Wait, what?

My TV just became obsolete.

Tide

We spent a fair bit of time walking around the rocks in Island Bay at low tide yesterday and today. The tide varies a lot and the rocks are pretty craggy, so there's tons of little tide pools. The kids like to wander about and look for little creatures in the pools. There were tons of fish, mostly little blennies but we also saw a crab

but he was petty shy and hard to get a decent pic of. There were zillions of these little blue starfish.

There were some bigger starfish.

No, bigger.

Unfortunately we forgot the camera today, because we found one little pool with some of the little starfish, some blennies, a shrimp and two sea anemones. Pretty cool.

Tramp

We took a wee tramp up to the Eastern Walk near Mount Vic today. There's a open spot that looks down over the Basin Reserve where someone put up a rope swing. It's pretty cool but you have to get up on the part that says "Don't let go".

If you want to get any real air.

I said real air.

I can't imagine where they get it.

Fantasy III

LT came up short, and I, am $800 richer. I believe I might use some of that to buy boots, gloves, flippers, a knife and a snorkel/mask, since I got a semi-dry wet suit for Christmas. Going to be doing some diving this summer, I might even borrow a gun from ES and do a little spearfishing.

Fantasy II

So I left 40+ points on the bench in fantasy football, like a dumbass. Luckily my opponent played a running back that was on the roster as "probable" and ended up being anthing but, and scored 0 points. I'm ahead 99.44 to 64.14. He's only got one player left. Unfortunately, it's LaDanian Tomlinson. The 'Bolts are playing Monday Night this week, so I have to wait until tomorrow to discover my fate. Dallas has already clinched homefield advantage, so the game means nothing to San Diego, which will hopefully result in LT not getting a lot of carries and Darren Sproles getting a lot of Carries. I've got Sproles on my bench so there should be quite a Karmic tug-of-war going on there. I've got my LT voodoo doll all ready to go. $800 .. $800 .. $800 .. $800 ..

Playing Soon

Read it. It's by the guy that wrote "A Simple Plan". I read it because Stephen King gave it props in a collumn in EW. I can't say that I liked it, but I don't know that I can say that I didn't like it. I think it was just too far fetched. It's certainly a page turner. It should translate pretty well to film, though. I'd say read before you see.

Moving, Again

So we're moving, again. Two weeks in company paid housing, two weeks in a self paid 2+1 apartment downtown. Nice location, but, come on, there's six of us, yikes. Now we're moving yet again. We're going to house sit for our friends CB and CT in Island Bay. It's not too close to work but the view is nice. C and C are out of town for a couple of weeks, so we'll be here until the 2nd at the latest and the 28th at the earliest. I really can not wait to start getting settled. This nomad shit is really starting to strain everyone's nerves.

Review: Enchanted

Took everyone out for ice cream and a movie to get the hell out of our (second) temporary apartment Saturday night. This was the overwhelming favorite over "Mr. Magorium and the Willy Wonka Ripoff", which surprised me. I Really liked this movie. The animation at the beginning was crap, about the quality of a low grade Saturday morning cartoon. Jesus Christ, this is what Disney has been reduced to? At least it was short. Amy Adams was brilliant, she had the Disney Princess thing down cold and was perfectly countered by the continually befuddled McDreamy. I thought Susan Sarandon was under utilized as the evil witch. It was a short movie so perhaps her perfomance was on the editing room floor? James Marsden was a bit over the top as the prince, but it seemed like direction, you can't really fault his performance. The story hit all the right fairy tale marks without beating you over the head with it. The songs were done by Alan Menkin, so of course, brilliant. Throw in good pacing, a plot twist that the younger viewers can grok and you have a rather successful little picture.

Four Stars.

Ukulele

The "Wellington Ukulele Orchestra" Came by work today to hawk their CDs, and to give a bit of an impromptu show. If you look very closely, you might recognize the guy second from the left, at least, you will if you watch "Flight of the Conchords" on HBO.

He's Back

Well, I wasn't sure when I accepted the offer, but it seems that PJ and New Line finally made nice and now PJ will executive produce not one, but two Hobbit movies. To the tune of forty million dollars, no less. The release date is 2010 for the first, so it's going to be pretty busy around here for the next 3 or 4 years. Assuming that we get the work. It should be a slam dunk, but you never know. I would really love to work on Smaug, since I didn't get to work on the Dragon in Beowulf.

