Laid back but tiring day

Let's consider this evening's blog post to be a compilation of all the Twitter posts that I was too busy/distracted to make today.

This morning. Got up around 8 a.m. (very decadent of me). However, due to chronic pain issues, staying abed that late is never a good idea. It took me about three hours to lubricate my joints enough to be somewhat functional. Over the course of the morning, I caught up my financial records in Quicken, attempted to program my new Logitech universal remote control, and finished burning "Pebble in the Sky" to CD so I can listen to that during my commute next week.

After I got my aches and pains calmed down, I wandered down to the basement for a 45 minute stint on the bicycle. Took a shower, and then went out to lunch with Goblin. After lunch we went to see the new Nicholas Cage movie, "Knowing". In short: interesting, good, and way weird. After the movie we went off to do our weekly grocery shopping at the super Walmart. We picked up the DVD of Twilight and U2's new CD while we were there, along with a few cheap t-shirts. The diversity of retail therapy options is one of the reasons I like doing our grocery shopping at the evil W-empire.

When we got home, we had a nice little dinner while watching the final episode of Battlestar Galactica. No spoilers here, but ... pretty nice shutdown. I may actually have to get all the DVDs now.

I still have some major items on my weekend 'to do' list. Hopefully, I can attack them productively tomorrow.

Brief reflections on Hell Boy

We went to see Hell Boy 2 the weekend it came out. I really love the three main characters (HB, Abe, and Liz). Hell Boy is so likable. He is fun loving, easy going, and he loves cats. I find it amusing that he and Liz are attracted to each other. I mean, after all, he is a VERY upbeat demon. She is a depressive goth girl. Um ... opposites attract?

Here's hoping that they continue the series. I could do with a Hell Boy 3.

Go see Iron Man

Great flick! And ... hang out for the extra time past the impressively long list of credits. It's worth it if your are a Marvel fan in any way, shape, or form. (Oh, and of COURSE Stan Lee is in the movie. Keep your eyes open.)

I think this is the best role I've seen Robert Downey Junior in, in a very long time. I think he had a lot of fun with it. (Though I really liked him in Charlie Bartlett.) And, boy was he buff!

Jeff Bridges did really well with his role, particularly towards the end of the movie. If I told you any more, I'd have to issue a spoiler alert.

Totally frivolous use of a huge hard drive

A few weeks ago, I purchased a wonderful 750GB external hard drive. We have TiVo and I use my desktop computer as remote storage for shows that I want to save. I mean, after all, my TiVo only stores about FORTY HOURS of programming. ... Yes, I know that's a lot. However, last year we recorded two entire seasons of "Star Trek: Voyager", and we sometimes record movies that we've been meaning to watch which aren't readily available at Blockbuster.

OK. I know I'm rationalizing here. But here is the ultimate frivolous, TiVo-related, use of this grotesquely large hard drive:

We do not subscribe to any of the premium cable channels (HBO, SHOWTIME, CINEMAX, etc.) This weekend, HBO and Cinemax are free. So, we're basically recording about 60 hours of movies and off-loading them to my hard drive periodically. This way, we have a little library of 'on demand' programming of our own design. No driving to the video store. No waiting for the movie to arrive in the mail. No paying to buy it (even used). We have over twenty movies queued up to record this weekend. Most of them are movies that we've been wanting to see. Some are flicks that we'd consider picking up if we noticed them in the video store.

We do get Encore and Flix, and we've started gathering a little stock pile from those two channels. After the writers' strike, we truly appreciate having a stock pile of things to watch. With the new hard drive, I could easily stockpile over 500 hours worth of movies and still have room to back up photos and music files. ... I wonder if I should have sprung for the full terabyte?

We are SO indulgent.

Not as productive as I would have liked, but ...

I really had a great five days off from work. Yes, I obsessed WAY too much about my paper, which I have to present tomorrow night. While I worked my butt off on the research, I am started to doubt myself in the thesis/analysis at this point. I'll probably do just fine since my instructor is a pretty easy going guy.

While I made ZERO headway in cleaning anything this weekend, I did finally get around to installing an external DVD burner on my old workstation. I bought the burner on Halloween and it's been sitting in my office in the box it shipped in since then. Though, I'm still futzing around with the software that came with it so I can burn some CDs from audible.com.

We went out to see "No Country for Old Men" last night. I recommend it though it is a rather dark weird movie. I kind of want to read the book now to see if it gives any answers where the movie left only gaping questions. When the film ended, several people yelled out things like "You're kidding me, right?"

Since we watched a couple of horror movies this week, I felt the need for fluff tonight. We rented Jennifer Garner's "Catch and Release". Kevin Smith is in it as a secondary character, so it'll have at least THAT as a redeeming characteristic. We also watched "The Holiday" this week, which I recommend when you are in the mood for humorous romantic fluff. Sometimes 'fluff' is just what you need, and not all 'fluff' is created equal.

We're anxiously awaiting the weekend of 12/14, so we can see "I Am Legend". It'll be perfect timing. As it stands now, I have to work on a major project cut over on the morning of the 15th. A nice apocalyptic action movie will be just what the doctor ordered coming evening.

As to the mess that is my room ... better luck next weekend?