Two fun weekends in a row

This past weekend was a blast! We didn’t really explore Baltimore that much, but it didn’t matter. We were having too much fun sitting in the basement watching good movies and talking. The friends I was with are fellow Shakespeare nerds, and we enjoyed our first viewing (well, second for one of the other gals) of the filmed version of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2009 Hamlet starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart. David Tennant is mainly famous for playing the title character in a couple seasons of Doctor Who (not to mention being Barty Crouch, Jr. in a couple Harry Potter movies), and Patrick Stewart, of course, is most famous for being Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise 1701-D. It was a brilliant production, if a tad edited for length, and Mr. Tennant is truly excellent at Crazy - a skill needed to play the Prince of Denmark.

It’s been a long week, and a tad stressful given that I work for a heating and plumbing company and we’re getting into prime heating season. I have to get up earlier than usual on Monday, but I do plan on having some fun this weekend. It will mostly involve sleeping in if possible, and playing some Magic the Gathering with two good friends who live closer to me than the ones I saw last weekend. Magic the Gathering is a fantasy trading card game that has been around for decades, and I just started playing it this spring despite the fact that friends of mine have been playing and talking about it around me for years. It’s fun.

Time for another fun weekend!

Sorry for the short post last week, but I didn’t have much to report. There isn’t much this week either, but I do plan on having a good time this coming weekend. I’ll finally be exploring Baltimore, Maryland, and what makes it better is that I’ll be doing so with some good friends. Two of them live there, and two others will be joining us from Pennsylvania. We’ll wander, talk, possibly watch some DVDs, play with a pair of cats (one of whom is a World-As-It-Is dead ringer for Puss in Boots from the Shrek universe), and generally have a good time. I’m bringing my good ol’ 35mm camera, and hopefully I’ll get to have my picture taken in front of Charm City Cakes which is the shooting location of Ace of Cakes from the Food Network.

I came across this on Facebook today, and it’s too cute not to share. Enjoy! http://asana.com/kittens

Happy Halloween!

Yes, I know Halloween’s still a few days away, but I still want to wish everybody a happy and safe Halloween, All Hallows Even, Samhain, or whatever other holiday you choose to celebrate this time of year.

So I successfully lasted through my first 90 days working in the office of a local plumbing and HVAC company. Hopefully my benefits will kick in soon. That’ll be a relief, and I’m able to pay my rent and still have a little fun. ComicCon 2 weeks ago was definitely fun, and now I’m looking forward to the weekend after this coming one. I finally get to explore Baltimore, and what’s even better is that I’ll get to do it with some good friends. Hopefully I’ll have some good stories to tell after.

What a week!

So yes, I went out and had glorious fun this past Saturday. I got up at 5AM so I could get into Manhattan for ComicCon, and I managed to snag a relatively decent spot somewhat close to the front of the packed mob they called a “line.” That meant I actually got into the convention shortly after their official opening time of 10AM. One of the things I found out that these big conventions do is hand out “swag bags.” This was my first really big convention in over fifteen years, and I don’t remember swag bags from that big Star Trek con I went to in Boston back when I was in middle school. Anyway, this year’s ComicCon swag bag is one of those nice re-useable shopping bags, and it contained an Official Con Freebie T-shirt, a pack of popular name-brand bubblegum that has interesting commercials on TV, a single-color starter deck of 30 Magic the Gathering cards, and various advertising pamphlets. I added some free books, some pins, and another good reusable bag to my personal swag, and I managed to pick up a couple extra bags for friends who weren’t able to make it in. I did finally get an official Chewbacca t-shirt! It’s very cool, but not as much as the photograph I got signed by Peter Mayhew. In case you didn’t know, that’s the name of the man in the Wookiee suit, and yes he is that tall. He was sitting down when I met him, but I got to shake his hand, and it’s HUGE! I haven’t noticed that much of a hand-size difference since I was a little kid. I also got to meet and pay my respects to Stephen Lang. Yes, yes, he was the bad guy in Avatar (and my favorite part of the movie, by the way) and the new Conan, and is currently starring in the TV series Terra Nova, but I’m a fan of his work in Gettysburg and Gods & Generals as George Pickett and Stonewall Jackson respectively. Now I just need good picture framed for my signed photos.

ComicCon, here I come!

