2.26.2006

media and food weekend

With Simon just back from business in Vegas (which typically demands late nights of drinking and gambling after the conferences in the day), we decided to stay in all weekend. Friday, after I picked him up from Oakland International (the airport from hell that requires a drive on the 880, the highway from hell), we grabbed some Thai food and went home to watch Primer which was awesome. It was a Sundance winner and was made on a $7K budget but had a great plot, decent acting and was generally fun to watch. It required a lot of thinking and later we read online that most people watched it a couple times with notebook in hand to keep track of what was going on. It was about time travel and I won't say anything more or I'll spoil it.

Saturday was carwash and gym/steamroom/jacuzzi day. It was also the day our beloved Tivo got upgraded from 40 hours to 224 hours of recording time. Hell yeah! That night we had a friend over for raw oysters, duck, and homemade chicken soup and then watched another movie while the friend took off for the Marina for drinks. I had to be coerced to watch Jarhead because I hadn't heard of it (not a big movie goer normally) and Simon tends to love watching stuff that is usually black & white and has any or all of the following: tanks, machine guns, grenades, helicopters, fighter planes, people in military uniforms shooting each other, bloodshed and suffering. When I heard war, I went and made myself a couple drinks to help pass the time but it turned out to be a great movie. Funny (the last thing I expected), irreverent, and well-paced.

Tonight I used the Macaroni Grill gift certificates I got from facilitating a workshop for Girls for a Change last month (great organization and super alternative to Girl Scouts, that's for damn sure). Starters were okay, caesar salad was not cold enough, lobster ravioli was not hot enough, penne was good. Overall not that memorable. Gonna try and squeeze in another indie film I borrowed from the library now so much for getting to bed early.

4 comments:

ceaz said...

I watched Weather Man and Waiting on Saturday night. Both were okay but I'm glad I didn't watch either in the theatres.

I have a bunch more movies that I haven't seen yet including Brokeback Mountain and other independent or Festival films. Let me know if you want to watch them.

David Tellez said...

How did you get the upgrade from 40 to 224?!

Fumbling said...

By sticking in a 200 GB hard drive :) Though it's not as easy as it sounds. Apparently there are 11 pages of instructions and 5 hours of reformatting required. 90% of my friends are engineers of some sort, the rest are accountants. Bless them!

Tashiwa said...

I loved Primer. It was one of my favourite movies of last year. I heard that theatre-goers were told that if they hung onto their ticket receipts, they would be allowed to watch the movie again - just because it's so confusing the first time around!

Luckily for us, we watched it with a really smart math-degree friend who clarified when things got really confusing.