Dinner and two movies

Taking full advantage of Sylvain being at Scout camp, Chuck and I decided to spend yesterday an hour away in Grand Rapids furniture shopping and going to dinner and a movie. Sylvain is in need of a desk and a new chest of drawers, since his old one is press-board and a couple of the drawers have disintegrated. Plus, we're starting to price out a sectional for the den with the hopes of finally getting rid of the post-garage-sale futon Chuck found that currently serves as a sofa. We're pretty sure what sectional configuration we're looking for, so it's down to playing the "too squishy vs. too firm" game, and picking out fabrics. We ended up being able to eliminate the pieces we tried out, so the search continues....


I've been wanting to see the new movie "Moon" on the big screen, and (of course) it wasn't playing anywhere in the Lansing area, but was at the Rivertown Celebration Cinema in Grandville. In the movie, a mining base has been established on the far-side of the moon, supplying the Earth with helium-3, which provided a clean energy source and saved us from our current energy crisis. The base is manned by Sam and companion robot Gerty (voiced in deadpan splendor by Kevin Spacey). Sam is on the tail-end of his three-year contract and is more than ready to head home. Then, things start to go wrong. I'll stop here with the plot for fear of giving anything else away, but let's just say that there was enough stuff to talk about that it sustained Chuck and I thru the majority of a 3-hour dinner at Bar Divani afterwards (note that the duration was on our part, not the restaurant's).

I liked this movie and would definitely recommend it. The movie was the feature debut of David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones. That aside, I really enjoyed the detail of the movie. The track that Gerty moves along; the grime present on Sam's spacesuit; the labeled take-out containers of freeze-dried beans; the sheer boredom of Sam's job, leading him to talk to his plants, whittle a replica of his hometown, watch old episodes of "Bewitched", and become an ace ping-pong player. I loved it how he watches old episodes of "Bewitched". This movie has just been released for a limited run, but when it's available on video giving more folks the chance to watch it, I'd love to talk about it more.

And, as for dinner at Bar Divani -- where else can I get little 2 oz. tastes of great wine and have a plate of cheese, fruit, and crackers for dinner?!? Chuck had a fairly large bowl of steamed mussels and some sort of braised beef. By the time we left, the rest of the Heartside section was coming alive, and if we didn't have the drive home, would have been tempted to hop around to the other wine bars a bit. So, we had a pretty fun Saturday.

Before I go, I'd also like to mention a movie I saw on the small screen Friday night: "Let the right one in". Yes, it's another "romantic" vampire movie (that is, if you consider love between two 12-year-olds romantic). It's a Swedish film about a boy named Oscar, who lives in an apartment building and gains mysterious new neighbors when a "father and daughter" move in during the middle of the night. The "daughter" Eli befriends Oscar while hanging out in the apartment's courtyard one night. She quickly warns him that they "shouldn't be friends"; which he ignores, and solidifies their friendship by teaching her Morse code so that they can communicate through the apartment walls. (Is some of this sounding somewhat familiar, fellow Twilighters?) An additional plot point is that Oscar is bullied by schoolmates, and Eli encourages him to stick up for himself. Meanwhile, Eli does live off of human blood, which is brought to her by her companion Hakan. Hakan seems somewhat incompetent at his "job", which makes me wonder how they paired up in the first place. I'll stop here with my description other than to say that I really enjoyed this movie and am thinking about adding the book to my reading list as I've read that there are some other interesting parts that didn't make it into the film. If you're a fan of vampire-lore, then you'd enjoy this one; there is some blood, but it's not scary -- this is, after all, a love story.

Time wasting

My evening after dinner and washing up the dishes has come to a screeching halt. I've spent the last hour on-line cleaning up e-mail, signing-up for yet another social-networking time-sucker (Digg), and viewing all of the Facebook notifications I've ignored over the past 6-months or more. That's when I saw the funniest little notification glitch...if you don't have a sense of humor like me, then you might not get it, but the image to the right made me laugh out loud to the point where Chuck wandered into the office to see what was so funny.

Last night was a very productive weaving night -- I finished napkin number two and started the third one. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep up this progress. I did watch Chocolat and thought it was a cute movie. I like Alfred Molina and needed to update my movie queue with a few more of his films. But, the movie didn't fill Sarah's objective to open my eyes to the beauty of Johnny Depp. Sorry, but I've still got nothing. I've always been more of a Brad Pitt-gal. Maybe I should send some of those movies Sarah's way....