The New York ComicCon and Anime Festivals are this weekend. Sadly, I have to work both Friday and Sunday, but I’ll be spending a good chunk of Saturday at the Javits Center socializing with my fellow geeks and nerds. I don’t plan on buying much if anything, though that’s subject to change if I find Something Special. My main goal is to try to get autographs from Peter Mayhew and Stephen Lang – Mr. Mayhew becuase I’m a big fan of Chewbacca, and Mr. Lang because he was excellent as General Pickett in Gettysburg. I’ll also be doing a bit of promoting for Lunacon 2012. The Con Chair sent me a good-sized box of bookmarks detailing when and where it’s going to be, and who’s set to be guesting. I’ll be trying to hand them around and leaving small stacks at strategic locations - it’s a good way to get the word out, especially at an even where there will probably be a large number of book nerds in attendance.

I’ve been hoping to re-make a music video I created eleven years ago, but I’ll admit to being temporarily foiled by the lack of certain software on my computer. I took a TV production class at my high school the summer between my junior and senior years. For one of the projects, I took clips from the movie Gettysburg and cut them together to “The Glory,” the big finale song from Frank Wildhorn’s musical The Civil War. It came out rather well, I thought, but the VHS I had it on disappeared years ago. If I do manage to obtain the capability I need, I’d like to remake the video, borrowing from Gettysburg and Gods & Generals. I learned about intellectual property and copyright laws in some of my grad school classes, so everything will get credited at the end of the video once I’m able to get it done.

RIP Steve Jobs

I heard last night that Steve Jobs died. He had one heck of a career, and I’ll freely admit to owning an iPod Video and occasionally shopping iTunes (which I’ve downloaded to successive PCs over the past 6 years). One of the things I always remember hearing about MACs is their legendary near-invulnerability to viruses. A few years back, I heard various stories from someone who used to work heavily with MACs, particularly about how she and co-workers were assigned to try and write viruses specifically for that platform so they could crack what OTHER people might manage to write. One virus I particularly remember her mentioning was one that caused units in the office to start cursing out loud through their speakers. That stuck in my mind because I remember working with MACs for a graphics/web design class I took my senior year of high school. One of the functions these ‘puters had was that they were programmed with a few phrases they could say – my favorite was “HEY YOU. YEAH YOU. WHO DO YOU THINK I’M TALKING TO – THE MOUSE.”

Anyway, just over a week to NY ComiCon, and I’m getting excited! I’m not planning to buy a whole lot (though one friend maintains that buying stuff is the whole reason for going in the first place), though I may need to pick up at least one Chewbacca-related item to ask Peter Mayhew to sign for me. It’ll all depend on whether anything strikes me as being super-special and if I can afford it. I also expect to get at least a couple interesting/odd looks or comments – I want Stephen Lang’s autograph for something completely un-related to his role in Avatar, and I can do a rough approximation of the spoon line from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in German.

Another long week

Is it Friday afternoon yet? This has been one of those weeks that started out OK, then went into a bit of a slide. There’s been a little extra stress at work the past two days, and I realized that I managed to miss seeing Rise of the Planet of the Apes in the same way I missed The Tempest and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 this past winter: I wanted to go, and I had access to a movie theatre, I just didn’t seriously think about making time to go until it was too late. Oh well. It won’t quite be the same, but I’ll probably see about borrowing a copy when it comes out on DVD. Hopefully I’ll get my heine in gear to see Anonymous – the historical drama centered around the Oxfordian view of the Shakespeare Authorship Question – Oxfordians are convinced that Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford, was the true author of the plays attributed to Will Shakespeare, The Man from Stratford.

At this point, I’m really looking forward to NY ComiCon, which is 2 weeks away. I bought my ticket for the Saturday, and I understand that two friends of mine are going to be attending that day as well! Maybe I’ll get to meet up with them for a bit when I’m not trying to get Peter Mayhew and Stephen Lang’s autographs or just wandering and passing out Lunacon 2012 bookmarks. I also heard from another friend that Rockapella is going to be performing in Manhattan in early January. You may remember that a few months ago I was getting more excited about seeing Rockapella perform live at Fairfield University in Connecticut than I was about the Royal Wedding. Jeff Thacher, Human Drum Set, truly rocks my worn-out socks!

Has Fall fallen yet?

The weather’s getting cooler, and the Halloween preparations that got started way back last month are kicking up even higher. I’m glad the super-hot weather is mostly gone, but I’m not a fan of the shorter days. As long as we don’t get another Snowpocalypse like last winter, I won’t mind too much.

