Havasimy

I hope everyone had a happy holidays. I'll give an account of my holiday weekend later. I'm in a middle of a slightly busy week. I drove back to NJ on Monday morning, so I only got to work half a day on monday. Last time I did that, I made up the time on the Friday, which like this friday, is an off friday for me. The thing is, this friday is a company holiday so I'm not sure if I'll be able to enter time on the timecard for this friday if I worked it. So what it comes down to is that today, tomorrow and thursday, I'm working 32 hours. I got eleven hours in today. But I'll atleast have a three day weekend to recover from it.

After the three day weekend, I'll have a two day weekend with no football games to watch (the steelers have a bye week), so that'll be like a three day weekend. The following weekend will be a four day weekend, since the first time ever, including college, I'll have Martin Luther King Jr day off. It's interesting that four out of the seven set holidays are in a two month period between mid-November and mid-January. We also get three floating holidays, so it's not that bad. Having MLKJr day off means I don't have to rush back monday morning to get some work in.

I got my shopping done!!!

Well, except for one thing, but I can't buy it here. I'll have to pick it up in Pittsburgh early on Christmas Eve.

This was one of my three day weekends. Since I drove back monday morning, I worked friday morning to make up for it. After work, I went to see Ocean's Twelve.

Overall, it was a fun little movie. I'm not sure if I liked it better than the first. The first one got along on pure style and rhythm. The second was slightly off on both. Overall, it was a good movie, worth the matinee price I paid to see it. It was definitely helped by the addition of Catherine Zeta-Jones, especially since Julia Roberts looked old, but her being pregnant at the time might have had something to do with it. Or maybe they had her look that way on purpose. It essentially looked like she wasn't wearing make-up and I don't think that look would be an accident. Maybe it was to create a difference between her and another real-life character in the movie that is referred to but never actually seen. I've like Zeta-Jones, though, ever since the movie "The Phantom" came out and she uttered the line "He could have had me, but he chose her. That could only be love."

The movie was actually more believable than the first, but the twist were far more obvious. Anybody who knows about the "Movie Law of Conservation of Characters" will see it coming immediately. The main twist of the movie can be sensed but not actually predicted because they kinda cheat by withholding some details about it. Overall, if you liked the first one, you'll probably like the second. I'm not sure if it's a movie I'll want to see again when it comes out on video, but it was a good movie to see to take my mind off work and christmas.

Speaking of movies I might not want to see again. I see that "Open Water" is coming out on DVD. This was a good movie in the theatre. It wasn't not really a scary movie like some people claimed it was. At least not in the usual sense. I guess you could call it scary in that it played with fear of abandonment and helpless and death. At no time during the movie was there anything that was trying to get me to be afraid. What this movie did was stay with me. When the lights go up after most movie, I might discuss it but most don't leave me still feeling the events of the movie afterwards. That being said, I didn't plan on seeing the movie again. First of all, in the theatre, the movie takes up your entire view, so the emptiness of the movie is increased by the big screen. The smaller screen as well as standard distractions at home seems like it won't be as good watching it on DVD. Also the short running time (79 minutes) and the fact I now know the ending made me decide that I would not bother buying it. But I just read a review that referred to director's and actor's commentary and featurettes that talks about stuff I was wondering about, so now I'm thinking about picking it up. At least I'll have to get it off of netflix so I can listen to the commentary.

After the movie on friday, I went to the nearby mall and did some Christmas shopping. The mall wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but then again it was still a weekday late afternoon/early evening. People would still be at work.

Saturday morning I slept in. Woke up to give myself plenty of time to wash up and go watch the steelers game at the bar. When I was in the shower, I thought I heard the phone ringing, which I thought was funny since I don't keep the ringer on my phone loud enough to hear it in the bathroom with the door closed and shower running. Then a little later I look down and the water is dirty. Turns out the city was replacing the water main and didn't alert anyone but the local hospital. The sound I heard wasn't the phone. It was the loud speaker they use for fire alarms and other emergency-type alerts. They were telling people to not use the water because it was dirty. It didn't help me since I was in the shower. I ended up washing myself off with a jug of water I had in the refrigerator. Not the most pleasant experience. I went to watch the Steelers game and got to it right at kickoff and watched the Giants take the opening kickoff back for a touchdown and then make a interception of the Steelers first offensive possession. Luckily, after that, my day started turning better. After the game, I decided to avoid the mall and go home. I ended up playing on the computer the rest of the night.