I realize now that there were a couple of things I forgot to mention a few things in yesterday's post that I just have to get out. First, I'm quite annoyed that SciFi changed it's name to Syfy. Why was this necessary? It's one of the channels that I watch the most and hope that this doesn't mean a shift in programming away from shows such as Ghost Hunters, Eureka, and Battlestar. (Even though Battlestar's run is over, hopefully, they'll come up with a new show that's just as good. I recorded Warehouse 13, but have yet to watch it.) I mean, where else can I count on a completely ridiculous made-for-TV monster movies like Mansquito, Ice Spiders, or Gargoyles: Wings of Darkness?!?

Second, I also recently watched The Machinist -- a Christian Bale movie that is pretty creepy, but somewhat disappointing in that I had a good part of it figured out before the end. It's about a guy who hasn't slept in a year who starts hallucinating. The hardest part to watch about the whole movie is Bale's weight -- this is the role that he dropped 63 pounds for and it really shows. His movie diet was reported to have been coffee, cigarettes, and one apple per day. I'm a little lukewarm about this flick and not entirely sure that I'd recommend this movie...

[SPOILER skip to next paragraph if you don't want to read this: One of the creepiest things about this movie for me was that the day after watching this movie, I saw a link for this article about this 6-year girl in L.A. Sure, The Machinist was a movie (and his hallucinations came from trauma), but to think that such a young person can be schizophrenic is very sad.]

On a lighter note, I know this has been out for the past week or so, but just in case you haven't seen this totally cute video of babies roller skating, then definitely check out this link. And before the smart-ass comments can begin -- yes, I know that's all CGI, but somebody out there can skate like that and I'm totally jealous of them for it.

Lastly, I met my crazy person for the week yesterday at the South Cedar Beaner's. After dropping off Chuck at the Common Ground Festival, I decided to grab a coffee before stopping at Jane's house for knit-night. The guy in front of me was middle-aged, dressed in a tank top and shorts, and had a walking stick. We're not talking about a trekking pole with shock absorbers or anything like that -- it was a tall, simple, knobbly wooden stick with a hole notched at the top for a piece of leather strapping he had tied in a loop through it. Why on earth would someone in the urban wasteland that is South Lansing need such a walking stick? The baristas were very talkative and tried to be helpful as he precariously carried a tray filled with three different drinks and his walking stick out the door. The barista making my drink and I watched as "urban hiker" walked across the parking lot, carefully placed the tray full of drinks on the roof of his car, and gingerly set his walking stick into the back seat. With both of us shaking our heads, I tried to laugh it off by asking, "I wonder where he's going...." "I don't know, but he's a regular and always brings that stick with him," the barista replied. How very strange! He obviously didn't need it while walking to the car; by the look of things, it was somewhat in the way of carrying his drinks.

Maybe I need to hang out at this Beaner's more often in the evening! That'll guarantee more odd-folk fodder for the blog....

Yes, I am a complete stick in the mud

So, here I am loading up my stick shuttle with weft yarn for my woven napkins and am preparing to weave while watching Chocolat (more on this later), all the while waiting for Chuck to call to be picked up from the Common Ground Festival. Call me coarse, but he had wanted to see tonight's Stone Temple Pilots performance. He wanted me to go, but I turned him down knowing that the evening wouldn't end well if I had gone. Call me a complete stick in the mud, but I cannot stand attending rock concerts. I've been to three:

1. Metallica, Suicidal Tendencies, & Danzig (in '94 when Metallica was on tour for the Black album -- being a die-hard Madonna fan, this was NOT my scene, so I was sitting in the car ready to go long before Metallica made it on stage; You may wonder why I was there...I went b/c of my ex....and that was the absolute last time I went to a concert to make a guy happy);
   
2. R.E.M. (in '95 at the Breslin, for which I had scored a free ticket from a stranger whose friend didn't show); and
   
3. Smashing Pumpkins (in '97?, again at Breslin, with the incident where Renee lets out the most blood-curdling scream after nearly stepping on an abandoned pair of women's panties in the parking lot).

[Okay, this isn't counting the infamous "Hey Aimee! Hey Anne Marie! Would you like a little ass in your face?!?" incident during the '94 Verve Pipe concert at the MSU Aud. If you lived on 6 North Hubbard that fall, you may recall this. But, anyways, I don't consider anything held at the Aud a bona fide concert...] Nonetheless, each time not only did I walk away with an insufferable headache, but I spent most of the evening being trounced on. I am only 4'9", after all, and tend to get stepped on when in large crowds.

Now, as for Chocolat: I have 2 confessions to make. Although it was up for several Oscars when it first hit theaters, I haven't previously watched this movie. There wasn't any real reason why, just that it hadn't caught my interest before. Secondly, I don't really understand the fascination a lot of gals have with Johnny Depp. This came to light while discussing the upcoming Alice in Wonderland movie. I think he is a fine actor, but don't feel any particular pull towards him or his movies because of him. Being a Depp fan, Sarah has insisted that Chocolat will change my opinion of him. I'll have to give a review in my next post....so, if you excuse me, I have a movie to watch and napkins to weave.