Cthulu?

It's supposed to be this big secret, but everyone's pretty sure it's just a take on the H.P. Lovecraft classic "The Call of Cthulu". No, not the Metallica song. The story. Anyway, J.J. Abrams is about a sure bet as you will get in Hollywood, so it should be good.

Fantasy

I won my semi-final round in the fantasy football league that I joined this year. I guess a lot of people take it pretty seriously, because I paid $110 dollars to join. Twelve teams. Eight ... hundred ... dollar ... first ... prize, which, I am now one week away from winning. So cross your fingers that Carson Palmer, Larry Maroney, Reggie Wayne, Ernest Graham, Maurice Jones-Drew, Tony Gonzalez, Bernard Berrian, Kevin Curtis and the Indy Defense have carreer days next week, because I could really use $800.

Review: Hitman

Not a bad, movie. It's not a great movie either, but it's hard to pin down exactly why. I think it could've been a great movie, but it was just a little off the mark. Maybe casting? Olyphant, like most of the cast, was competent but not great. Olgs K. excelled in a role that required little more of her than to be very naked and very hot. The action wasn't too cartoony, which is what usually kills this kind of movie for me. I mean, shit got blown up and all, but they tried to maintain some semblence of reality (Shoot 'em up, I'm looking at you). The story wasn't full of holes, but wasn't great. All the little places where this movie missed just added up.

Three Stars

Blocks

There's a web site here, trademe.co.nz. There's pages and pages and pages of old school Land Rovers for sale on it. Cheap. Flatbed SWB's and soft top Series 2A's. Defender 90's and 110's. Some of them go all the way back to the late 50's. Most of them are farm registered only. No, they don't have "Farm Use" painted on the sides. Anyway, I thnk I see a Land Rover restoration in my future. Don't tell Mrs' STFU that I want to put a farm vehichle up on blocks in the driveway. I hadn't ever really considered a Land Rover before, I was always on the look out for an old ('68-'72 FJ) Land Cruiser, or a Willy's, at home, you just don't see old Rovers. I might have to change my mind. I still want a chopped, flat bed '32 Ford, and this Land Cruiser is about the coolest thing I've ever seen in my whole life.

Come on, you can't go wrong with camo!

$3500!, and only 870,000 klicks. It's a Land Cruiser, it'll run forever. If you can't see the potential there, you shouldn't be allowed to drive a car. OK, I love me some Land Cruisers, but the old ones aren't really available here. Might have to get me an old Rover to drag around the surfboards, dogs, kids, tents, etc.

Review: Bee Movie

I've had mixed feelings about this since Dreamworks started with the early promotions way back last year. I mean, Seinfeld's stand up is pretty good, but a kid's movie? To be fair, it is pretty funny, but it's really not for kids. The majority of the humor is geared towards adults. I mean, Larry King jokes? My kids liked it, but I think that they would've loved it had it been more accesaable. The work was competent, but not fantastic. I liked the story, the message wasn't to heavy handed, but the whole thing got a little bizarre at the end. Hey, I was entertained.

Three Stars.

Movie Reviews

I've realized that I've gotten a bit behind on my movie reviews. With the move I haven't really seen too many movies in the last couple of months. I'm going to try to catch up on the things I've seen recently.

Car

We finally found a car. Sorry M, it's another Toyota. Number five, I think. And Land Cruiser #2.

Garden

Since it's close to where we were staying, we took the cable trolley

up to the

Wellington Botanical Gardens

It was nice to get out of the apartment for a bit. They have the coolest
carved tree that you will see all day.

Iran NIE

UPDATE

   Just a couple quick notes. We've decided on a house, it's not perfect but it's good enough. Hopefully after a year the housing market will be a little more resonable and we can look for something to buy. There's not much of a view, but it's big, and it's very close to work. I'll put up a picture when we move in, which won't be until the 29th. Our free housing runs out on the 11th so you can see that this is a problem.

   It turns out that the vet in Valencia screwed up a bunch of the paperwork, and had we sent the dogs with the paperwork that we had, they could have been sent back, or even destroyed. So the delay is just as well. The new vet knew right away that the current paperwork was FUBAR.

   Almost done with my first week of work, pretty slow so far. I've been looking through lots of documentation and asking a lot of questions, getting up to speed. People keep asking me what I want to do, which is nice. I've got something simple for on the side until I get something to sink my teeth into.