Chris & Maria's Blog

I’ve looked at this blank page for about 5 minutes now, trying to figure out what to talk about.  What’s new since the last time one of us updated something?

The biggest thing, I suppose, is that today marks the 6 month anniversary semiversary…. 6 months ago we got married (you know your children are destined to be nerds when you and your spouse actually have a conversation about the origins of the word “anniversary” and decide that it can’t be used to signify anything less than a yearly event).  Somehow, it just doesn’t seem like six months have gone by.  That’s fast!  To celebrate, we’re having a nice dinner and this weekend will be going to Biltmore in Asheville, NC to see the Beach Boys in concert (I, too, was amazed they had a website).

There are loads of little things going on right now.  The job has kept me really busy, which is good!  I just don’t have any time during the day to really think about the stuff I’ve got going on the side.  😛  The Highly secret Project we’ve got going on the side is coming together very well.  We were at the studio a couple of weeks ago and were really pleased with the results.  We’re looking forward to seeing further developments on that in the coming weeks.

We went with Pete on Sunday to the world’s longest yard sale (everything has a freakin’ website these days).  It’s 630 miles long!  Needless to say we traveled only a fraction of that amount.  We came across a few interesting things along the way.  I took some pictures, but didn’t buy anything.  It was late on Sunday, and most of the people had packed it up and left.  Next year, if we think about it, we’ll hit it on Saturday and might just drive most of it.

It’s been a LONG long wait for this, but yesterday we finally got to see the first official teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and it’s wonderful! It was somewhat chaotic in our household last night getting everything done and up on Leaky for all the fans to see, but totally worth it!

See the trailer here!

See the HD screencaps here!

I’m thrilled with the trailer. I was expecting the usual lightning fast rush through different images, explosions, flashes of light, characters shouting spells dramatically etc etc. But instead we got just a little bit of that, and also a little summary of one of the subplots – with some superb acting by Sir Michael Gambon (I like him as Dumbledore no matter what anyone says so there) and young Hero Fiennes, who both capture the creepiness of this moment in the plot perfectly. Overall it’s subdued, interesting and thought-provoking, making you want to see more. Teasing exactly how a teaser trailer should tease!

The Dark Knight

The question has been raised in a comment as to why I have not written a review of The Dark Knight.  Well, that’s a good question.  It could be because everyone that 1) has seen the movie and 2) has a blog seems to have posted a review.  So what will the voice of one Batman fanboy have to add to the tumultuous chorus of positive reviews?

The film is amazing.  Perhaps the best super hero film ever made.  I’ve heard some people say the best film ever made, but I don’t think I can go that far.  It’s fantastic and Ledger truly gave the best performance of his life in my opinion.

In other news, not a lot has been going on.  We’re still waiting for Maria’s paperwork to come back, but we knew that would be a process.

I’ve taken on a few consulting gigs in order to boost the savings for the down payment on a house.  As always, I’ve got half a dozen or so irons in the fire.  The difference is that where most of them never seem to get hot before, they are all getting hot now.  Hot enough to keep me busy, at least!

Our Disney World trip has been booked and we will be going to visit the giant rat mouse this October!  I’m really excited about this trip.  Maria has never been, I’ve never known anyone who liked Disney movies more than her (I swear she knows every Disney song by heart).  More than anything else, I’m excited to see her reaction to everything there.  I also hope to be able to go to Universal Studios while we’re there, and get a peek at the Harry Potter construction that’s going on!

Lost Boys II: The Tribe

From time to time, I see a film and I just can’t help but comment on it.  And commenting to friends just isn’t enough.  I have to make my comments public.

I just sat through Lost Boys II.  This will probably not come as a surprise to anyone, but this has to be the worst film I’ve seen in years.  I knew this would probably be the case before I watched it, but I held out desperate hope that at least some of the appeal would be there.  It tried desperately to recapture the magic that was Lost Boys, but it fell very short.

First, the plot is very nearly identical to the first film, except instead of two brothers it’s a brother and his sister.  If you ask me, though, they were more like a brother and sister from Kentucky as they seemed just a little too close.  Not only did they rework the plot of the first film, they also reused some of the same shots and lines.  There was also a sad and desperate attempt by Feldman’s agent to help boost Feldman’s career by spending 30 seconds talking about Goonies…”It’s the greatest movie ever!”  I kid you not.  And Feldman….he sounded like he’s had a three pack a day habit for the last 20 years.  I’ve met him and his voice isn’t that gruff.  What was that all about?  Wait.  Was that acting?  Oh.  Sorry, no.  It wasn’t.

Save yourself from the experience and keep this off your Netflix list.

Yikes!  Sorry for the delay in updates.  I know you check daily, and you cry yourself to sleep when each day passes without something new here.  I’ll strive to do better.