Anyways, I finished Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo today, and it’s most definitely good stuff. I look forward to reading Played With Fire and Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, and I’m already sad that Mr. Larsson died before he could give us more stories. I got the three existing Millennium books in a thrift shop, in trade, and from a library’s book sale respectively. I learned some about Swedish culture and lifestyles, journalism, and business. I checked with some friends, and I’m not the only one who thinks Lisbeth Salander reads like she has Asperger’s Syndrome. I actually came to that conclusion before Mikael Blomkvist wondered about it in the story. I’ve read quite a bit about AS, along with having friends who have it.

I’m getting rather ticked off with my computers (3-year-old laptop and older desktop) – both systems are refusing to play my DVD of Comic Book: The Movie that I got from some friends back in March. It’s a mockumentary similar to This Is Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind, Best In Show, and the other hilarious Christopher Guest movies, only based on the relationship between the film industry and comic book fandom. My situation is especially irksome since I’ve decided to attend ComicCon in Manhattan next month, and some of the slated Special Guests (Mark Hamill, Kevin Smith, Peter Mayhew) were in this movie. Regardless, I’m planning to attend the Saturday of the Convention. With luck, I’ll get to meet Kevin Smith (aka Silent Bob), Peter Mayhew (aka Chewbacca), Ian McNeice, and Stephen Lang and shake their hands. That would be awesome.

Books, Bun Bun, and answering phones

As I’ve probably mention, I’ve been working in an office answering phones for the past eight weeks or so. Along with all the wrong-number callers and hang-ups, one of the inevitabilities of doing phone work is getting telemarketers. Some of them are automated, some of them call multiple times in the same day, and they’re all annoying. I stay as polite as possible with the live ones and usually just hang up on the automated messages even if they claim it’s “highly urgent.” At least I know I’m not alone in being annoyed by these people – there is also Bun Bun, a character from the web comic Sluggy Freelance. I haven’t read Sluggy yet, but I’m familiar with Bun Bun thanks to his appearances and honorable mentions in the works of John Ringo. Bun Bun is a cute little bunny rabbit who carries a switchblade, looooooves the Baywatch girls, and harbors a burning (he torched it himself) hatred of telemarketers. I purchased a small Bun Bun doll from the Sluggy Freelance online store, and he’s sitting on my desk at work as a reminder to just let it go when the telemarketers get too annoying. He will be joined soon by Monty Python’s Killer Rabbit – I figure they’ll get along great. “We’d better not risk another frontal assault. That rabbit’s dynamite!”

One of my co-workers is a long-time bibliophile, and she’s raising her kids to be the same way. We’re both big fans of the Pendergast series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. (I’m almost done with Cemetary Dance at the moment, and it’s most definitely up to standard.) I visited a local library’s used book shop last week and picked up some books I thought she and her kids would enjoy, and it turns out that every book I chose is on two of her kids’ reading lists for school. She sends them to a private school, but I’m still highly impressed that those teachers are asking their middle- and high-school-age students to read Clive Cussler, James Michener, Michael Shaara, and Terry Pratchett. I’m also going to finally start Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy this weekend. I managed to pick up used copies of all three books at good prices, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is my next paperback after I finish Cemetary Dance.

What a week.

Sorry for posting late this week, but things got a tad crazy. My job moved its offices a couple towns over (guess what I was doing last Saturday?), so now I need to be up earlier to make sure I get there on time. That means longer days and being more tired when I get home, but I’m sure I’ll get used to the new schedule soon. On the upside, there’s a movie theatre right by work now, so hopefully I’ll get around to seeing Rise of the Planet of the Apes one night before I head home. From the trailers I’ve seen, that movie looks truly awesome – if for nothing else than Andy Serkis’s motion-capture work for Caesar and orangutans swinging about on the bridges.

There’s also a Goodwill thrift shop near the new office location. That means I have a handy place to go if I want to donate any books or old clothes or stuff. I went in there last Saturday after I was at the office for a while helping unpack files, and I’m very glad I did. Not only did I find a Tazz the Tasmanian Devil mug to hold pens and stuff on my desk, I found a 1971 edition of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary! It’s a 2-volume slipcased hardcover, very heavy, but it’s got the whole dictionary in tiny print on that onion-skin paper you see in bibles. I later found this edition on Amazon.com and Ebay for ~$30 and up, but I got it for $15. The magnifying glass that was originally in the little drawer at the top of the slipcase was gone, but that doesn’t matter much at this point. I now have a copy of a truly excellent dictionary!