This morning I again slept in. I got up and cleaned my bathtub. It was dirty from the dirty water from yesterday. I ended up cleaning the whole bathroom while I was at it. I then proceeded to go to shopping. First stop was Target, where I lost my good pen I was using to cross stuff off my list. I picked up alot more than I thought I would there. Then I went to the mall which wasn't as crowded as I expected, although it was extremely busy. I read somewhere that the saturday or sunday (I forget which) before Christmas is the busiest shopping day of the year, except when Christmas is on a saturday. Then, the busiest day is Thursday the 23rd.
Maybe people are waiting til thursday. I finished up my shopping with the ToysRUs on the way home. Now, except for one pittsburgh-centric gift that I need to pick up early on Friday, I have my shopping done.

If anybody wants an idea of what to get me for Christmas, I'd accept the car pictured here.
I'd also accept the Shelby mentioned in the article.

Went to the Steelers-Jets game with a my brother and a couple friends of his from college. One of them, Bill, has been living with a girl since before any of the other guys even knew their wives. While we were tailgating, my brother jokingly asked Bill if he had married Sarah yet. Bill replied, seriously, "Yeah. Didn't I tell you?" Apparently, they decided to get married but not have any celebration. So they went down and got married in a civil ceremony. Bill told the IRS, their health insurance company, but forgot to tell his friends.

Anyway, a belated Congrats go out to Bill and Sarah.

And while on the subject of marriage and college friends, I realized earlier this year that, while I've gone to a number of weddings of people I've met in high school or before and one wedding of someone I met after college, I have yet to go to a wedding of someone I've met in college. Of all my college friends, all but two of them have married. (Three if you count a guy I met at the college radio station shortly after I graduated.) I guess that's the difference between my students at my high school and college. Either the people I went to high school with formed a closer bond because the less amount of flexibility in our lifestyles or my college friends were more apt to leave the area, making it alot easier to lose touch with them. It's probably some of both. One of my still-single college friends is someone I have not talked to just once in about four years, despite us being real close friends before he moved out of Pittsburgh. So, I guess, if/when he gets married, my 0-fer streak will continue. Oh, well. No big deal. As it stands now, I've attended the only two weddings that I would categorize as truly can't miss. And I've been best man at both.

Here's an interesting story about an incident that happened to country singer Chely Wright. You can watch the video for the song it inspired here. I can comprehend how someone might get that angry about a bumper sticker that shows support for the war or even the President, but the Marines? I think that is what I hate most about politics today. People are so determined to prove their side is right that they choose to hate anybody who they deem is for the other side. And it doesn't matter which side they're on. The best way to win nowadays is to tear your opponents down. People can't just agree to disagree. The first letter in this Dear Prudence column is another example. Someone actually dropping their friends because of whom they voted for for President. That's someone who I wouldn't want as a friend.

As bumper stickers go, I've never put one on a car I've driven regularly. But if I did, it wouldn't be political or sports related. There are too many people out there who would take out their issues on a car that disagrees with them.

This would have never happened in my house growing up. Is it just me or do parents have less control of their kids nowadays. It would never have come to this when I was young.

And to make matter even more bizarre, they could be charged with abandonment, depending on how much they talk with their kids while all this is happenning.

Due to a few things, including going to the non-internet-connected home of my parents for two straight weekends, I haven't posted in a while, but I should be all good now. I'm going to try and post something atleast once every couple of days.

I got to ride on the train going to and from Western PA for thanksgiving. I got business class, which was good since, it seems, they let people on who didn't have reservations and people who did have reservation ended up sitting in booths in the dining car the whole trip. I basicly watched my portable dvd player for 7 hours each way.

I also got free passes to see Oliver Stone's Alexander. As a co-worker of mine who also went to the screening put it as we were leaving the theatre: "Boy, Oliver Stone really knows how to make a movie... looong." Yeah, the movie, while well acted, was long and it wasn't the long-but-time-moved-fast long. Parts dragged. And even with the almost three hour running time, Anthony Hopkins was brought out often to tell parts of the story that would normally be shown but would have been longer. It's like he had a four hour movie and, to cut it down, Hopkins was brought in to tell a 30 minute section of narrative in 3 minutes.

This weekend I got to watch both the Steelers and Pitt football team win. Pitt is in the BCS. It's too bad they got the Fiesta Bowl, though, cause another road trip to see Pitt in a bowl would be great. A road trip to Arizona requires more planning and probably a couple more days than a bowl on the east coast.

I did send away for Steelers playoff tickets. If all goes well, I'll have four tickets to both possible home playoff games.