “adios, places to go, people to see.” Oh, they were sorry.

I arrived at C & L’s house at 3.27 (by my reckoning, anyway). They asked me where I would like to go. Honestly, I hate deciding things like that. We ended up going to the mexican place by Wal-Mart which was actually great by me because it has been a while since I was there. After dinner, C had a meeting to go to so L and I went to see Hancock which I found to be entertaining and very different from the typical superhero fare. I really liked the premise but we both agreed that the twist was somewhat hokey, but still entertaining. It only increased my appetite for The Dark Knight.

After the movie, we went back to the house and awaited the results of the meeting which we all agreed was favorable. The theatre season for 2009-2010 was approved as presented. Little Shop of Horrors is in and Jesus Christ Superstar appears to be a go along with the rest. Those are just two of the shows I was really hoping for (the fact that they are musicals is beside the point).

Before leaving the home of my dear, dear friends, I was given money to revisit the ice cream shop. If I had taken it and not gone, it would have been stealing. So, I went and endulged in a cake batter ice cream cone. I guess you could say I had ice cream and cake in one. All this on the night before L is to go to the hospital to be induced for her fourth child and first boy. YOU TWO ARE THE GREATEST!!! My birthday celebration will continue in my next blog.

I have a book for people with little or no background in Astronomy.  It is called quite simply “The Stars — A New Way to See Them” by H. A. Rey.

I learned my constellations by the  having start charts with lines connecting the various stars in a group (constellations and asterisms) and except for a very few, they looked nothing like what the name given.  Then there were other books that put drawn pictures around the stars, but they did nothing to connect the stars in any reasonable fashion.  Enter H. A. Rey with his book.  He made simple stick figures with the stars that look surprisingly like the names of the constellations.  He also uses English names for the constellations so you don’t have to know Latin to figure it out.  Neat stuff for the beginner.

This book is designed for naked eye viewing.  You don’t need a telescope or binoculars to use it.  As you get comfortable with the stars, he does point out things to look at with either binoculars or a small telescope, but this book is designed more as a major road map, not something that gives you all the little tourist stops.

I will admit that even though I’ve been into Astronomy for over 30 years, I never really took the time to discover or remember the constellations.  I know the major ones, and can use my star chart to find others, but this book will help me to remember ones I don’t know at the present time.   It will be nice to know my way in the sky without having to consult a map every time I look at something I don’t know.

If you struggle with what star is what, I give this book a very strong recommendation.

We became home-owners about a year and half ago, and as fellow home-owners know, it’s a lot different than renting.  For one thing, we now have a yard to maintain and being 2 very busy people who know absolutely nothing about landscaping, we’ve found this aspect of home ownership quite challenging.  As many of you know, my husband is a very hard worker, and when he is off work, we are usually out and about with the kids – no Saturdays working on the yard for us!  So I usually venture outside while I’m playing with the kids in the summer and make a haphazard attempt at pulling weeds and trying to make the yard presentable.  The good news is we have yet to receive a complaint notice on a stick from the city, like I sometimes see in other less fortunate yards.  The bad news is that if we were to ever get one of those notices, I fear now would be the time since I have been immobile with my pregnancy so far this summer.

So my awesome husband tried to make arrangements with a local fellow to have the weeds done for me on my birthday, but the guy showed up and was gone by the time we returned from lunch, etc. less than 3 hours later.  He did get some of the weeds, but not all that many, and lo and behold, the other day we received a bill from him – for $140!!!  Even if he had been here 3 hours, that would be over $46 / hour and he didn’t even do nearly everything he was supposed to do!  Needless to say, I’m going to dispute the bill, but first I’m going to have a baby and get out of the hospital, so he’s going to have to wait.  In the meantime, we’ve enlisted a friend who is a landscaper to help, and he’s going to visit and work hourly on Thursdays…  not the immediate weed relief I was hoping for, but I’m sure he will do a much better job for a much more reasonable rate.  He already visited after weed guy #1 and confirmed that there are still LOTS of weeds in our yard.  I just don’t know what weed guy #1 was thinking…  it’s tough times in the economy and he seemed nice enough, but he must be crazy if he thinks we’re going to pay him that much for what little weed relief he gave us…  My town is going to be offering college classes soon so maybe I should just take a horticulture class and do the landscaping myself from now on…

Unless I finish some of the drafts I’ve been working on today, this will be my last post for a little while – the Dr. finally gave us the green light to have our baby tomorrow!  I am to report to the hospital at 7 am for an induction, and hopefully (unless this baby takes after 2 of his older sisters who were actually born a day after their induction) we will have a healthy baby soon after that.  I would like to thank everyone who has been thinking about and praying for us, and I will ask hubby to email and / or call people when there is news tomorrow or Saturday.  We will send pictures ASAP!