We did the second trip to Nashville for Maria’s biometrics.  We went down the night before and stayed at the luxurious Thrifty Inn.  It’s owned by the same company that has the car rentals.  When searching online, it had great reviews (4.5 out of 5).  In reality, it was just barely okay.  It was clean and fairly quiet, which is what kept us from finding another hotel.  I don’t think we’ll be returning there, however.

The appointment took all of 30 minutes.  After that, we met up with Lizzie for breakfast at the Pancake Pantry.  Wow! It was soooooo good!  We have one in Gatlinburg, but unless you want to get up at 6am to be there by 7am, you’ll have an hour or two wait to get in.  The one in Nashville was pretty busy, but we got there at just the right time.  By the time we left, the line was out the door.  Lizzie’s mom joined us for breakfast too, and we had a really great time chatting with them both.  Leaky Cauldron people seem to always be cool and friendly.  I’ve yet to meet any of them that didn’t fit that profile.

I almost don’t want to post about it, since I fear it may not come true, but we’re going to try to be in Chicago at the same time as Terminus.  Keep your fingers crossed!!

Chris made it to the Ghostbusters blog! 🙂

After six hours on the road (three there and three back), we’ve pretty much recovered from our Nashville trip to see the great Eddie Izzard.  Overall, it was a great trip and Eddie was riot.  He did nearly two hours of standup, then stood outside the Ryman theater for 20 minutes talking to his fans.  Like an idiot, I didn’t take my camera, so I’ll have to wait for Anna to dump the images from her camera so I can post them.

There were lots of cool things about the day.  It started a little rough when Budget didn’t have the car that we reserved (insert Seinfeld joke here).  They made up for it a couple of hours later by upgrading us to a Prius.  So not only did we have a good time in Nashville, we did the trip with a shade of green.  I think my next car will be a Prius or some similar hybrid.  We averaged 45 MPG there and back, and that’s without hypermiling.

We also met up with Lizzie from The Leaky Cauldron.  It’s always nice to meet up with Leaky people, as they seem to be some of the nicest people I’ve met.  So nice, in fact, that I married one of them.  😛

We’ve got to go back to Nashville in a week.  Maria got her  appointment to get her biometrics taken for the green card application.  I’m pretty sure that just means fingerprinting, so that means we’ll drive for six hours in total for about 10 minutes worth of processing.  We’re going to make the most of it, though, and go down the night before.  We’re also going to try and meet up with Lizzie again.  More news as there is news!

High: Our papers being cleared at USCIS. One more step!

High: lots of family time this weekend: We had dinner out for Chris’s mom’s birthday, a barbecue for Father’s Day and  went to a ‘crawfish broil’ at our realtor’s house (she is a family friend).

High: We went to AdventureCon at the weekend too. Chris was a judge at the costume contest – see his pictures with fellow judges Danielle Harris and Jennifer Blanc, and with Michael Biehn and Ernie Hudson. We also met with Disney artist Richard Green – he animated Lumiere in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ – which was great fun, and we bought an original piece of artwork from him.

Low: ummmmmm…..er……..

A round-up of last week, while I can still remember it….

High: Spending Saturday evening playing crazy golf / putt putt and retro arcade games.

Low: Dealing with Ginny’s Liquid Evil on Monday morning. I’m not even going to explain what that is, it’s too revolting.

High: Booking tickets to see the Beach Boys. Woohoo!

Low: Finding our perfect house, then finding it already had a contract on it.

High: Taking a trip to Elkmont in the mountains to watch the fireflies. They were absolutely amazing; just beautiful. Taking pictures didn’t really work, it’s more something you have to watch to appreciate I think. However Chris and Pete did get some great photos of the river, and I really like these two that Pete took of us here and here.

Last week was a interesting week of highs and lows.

Low: getting woken up by Trixie yelping and moaning in pain. She wouldn’t put any pressure on her back left leg and kept whimpering. Of course it was a public holiday so we had to take her across town to the emergency out-of-hours animal ER. She got progressively better the longer we waited there and by the time we left she was almost running! Anyway the vet thought she possibly had some tissue or ligament damage and she got given some anti-inflammatory drugs but she only needed to take them for a couple of days before she was back to normal.

High: spending a great afternoon / evening at the Yeary’s Yearly Memorial Day Feast. Both food geniuses (genii?).

Low: losing a very special lady. Neighbour and friend to my parents for nearly 30 years, Rosemary also featured in what I believe is my very first memory at pre-school nursery. She will be sorely missed.

Low: losing my parents cat (who also belonged to a couple of my sisters at various points in his life). This was before last week but as most people agree, Beamish was a wizard so time frames don’t count with him. He lived for a couple of hundred years at least.

High: spending Friday night with a great group of women watching the SATC movie, and then eating chocolate fondue afterwards. I’ve never seen so many pairs of high-heels in a cinema!

High: Trixie’s summer haircut.