UPDATE: Just got home from picking up Chuck and he confirmed all of my fears -- even he had a hard time with folks pushing and having beer dumped on (and maybe even urine, though he wasn't exactly sure); and he can't seem to control the volume of his voice, since he can't really hear himself talk.

Finding comfort in old clothes

In case you're just now joining us here in Geoknitterville, I've spent the entire month of June complaining about the heat. Now that we're into the first few days of July, I've found myself in the ironic situation of spending several days in the Great Outdoors in temps that are struggling to hit the mid-60^os. I'm very much enjoying this weather, though am lamenting the fact that I didn't bring a jacket or more than one long-sleeved shirt in addition to my old sweatshirt hoodie.

My hoodie isn't all too special; it's a plain gray, Champion-brand pull-over. It's also the oldest piece of clothing in current circulation in my closet, having owned it since my Junior year of high school (17 years ago). It's now tattered in all the right spots -- along the cuffs and edge of the hood. And I can't imagine replacing it.

Thankfully I might not need it as much for the rest of the trip, since around 2 this afternoon the sun poked through the cloud cover and the overcast sky shuffled eastward. I hadn't seen the sun since last weekend and was starting to feel deprived. Everyone around camp scattered -- Chuck and Sylvain decided to go fishing with Matt and Brian (friends from college), and their wives Heather and Kim packed up to go to the beach. Not liking either option, I decided to hop on my bike and visit our usual campsite in the wilderness area. As I sat on a stump at the campsite to type this entry, a Jeep full of teens drove by on the 2-track. One of the giggling girls sitting in the back yelled over to me, "Hey! Are you taking a shit over there or what?" Yes, folks, even after a 45-minute trek into the deep woods, I still attract hecklers.

Well, I should get going before my audience comes back to offer me some TP. If you're keeping tabs on the tweets, you may have noticed that I made the unfortunate choice to keep knitting Lisa's shawl in the dark by firelight. Normally, this isn't an issue, but somehow I mis-counted and needed to tear back about 5 rows for repair. Being a wannabe lace knitter, I didn't bother with a lifeline, so I guess I got what was coming to me. Tonight, I'll have to switch to socks after dusk.

Dry...for now

There is nothing that I hate more than setting up a tent in the dark. Inevitably, the spot that appeared to be even and stick or stone free will prove itself otherwise in the middle of the night. With that said, our little holiday camping trip was destined to have us doing just that the moment we decided to leave "right after work." We made it to the campground by 10 pm last night and I was in a completely grouchy mood. It was so bad that Chuck left me to set up our tent alone and helped Sylvain with his tent instead, which in the end was probably his best course of action. And to make the night complete, it started to drizzle while we were half finished setting up the tents.

Even though the Jeep was packed to the gills, we each thought of things we could have used, but had left at home. I had forgotten just how cold sleeping on an air mattress can be, and wished we had brought a few more blankets (or even our winter sleeping bags) as it got down into the low-40s last night. Only the most urgent of needs brought me out of the *warm* bed for a visit to the restroom in the rain. Though, I should really be grateful that there's a restroom at all. Usually when we camp in this part of the state (Manistee Nat. Forest between Ludington & Manistee), we stay in the dispersed campsites, where the sites are what we make of it (bathrooms included). We opted for a campground because one of the couples joining us tomorrow is expecting, and a bathroom has moved from being a camp luxury to a necessity. I'm not minding this switch so much since we were able to get a couple of sites that appear to be surrounded by other quiet tent campers.

So this morning after being out and about, I didn't feel like returning to bed. Luckily, our tent is large enough to accommodate the air mattress, my backpack, a camp chair, and a camp table. It was only 6:30, and I didn't want to bug Chuck or Sylvain, so I started working on a shawl Lisa had designed. I was able to make significant progress, and may very likely finish it later tonight or definitely tomorrow. One of the yarns called for in the pattern is Noro Kureyon, which I thought I was buying in a nice peach, teal, brown, gray, and purple colorway. The teal is not a pretty color, but it was something I thought I could live with. However, during one of my visits to Nancy, she flashed open more towards the center of the skein, exposing a very out of place neon, "safety yellow." Don't get me wrong -- I'm a huge fan of light and warm colors, but this yellow looks hideous mixed in with the colors that drew me towards this colorway. My laziness won me over and I never made it to Rae's to see if I could exchange it for something else. So this morning, I made it through the first yarn, and was ready to add the Kureyon. I reached into the skein to draw out my starting strand and out popped a wad of the ugly yellow, which I gleefully cut out. The next time I need/want to knit with Kureyon, I'll definitely be more discerning about the full color varigation.