Thanks again so much for your thoughts and prayers – it means a lot to us!

As I write this I am trying out three different weather gadgets on my desktop sidebar to see which one I will keep.  Right now Accuweather says 74° (okay, I just right-clicked and selected options to see which one it was and it updated itself), MSN says 76° (jumped to 79° after I checked its options!), and the Weather Channel was at 79° and just hopped up to 81°.  Well it seems that the Weather Channel one gets points for changing on its own, but which one is right? If I could just find the answer to that I would know which one to keep.  The Weather Channel one, by the way, also loses points for having its logo blatantly on the gadget while the other two conserve space a little better, but then again it has more options.  Sigh.  Until these three, I had used WeatherBug, which not only let me choose the location but also what thermometer I wanted to use in the area from a list of 8-10.  Unfortunately for some reason, after restarting the computer it would no longer connect to wherever it got its info from.  And reading the comments it would seem that I wasn’t the only one with this problem.  So here I am looking for a working gadget.  Well, if I don’t like these three there are always more on the gadget website- seems weather gadgets are a dime a dozen.

This Vista sidebar is pretty nice.  At first it had a little slideshow viewer, a clock, and an RSS headline reader (100 headlines, four at a time, and only the first few words of each one?  No thanks!) in addition to its own weather gadget (similar to the MSN one, but less frills).  I replaced the weather gadget, left the clock gadget- a pretty realistic looking analog clock by the way, and removed the other two.  I also downloaded a CPU/RAM meter and a wireless networking meter, the latter of which is waiting on the bench for me to get a wireless router.  There are also stock tools, search tools, and a lot more for the sidebar.  There are even some mini-games that can be installed.

Well, looking at the weather gadgets again, the accuweather was three degrees below the next higher one, but once again I had to manually update it so this one is probably gone.  However, the other two are at a three degree difference themselves- so which is right??  Sigh.

Well, if I happened to waste your time with this post I just have this to say- sorry, no refunds! 😛

Today being that day that someone ages a year older (not necessarily wiser), I got several emails wishing me a happy birthday… one from an area radio station informing me to listen at 6.50 AM for my name. I also knew that our local station has a birthday quiz at 6.45. I set my alarm a little earlier than usual (I could always go back to sleep). The question posed: “Who played the role of Kevin in the American Pie films?” I knew that it was not Jason Biggs who played the lead, Jim. I must admit that I had enough time to go to imdb to find the answer. After learning that Thomas Ian Nicholas played the part in the original trilogy of films, I rolled over, dialed the phone number, and rather groggily gave the answer. Apparently, Courtney understood me enough since I won a certificate to one of our local coffee shops (I believe there are two).

I will not comment on American Pie, but on another film that Mr. Nicholas was the adolescent star of. In Rookie of the Year, Thomas starred as Henry, a young kid who has a little league accident that gives him the world’s greatest pitching arm. Who should discover him but the lackluster Chicago Cubs (this was 1993… not the phenomenal team of today) baseball team. Cliches abound but the movie is fun to watch for the whole family (if memory serves). John Candy was in the press box. Was Harry still with us or could he not be persuaded to step in front of the screen? If Bob Ueker could do it, why not?

So, a nice birthday present. Hopefully, I have other equally memorable events to post about later.

Currently (as I write this), my top read posts contain two posts I wrote about books. If I look at the posts from the last 10 days, I find posts about books take 4 of the top 10 spots. I just found this fascinating. In fact one of my best few days in blogging (most visitors in a 24 hour period) came after I wrote about my favorite books.

This got me thinking. If I’m not in a play, I tend to read a great deal. Recently my tastes have been stuck in Science Fiction and Mysteries, but I will read different things at different times. Really different at some times, during my high school days I read 4 different encyclopedia sets from A to Z. Ok, one of them was a children’s set I read again, but I did read it during High School.

Anyway, I was thinking I need to take my reading in a new direction. So if you have a book you really like, please respond. I’m going to try to read as many as I can. I’m a quick reader, so depending on the list, it may not take too long.

Yes, this is another one of those posts designed to change lurkers into responders…..

Recent books I’ve read ….

Why did it have to be Snakes (Mysteries of Indiana Jones) Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg

The Early Asimov — Isaac Asimov

Sherlock Holmes and the case of Sabina Hall L. B. Greenwood

and re-reading A Morbid Taste for Bones — Ellis Peters