Movie Update

I watched two movies on Friday night.  I wanted to see Music and Lyrics with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.  Since I couldn't think of a soul who would want to go with me, I took off a couple of minutes early from work to catch the 5:15 show at the theater on my route home from work.  While I was in line to buy my ticket, I noticed a movie called Amazing Grace.  I'd never heard of it, but from the poster it looked like a period piece - which naturally captured my interest.  I noted in my little brain that it was PG (maybe PG-13) and that the next showing was sometime after 7:00. 

Oddly enough, the movie I'd gone to see played the trailer for Amazing Grace.  Yeah.  Totally my kind of movie.  A period piece about the Member of Parliament who struggles his whole life to outlaw slavery.  Check.  I'll be seeing that one.

So anyway on to the movie at hand: Music and Lyrics.  It's not terribly original.  It's a replay of two other movies I've seen before, Paris When It Sizzles and Alex & Emma, neither of which did much of anything at the box office (not that I was around for the first one).  Two complete strangers meet and have to write something, in this case a song, within a pretty unreasonable deadline.  The two lock themselves away in the man's apartment and (I don't think I'm really spoiling anything here) fall in love in the process.  The small variation in this movie is that the woman is more than the secretary or stenographer.  She is an essential part of the creative team.  (The other two movies feature men reciting their screenplay or novel to a secretary/stenographer.)  Also unlike the previous movies, we don't get to see the fictional characters act out the story that is created by the two "real" characters since they write a song. 

However, neither of the other movies show us gloriously horrific 80's era music videos featuring a lip-synching, hip shaking, pelvis thrusting, hair flopping Hugh Grant.  Can you say, "Like, totally awesome?"  Hugh Grant's character was a member of a band that is very obviously based on Wham! and unfortunately for him, he's not the George Michael character.  He's the "Where Are They Now" Andrew Ridgley-esque has-been who now headlines high school reunions.  As a woman in her 30's who happens to think that Hugh Grant is really funny, I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  I don't think I've giggled so much at an opening scene in quite a long time (the aforementioned 80's era video).

This movie also brought me one of my all-time favorite lines ever.  Drew Barrymore's character and I share an annoying habit.  At one point, Hugh looks at her and says, "You look mad, maybe you should click your pen."  That's right, she's a pen clicker.  I don't think anyone else laughed after that line, but I was guffawing.

To sum up, it's not going to win any awards, but it's cute enough for a rental at least.  But if you're my age and like Hugh Grant or Drew Barrymore, I won't think less of you for seeing it in the theater.

And I did pop in to see Amazing Grace.  Get ye to a theater now to see this movie.  It lives up to the first word in it's title. 

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2 Mondays

(I tried to post this earlier today, but it didn't take...)

What separates me from Asia? 2 Mondays. Wow. I can't believe that I've only got two weeks of work left until I leave.

I am nervous about going because I've been having a lot of digestive trouble this month. Thankfully, what I know as Chinese and Japanese food over here seems to be easy on my system. But I have no idea what the real cuisine will do. I will probably buy a bottle of soy sauce and keep it in my pocket the whole trip. If the only thing on the menu I recognize is rice, I will be ready to eat it.

Have soy sauce, will travel.

Horsenbuggy: Dragonslayer

One of my biggest obstacles since taking this new job has been one particular woman in a pretty key position.  She is ornery and very difficult for the majority of people to deal with.  She is a bully who doesn't like to explain her reasons for doing things.  She simply forces people to bend to her will even if her way only benefits her.  My boss has a pretty good way of dealing with her. 

When I first started here, I used him as a buffer.  Sometimes to verify that my way of thinking made sense.  (She's that kind of bully - the one who can make you walk away doubting your own opinion.)  But mostly I used him as an intermediary - the one who had to break what I thought was going to be bad news to her.  Eventually, I found out that not even he always has the fortitude to approach her.  Sometimes he uses an intermediary, a woman in her department who knows how to deal with her.  So I alternately bounce back and forth between the two middle-people when I need to deal with this woman.

The good news for today is that I have had to deal with her twice this morning.  The first time, I came out of her office knowing that everything had gone well.  The woman who usually acts as intermediary called me over to say, "Wow.  That was easy.  Good job."  On a second issue, someone further down the hierarchy in her department called me to discuss a new system we've been developing.  She said, "It's ready.  When are you going to tell [namewithheldtoprotectthenotsofriendly]?"  I said, "Right now."  I marched over, asked the girl to join me and we presented a united front in her office.  I did all the talking and said that we were changing over to the new system this week.  She had one or two minor questions that I was able to answer easily.  And that was that.  When we got back out into the hall, both the girl who was with me and the usual intermediary presented me with shocked faces.  The Intermediary said, "Wow.  We're calling you to deal with her from now on." 

I have slayed the dragon.  (Or at least put her to sleep, she'll never truly be slayed.)

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Help! I'm Totally Addicted

I am totally and completely addicted to soccer.  Arsenal played in the 4th Round of the FA Cup playoffs yesterday.  I scheduled my Comcast DVR to record it.  Not thinking about it being a playoff game, I then casually perused the rest of the channel line up to record one or two other games. 

