Sunday, August 11, 2013

Life Needs to be Simpler, Like Just Smash the Aliens


1. No one's using my laptop, so I really should do a blog post tonight because tomorrow's going to be busy. I'm watching a delayed replay of the Phillies game but since they're on a 10 game losing streak, I don't have a lot of hope for them. While channel surfing on Friday, I found a tennis tournament in Canada to watch which made the weekend a lot more fun. The semi-final matches were a lot more interesting than the finals; Serena Williams and Raphael Nadal just steamrolled their poor opponents in their respective final matches. Only 2 weeks until the US Open! Maybe I should get the tennis channel, although, then I wouldn't have time to watch baseball.

2. Speaking (writing) about smashing the aliens, my honey and I went to see Pacific Rim on Wednesday night and it was just as good as the first time, only it went by faster, as it always does, the second time through a film. Then I came home and downloaded the soundtrack and Amazon suckered me into the movie novelization by Alexander Irvine by putting at least 20 pages up on the site for free and by then I was hooked and had to buy the Kindle version and finish reading it on my phone. I made it 3/4 of the way through when my battery died at 1 am. I finished it later and napped a bit while Alex was at school and Miranda was watching television. It's a remarkably good novelization; sometimes they are just corny, but not this one. However, Miranda definitely watched too much tv this week. Tomorrow I'm dragging her on a whole series of errands so I'm sure she'll be begging for relief by lunch time.

3. Tuesday, Miranda has a play date with her best friend, Jason, so I think my mother and I are going to sneak off and see Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. Which reminds me of my favorite quote from 10 Things I Hate About You:

Bianca: There's a difference between like and love. Because, I like my Skechers, but I love my Prada backpack. 
Chastity: But I love my Skechers. 
Bianca: That's because you don't have a Prada backpack. 

You see, I like Harry Potter, but I love Percy Jackson. At least, in the books. And for all of you Potter fans who've never read Rick Riordan, you are missing out. And if you've never seen 10 Things I Hate About You, what is wrong with you?

4. Other books I'm trying to read this week:

5. In my mission to clean off the DVR, I went through 8 episodes of Graceland in 2 days, a new series from USA Networks. The pilot was weak but Aaron Tviet, who was so appealing in last year's Les Miz, is worth watching, and by the second and third episodes, the twisty plots had pulled me in.

My other surprise new favorite it Crossing Lines, a French/American co-production filmed in Europe. All the characters are so wonderfully flawed (Farscape-flawed is how I described it to my honey) that I'm interested to see if they manage to catch the bad guys before they are caught. Perhaps it could be considered Spooks-lite; I never managed to finish the second series of that show, and I tried twice. I only made it through 5 episodes of each of the first seasons of The Wire and Luther, even as brilliant as Idris Elba is; too heavy. Life needs to be simpler.

6. The dog days of August are about to begin: Alex finishes summer school on Thursday and both children do not return to school until Monday, September 9. Hoping to find fun things to do. Cheap fun things to do.

7. Marshall's company picnic will be at the Philadelphia Zoo on Wednesday night and we're looking forward to that. And the weather forecast is partly cloudy and not too hot. Should be fun!

And here's Jen.

No comments: