Oh my. -15°F, Fair?
It’s like
Hoth
out there.
Cold, ice, freezing desolation.
You may have to climb inside a tauntaun for warmth.

-15!? Double digits below zero mean I may not leave the house today despite the fact I had plans for a movie.

We’re squarely into fall. What have I been doing since August? I seem to be busy. I don’t have kids, but things get busy when the kids and college students go back to school.

As always there is Iowa Hawkeye football with Saturday-consuming fun that includes tailgating, painful losses, awesome wins, and homecoming. I think we turned a corner with our trouncing of Wisconsin last week.

Since the beginning of September, I’ve been taking a knitting class at a local knitting shop. The class is through Kirkwood for eight weeks and I have one class left. Its been fun even though I’m the youngest person in the class by 10 or 20 years. I’m working on my first cable scarf (the first thing I’ve made just for myself) and have also learned new and better techniques that I didn’t have before. The class is offered often and people take it over and over. I may take it again in the spring after I have mastered all the new things I’ve learned. I really need to update my knitting project photos as I have a lot of things I’ve made that I haven’t shown off.

Also in the creative vein, I’ve been rehearsing with a “Sax-tet” that Jerry put together. We’re working on Christmas music to perform in December. We consist of a soprano, an alto, two tenors, and a bari. Its been a lot of fun to get together and play my good tenor (not my abused marching horn) and music that isn’t for marching band. I’ll keep you all posted on when and where we will perform.

On the home front, my new cats, Mulder and Scully, have settled in and pretty much run my apartment, both literally and figuratively. I have oodles of pictures of them to share. Mulder has apparently gotten a bit too much love from me as he’s gained 3 pounds since I got him and now tips the scales at 18.5 pounds! Someone got new light cat food this weekend.
Currently I am trying to wrest a bit of control back by toilet training them. Yes, toilet training for cats! I know it can be done because we had a friend/neighbor when I was young who had a toilet trained cat. I knew I wanted to pursue it when I got new furry family after Mac passed, but Mulder made the choice even easier. Both cats used the litter box just fine, but Mulder had this very annoying habit of digging in the litter box for fun. It could be completely clean and he’d just dig and dig and dig until he hit the bottom of the box. The problem, beyond the annoying sound, was that he would quickly reduce the corn-based cat litter I used to a fine yellow dust, which he would then track all over my apartment. Cats. I’m using a kit from CitiKitty and we’re into week 3. Scully had a small setback yesterday, but the website has many tips for getting them back on track and so far, so good. Hopefully they’ll be trained by Christmas.

Haven’t seen too many movies as of late. The fall TV season has returned and my TiVo always has a stockpile of shows for me to watch. But I have gotten a bit of my recommended daily allowance of theater time. ‘The Dark Knight’ in IMAX is truly amazing. Its still playing in many IMAX theaters, check it out, its worth the drive (if you have to make one). I enjoyed ‘Eagle Eye’ for your action-packed, computers-take-over-the-world needs. ‘The Dutchess’ was gorgeous and well-acted, but be fair warned, its a rather melancholy tale. I’m looking forward to the November and December holiday/awards season offerings.

I saw Kathy Griffin at the beginning of the month with Doogie and Colleen. She was super hysterical and it was a great show despite it being strangely held in Carver-Hawkeye Arena since Hancher is currently out of commission. But beyond that, I haven’t been to any concerts since I saw the Bones the night before the very first home football game at the end of August. I’m saving up my vacation and gas money to hit the road and see Harry (YAY!) four times in December. He has a new Christmas album coming out on Election Day and I can’t wait to get it.

I guess that’s all for the moment.

The other reason is that I think this may be the last night I spend with MacGyver. I brought her home after work with a vast assortment of medications and instructions for monitoring and she’s just fading. She won’t eat at all, she drank once and then threw up the water. It was so sad. She’s stumbling when she tries to walk and basically is just laying on the floor quietly. I feel like she’s telling me it may be her time. She sat on my lap for awhile and slept on her favorite chair. Now she’s just on the floor in front of my TV. I think she’s just worn out.

I’m going to stay up with her as long as I can with her tonight and then see if she’ll sleep on her pillow on my bed one last time. I’ll re-evaluate the situation in the morning but it might be time for her to go gently into that good night. I’ll never be ready, but I feel more at peace with it than I did two days ago.

Again, thanks for all the kind words and thoughts.

It was a lovely day after Thanksgiving day. This morning my mom and I went and got my Christmas tree. It was a spur-of-the-moment change of plans before she left town. The tree was procured at my local Earl May garden center. Which was handy since it was a mile from my place, if that, so we could just have the tree wrapped up and semi-shoved into the back of my car for the trip home. It may not have resulted in the crazy tales from past tree getting expeditions, [note to self: good blog topic for December] but for once, easy was fine. My apartment is now home to a lovely 7′ premium fraser fir. Its been drinking all its warm water today and tomorrow it will be properly decked out.

After the tree was standing and stable, Mom and I went to lunch at Takanami in downtown Iowa City. Their bento boxes are awesome. I had the salmon and mom was daring and had the tofu. The eel was tasty as always. After lunch, we walked around the block to The Prairie Table where my big Black Friday purchases were a new scraping spatula and a new turning/flipping spatula. (Did I mention yesterday that there were people lined up at Best Buy on Thursday night at 5:30PM? When the store wasn’t even going to acknowledge their presence until 3AM on Friday? Insanity. I’d only get up that early to shop if Steve Jobs himself was going to be giving me 50% off a MacBook and ringing it up himself.)

After the big shopping, my mom headed home and I took a shower and then intended to blog, but my internet was down. Annoying. So I watched five minutes of ‘Survivor’ before I realized it was a clip show and deleted that and then watched last night’s ‘Ugly Betty.’ After that, I went to the movies and saw The Mist the latest movie based on a short story by Stephen King. I’d read the short story, so I knew the basic plot, but I knew the movie had a different, more conclusive, ending than the story. But word is that Stephen King loved the change and said he would’ve used it himself if he’d thought of it at the time. Its totally disturbing, even though I kind of thought I knew what was coming. Like a train wreck where you just can’t look away. Overall, the movie was a bit uneven, where some of the special effects/monsters didn’t really measure up to the much more real psychological drama/trama the characters were experiencing. The thrills and chills are there; if you like Stephen King or you like thrillers, I’d say give it a look. If not in the theater, then on DVD.

Immediately following the movie, I went over to Jerry & Sara’s to have some dinner and conversation with Frosty, Margaret, and Brian Moon, who I hadn’t seen in forever. Good times with good friends. Taly was cute as always and Heather & Taylin dropped by for a few minutes to drop off Taylin’s latest Build-A-Bear creation for Taly (a terribly cute Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). We played cards and chatted and I just got home, fed the cat, and watered the tree.

I will have real movie reviewer thoughts tomorrow. Now its like 8:30pm and I haven’t been home since 9am this morning. I need to eat something, watch Project Runway and get ready for tomorrow.

This week has been endless. I can’t believe its only Wednesday today.

First, I read that Joss Whedon (he of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly/Serenity fame) is bringing his Jossy goodness back to television sometime this spring (hopefully) with a new show called, Dollhouse, starring Elisha Dushku (formerly ‘Faith’ from Buffy & Angel).
My only reservation: its going to be on FOX.

Secondly, I read that the X-Files 2 movie now has a release date of July 25, 2008! This summer!
My only reservation: the studio made this comment about the plotline:

the pic is a stand-alone story and supernatural thriller that takes the complicated relationship between Mulder and Scully in new directions.

Please skip all the requited/unrequited love/weird child storyline. Please. Go back in time if you have to. (And while you’re back there, bring the Lone Gunmen back with you.)

Oh sweet cinematic happiness. My favorite TV show ever gives me something new to look forward to. Unless it is really rushed through post-production, it wouldn’t be out until next Christmas at the earliest. 2008 or 2009. Enough time to rewatch all my DVDs in order.

I still wear my X-Files jacket on the colder days. Yes, I have an X-Files jacket. One of those wool and leather “letterman” styles. It says “the truth is out there” on the back and has the X-Files logo on the front.

I will forever be playing “he/she was on the X-Files” in my head whenever I watch TV or movies.

Once an X-Phile, always an X-Phile.

Theaters Begin Barring Children
Some theater chains have begun barring children from theaters after 8:30 p.m. if they are not accompanied by their parents — in hopes of attracting more adults who are put off by the disruptive behavior of some kids, according to USA Today. A spokeswoman for the Midwest chain Kerasotes Theaters said that it is testing “adult-friendly” screenings at 13 of its 95 locations. Marcus Majestic Cinema in Brookfield, WI, has gone further, serving alcoholic beverages and prepared entrees in its adults-only auditoriums and providing a babysitting service. “We want to create an entertainment destination and reach people who might not otherwise come to a movie theater,” Marcus Theatres spokesman Carlo Petrick told the newspaper.

I don’t like the whole trend of “eating a meal” during a movie, the last thing I want is someone chomping on more than popcorn and all those smells, but anything that gets kids out of theaters is welcome to me. Actually, I don’t think this goes far enough, I’d like to see kids banned completely after a certain hour. I know some kids are good movie go-ers (I’d like to hope I was), but the parents I see traipsing into the theaters with multiple children to watch violent films late at night need to be tossed out. Especially the ones who just let their kids run around in the theaters. Arrrgh. The big screen is no more a babysitter than your television. And really, your kid should be in bed and not at the 10:30pm screening of the latest action flick.

We certainly hope you all enjoy the show. And remember, people, that no matter who you are and what you do to live, thrive and survive, there’re still some things that makes us all the same. You. Me. Them. Everybody. Everybody.

If anyone’s looking to pick me up a little something for my birthday next month, somehow I don’t have The Blues Brothers on DVD. Oh the horror!

Three orange whips anyone?

FilmCritic.com – Movie Reviews

In my defense, I don’t know much about movies from the 1980′s. There were two questions about ‘Predator’? No clue.