During the day, my mind would occasionally wander thinking, "Ooh, I get to watch Arsenal play tonight.  Yippee."  And when I finally arrived home, I settled down to what I hoped would be an enjoyable evening of winning (for us) football.  I was very happy that Fox Soccer Channel showed a little more of the mundane-ish pre-game stuff like the coin toss and the players jumping around on the field to warm up.  This is silly stuff, but it makes me feel a little more like I'm there.  FSC usually edits this stuff out to only show the meat of the game in their rebroadcast.  That's how they keep games to a tidy 2 hour time block.  Anyway, it was a fun change.

Then the game was so stinking exciting.  Arsenal have gone behind in something like their last 13 games only to either eek out a tie (yes, soccer allows ties in regular season play) or to barely win the game at the last minute (or second).  But this game got off to a great start when we scored the first goal in the 13th minute (a game officially has 90 minutes, but it's always a little more than that).  What was even more nail-biting is that Arsenal didn't bring their best players to this game either because the manager decided to give them a much needed rest or because they were out on injury or suspension (Henry, Fabregas - resting; Van Percy, Gallas - injured; Senderos - suspended; Lehman - resting AND suspended).  So while we still fielded a good team, it wasn't the squad we would have put up against say, Manchester United.

But none of that seemed to matter because the Arsenal side looked fabulous the first half of the game.  All except for one player.  Julio Baptista (who sucks).  "Who sucks" is now my tagline for this guy.  Every time they said his name on TV, I added "who sucks."  I'll concede that he didn't suck when he scored 4 goals in one game last month (that's REALLY impressive for you non-soccer people).  But he just was "off" for the entire game last night.  What is so frustrating for me is that no one in the Press seems to have noticed.  He really really really sucked.  He should have been pulled after the first half, but Wenger let him stay in.  (And it turned out to be a good thing that Wenger didn't burn one of our three subs that early in the game.)  There were other frustrating mistakes made by important players during the second half.  Notably, Gilberto missed a penalty kick and Adebayor missed a one-on-one shot that even the 50-something year old announcer claims he could have made.  But Baptista "who sucks" went on to miss a penalty kick as well as all the crappy missed crosses and bad shots he made during regular play.  At least those other two mistakes were basically the only mistakes Gilberto and Adebayor made during the whole game. 

(I know none of you care about any of this, so I really appreciate you reading anyway.)

The bad news finally came in stoppage time (they don't ever stop the clock during a football game so at the end of a half, the refs tack on a couple of minutes to account for any delays that happened like penalty kicks or injured players laying on the ground or refs having to talk to players about fouls they committed) when Bolton finally tied the game.  A normal game would have ended there, but this was a playoff game.  We had to have a clear winner to advance to the next round of play.  So for the first time since the World Cup, I watched a game with Extra Time.  They play an additional 15 minutes (with stoppage time added on if it is needed).  If the game is still tied, they play another 15 minutes of Extra Time (with stoppage time tacked on).  If it is still tied, they go to a penalty kick shoot out. 

Just as the announcer was saying, "We'll have to go to Extra Time," my recording ended.  I literally screamed at the TV.  Fox Soccer Channel had used up the 2 hours they'd allotted to this game.  I knew they would have continued to broadcast the game, but it would have rolled into the program name of whatever was to follow.  So the only way I was going to see the end of this game is if I had recorded whatever was supposed to be shown next.  Did I?

Find out next week...

Just kidding.  Of course, I did.  See, the title of this post is that I'm addicted to Soccer, not just Arsenal.  When I was choosing which games to record, I noticed that the game coming on after Arsenal's was some championship for some league I'd never heard of.  I said, "Hey, why not?  If it's boring, I'll delete it.  But it may be a good game."  SO I HAD THE ENDING OF THE ARSENAL FA CUP GAME RECORDED BECAUSE I'M A FREAK!

I brought up that program and watched Arsenal do a whole lot of nothing in the first Extra Time period.  Then Freddie Ljunberg, who came into the game as a substitution because he's just coming back from a bad injury and who clearly DOESN'T suck, scored the beautiful winning goal.  To add insult to exhaustion, Adebayor scored on another gorgeous no-defenders-in-sight break to make the final score Bolton 1, Arsenal 3.  (I have completely erased it from my mind that Julio Baptista "who sucks" helped Adebayor score that final goal.) 

If anyone's interested, Arsenal advance to the 5th round, playing Blackburn on Saturday.  Hopefully that game will end after the standard 90 minutes.

But this game reminded me of why I began watching soccer in the first place.  It's unbelievably exciting.

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Hospitals Lead to Sickness

So, I spent the weekend with my mother in the hospital and now I'm sick.  Does that seem right to you? 

I woke up Monday morning with a raging head cold.  Two days later, I'm just about to finish off my first bottle of cold medicine and first box of tissues.  I just got back from Walgreens (my favorite store) to pick up two more bottles of cold medicine (daytime and nighttime variations) and another box of Puffs with lotion.

