The Golden Globe nominations were announced today. Excluding TV and foreign films, there are 29 titles. Of the 29, I've seen one. ONE!!! That's terrible, but an accurate reflection of how my year has gone in the leisure and entertainment department. New list is to the right. I'm looking forward to seeing some of these. I'm dreading others. I'll put it out there right away that I probably won't watch The Chronicles of Narnia sequel sequel. I'm not automatically discounting any others quite yet, although chances for The Fighter aren't looking so great either.
We picked this towel up at Alpha Dog Omega Cat in Charleston. It was pretty much the only thing in the store we could afford. Well, this towel and this totally cute strawberry catnip toy:
Anyway. Here's what's part of "A Cat's Christmas": Twelve Tabbies Tapping Eleven Persians Purring Ten Toms a-Spraying Nine Fleas Biting Eight Kittens a-Mewing Seven Siamese a-Sleeping Six Legs a-Rubbing Five Golden Abyssinians Four Furry Footstools Three Clawed Chairs Two Fur Balls and A "Partridge" in a Pear Tree
I'm sorry, I'm just lacking the motivation to do the complete recap of our trip. Or this past week. Here are the pictures to tide you over until I get my butt back in gear.
It was sleeting the other day so I'm mentally preparing myself for winter. By looking at pictures of our first winter at the house. The one with all the snow
Let's just pretend I did a recap last week. I meant to, but time just got away from me. I blame it on trick or treating and the fact that the last day of the month fell on a Sunday. Boo (on both accounts.)
Anyway. Onward.
Monday: We didn't have many kids trick or treat at our house this year - 39. I wonder where they all went? I brought about half of our leftover Halloween candy to work with me to get it out of the house. It goes pretty quickly at work between chocolate-loving accounting folk and the maintenance guys who pop in from time to time. They seem to come around a lot more if they know there's food. Day one went pretty well. The system wasn't as slow as I expected since we had another group of plants go live on 10/31. Hope their experience has been better than ours! Bells was a pretty low-key practice.
Tuesday: I love my new day two. I don't have to come in early, I don't really have a lot of stress over deadlines. It's great. I went and voted after work - it was pretty busy, which was great. It was also great that I didn't have to stand in line to register. (Ha ha suckas!) I was in and out in about two minutes.
Wednesday: Day three is where it starts to get messy. I also had an annual enrollment meeting to attend since the one next week (meant for people who would be busy at month-end) is when I'm on vacation. Skipped lunch, stayed late. Didn't really matter since Adam was golfing.
Thursday: Day four, messiest of them all. Apparently the third month close on SAP is the worst. Guess which month this was! Processing times for WIP and variance calculations were ridiculous and settlements timed out on me and I had to have Tina run them in the background (so it doesn't allow timeouts) for me. *sigh* On the bright side, I got a lot of other things done while I was waiting for things to process. On the not bright side, I was at work late again. But luckily Adam was out and about so it didn't really matter again.
Friday: Finally finished up my month-end stuff. Kind of. Some "misunderstandings" in some new files led to doing the same report three times. Awesome. It was a long day. I left much later than I had hoped, feeling frustrated and needing a drink. Come to think of it, I think I worked later than I wanted to every day this week. And through lunch two days. Yay for month-end.
Adam got home after an adventure (including a fender-bender incident) in Green Bay and we went down to Kodiak Jack's for dinner (see: desire for booze and bad day in previous paragraph.)
Saturday: Shopping - and some crazy prices on leftover Halloween candy at Target. People are work are going to LOVE me! Mini nap. Church and then dinner with Adam's family.
Sunday: Time change left us up for the day at 6am. Weekly cleaning, including cleaning out litterboxes in preparation for a few days away from home. Getting around to thinking about our Christmas party menu.
This next week should be better. We both work Monday and Tuesday and then Wednesday morning we leave for Charleston. This has been Adam's trip to plan so I've been staying out of the details. What I do know is that we'll be in Charleston Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning. We then head up to Charlotte for the rest of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we head back to Charleston and back home. The weather looks good so far and hopefully things go smoothly. We're signed up for a 5k race on Saturday morning so we'll see how that goes. My only experience with races has been counting the donation money and I'm woefully behind on getting my butt back on the treadmill so it could be brutal.
I admit I'm still working my way (albeit very slowly) through Last Night in Twisted River so this list might not be totally accurate. I also seem to remember I couldn't bring myself to read all of Setting Free the Bears so perhaps that's a little unfair as well. But oh well. This is my list.
10) A Son of the Circus
9) The Water-Method Man
8) The 158-Pound Marriage
7) Until I Find You
6) The Hotel New Hampshire
5) The Fourth Hand
4) A Prayer for Owen Meany
3) The World According to Garp
2) The Cider House Rules
1) A Widow for One Year
I don't have a lot to say about many of these individually. John Irving's style and subject matter is divisive at times and it's a matter of taste as to who likes him and who doesn't. All of his books touch on many of the same themes and I enjoy reading and re-reading them. He makes up a good percentage of my home libary.
On our very first camping trip to Door County we went to Washington Island and visited the petting zoo - The Double KW Ranch. While there we met the cutest pot-bellied pigs I'd ever seen:
But then we met this one on our most recent trip:
I don't know - I'm torn. Why are all pot-bellied pigs so darn adorable!
Classic 80s movie or what? Beautiful girl - geeky guy. And Peter Gabriel.
9) Martian Child (2007)
A beautiful film about acceptance and how genes don't make a family a family.
8) The Sure Thing (1985)
Another 80s classic. Cross-country trek for sex when what you're really after is right beside you the whole way. Daphne Zuniga is great in this too.
7) Money for Nothing (1993)
What else are you going to do with a million dollars that you find laying in the street? I mean, come on!
6) The Ice Harvest (1995)
Creepy in a Bad Santa kind of way - I think it's a Billy Bob Thornton thing. Kind of over-the-top violent (see also: Grosse Pointe Blank), but not bad. Good ending.
5) Serendipity (2001)
Sappy, "it must be fate" plot, but it totally draws you in.
4) Must Love Dogs (2005)
Another sappy movie, but full of fun moments and a great supporting cast. Also, wins "best, most hilarious race for protection", hands down.
3) Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
Wonderfully violent plot, great soundtrack, also love Minnie Driver and Dan Aykroyd.
2) High Fidelity (2000)
Another great soundtrack (see what I mean about John Cusack choosing his films for their music?), Jack Black, some great meltdowns. Kind of like Broken Flowers, but, you know, a good movie.
1) Better Off Dead (1985)
Totally stuntperson performed skiing sequences aside, this movie is my most favorite John Cusack film for so many reasons. Classic 80s music (and a Claymation Van Halen video? yes please!):
Hilarious "suicide" attempts, bad French accents, crazy parental antics, and the best little brother character EVER. Oh, and I want my two dollars!!!
Seriously people - go watch this movie. It's wonderful.