The bad thing is that I usually don't get in front of these things and they will linger for a while into a real infection.  I don't have time for this cold to linger into an infection.  I am going to Asia in 1 month, 2 days and 3 hours.  I will not be sick in Japan.  I was sick on a vacation once.  It wasn't fun.

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Why I'm Nervous About Asia

The African Hag will laugh at me, but this scares the pee into me...

"Nice" Japanese toilet

Weekends Update

It's been a while since I've given a Weekend Update.  I'll try to think back to the last few weekends...

Three weeks ago, dear sweet AliGail invited me to Martinis and IMAX.  I couldn't convince any of my friends to join me, so I went alone.  It was fun.  One of the most interesting things was running into a brother that I hadn't seen in over 10 years.  At one time, I was very good friends with the cousins of this brother.  They moved away years ago and even though we haven't kept in touch, they still hold a very special place in my heart.  So, it was nice to see him and even more surprising that he remembered me.  (That Bethel really builds fine qualities into people.)  I think that was probably the weekend that we did the Pioneer Dinner, too.  Our bookstudy fed the pioneers after their congregation meeting.  We have so many pioneers, that once you included their families, the elders and their families and our bookstudy, we had almost half the congregation to feed.  But it was nice.

Last weekend, I was invited over to a pioneer sister's house to play cards.  That was nice.  My partner and I won after trailing for most of the game.  I've tried very hard to quell my competitive spirit over the years, but it is still fun to win.  Saturday, I had to go down to show Stinky Garbage Trailer to some people who actually kept their appointment.  They liked the house and made me an offer.   I accepted the offer and was scheduled to go over the terms with them this past Saturday (as in just two days ago).  You'll find out why I had to miss that later... 

After showing the house, I called AliGail's family to see what they were doing.  They never don't have plans, but I thought I'd try since I was three blocks away.  They were home (surprise, surprise) and of course told me to head on over.  They were scheduled to attend a housewarming party later that evening.  When I found out who the party was for, I invited myself along.  They were going to a party for a brother in their congregation who I used to work with at my old job, in the same department.  I knew he wouldn't mind if I crashed the party.  It was strange seeing so many people from my old congregation.  In reality, I only left there about 15 months ago, but it feels like a lifetime ago.  I think AliGail's family were partied out (they had been to a small lunch gathering earlier in the day).  We left after about an hour and headed to the movies.  We saw "Pursuit of Happyness" which I have wanted to see, but could never get around to.  It was good - I really like Will Smith. 

Then on Sunday, our bookstudy had hospitality.  There were only a couple of us able to do anything.  We kicked around the idea of having lunch at someone's house, but eventually just decided to take them out.  After the meeting, so many in the bookstudy cancelled that my brother-in-law and I (my sister was at home with a sick kid) had to recruit from outside the bookstudy.  We had a nice lunch - the speaker and his wife were close to my age and grew up not too far from where I used to live in Florida.

This Friday, Frau Adorable and Number 11 called me to go to Thai for dinner.  We had a nice time.  The place has some new music which distracted me terribly.  Instead of the traditional Asian remakes of American songs, they've got Karaoke remakes (in English) of American songs.  The person singing is pretty good, but not quite as good as the original singer.  So when the random woman was doing a Karen Carpenter song, I was a little bit impressed but disappointed at the same time because I'd rather just hear Karen.  She (or another woman) did a fair Whitney Houston impression until she missed a few key notes in "I Will Always Love You."  Then a man really committed the ultimate crime by trying to sing a couple of Queen songs.  No one can match Freddie Mercury (though George Michael is a decent second choice).

Saturday I was woken up by a phone call from The Doctor telling me that Mama was in the hospital.  I got down there at 9:00 am and stayed with Mama until Daddy relieved me at 11:30 pm.  It was a bad bad day for Mama.  The hospital staff were not very concerned about seeing to her needs in a timely manner.  I also got attitude from her nurse when I tried to relate Mama's medical history.  The nurse told me that she wanted to hear it from Mama and no one else.  That made me so mad.  I understand that Mama is best suited to tell her about the current symptoms.  But she doesn't know my mother.  She doesn't know that Mama couldn't tell a story in order with an accurate level of detail if her life depended on it.  Add to that the fact that Mama had received at least two doses of Morphine already...  It still makes me mad thinking about it.  The nurse got a little nicer, but she was still in no hurry to take care of Mama.  The only people earning their keep are the "techs" - the ones who take vital signs, assist patients in the bathroom and clean up.  I suspected that a piece of equipment they had hooked up to Mama was not working, but I didn't push them about it.  It was one of the techs who finally noticed that it was, in fact, not hooked up correctly.  She called it to the nurse's attention after I left.  Once it was finally connected - at least 10 hours after it was painfully inserted into my mother - the equipment began doing its job.  This medical system stinks.  You have to fight tooth and nail to get the kind of attention that you deserve.  You cannot assume that "they" know what they're doing.  "They" don't always know best.

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