Overkill is Underrated

IMG_4216, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

We may have the planes sold - at least the guy buying them gave us a significant deposit and will pay the rest in a week or so. The holdup is paperwork - Jon just payed off the note which means the bank has to notify the FAA who are notorious for snail-like behavior. Seriously, they make the post office look like it's staffed with cheetahs.

After a long stretch of not really watching anything, we watched 3 movies on 3 successive nights. I've already raved about Inception - we watched Despicable Me on Tuesday and it was a good CGI cartoon about an evil villain who adopts 3 orphans to help with his nefarious plans to steal the moon. Last night I finally got to watch The A-Team, and man it was stupid. This movie is exactly the type of crap William Goldman was railing against. There is no way in heck I can completely dislike any movie with Liam Neeson in it though (Krull being the one exception). I also loved the show way back when so sue me, I liked it.

A new episode of Fringe is on (YAY!) Friday night (the Timeslot of Doom.BOO!).

Inception

Inception, originally uploaded by BestLife Movie.

On Saturday Brenden and I visited a cousin (to be more precise: the daughter of my father's mother's brother. Got that?) who is in town getting a Cracker Barrell restaurant ready for opening at the end of this month. That's her job - she travels around the country and oversees getting these restaurants open. I can't decide if I would like that kind of job or not. Traveling is great, but that's an awful long time to be away from the family. Her children are grown up and have families of their own though.

It was a fun visit - I haven't seen her since I was a little girl and Neoma is as nice as I remember her. Brenden was about to blow a gasket - the store part of the restaurant was partially stocked so that means there were a lot of toys and candy he wasn't allowed to touch.

I finally saw a movie worth remembering last night - Inception. Christopher Nolan, most famous for his Batman movies that don't suck, also did Memento. Like Memento, I highly advise watching Inception when you can give the movie your full attention (and no beer! Trust me on this). I wish they made more summer movies like this; there's car chases, gun battles, explosions all over the place, and you have to *think* about what is going on!

I just finished a book, "The Big Picture: Who Killed Hollywood?", a series of rants essays by noted screenwriter William Goldman that were written during the 90's. It's a chronicle of the ongoing degeneration of movie quality as he writes about summer movies, Christmas movies, and the Oscars. It's a hilarious and depressing read. It's telling that one of the last things he rants about is a car chase in Micheal Bay's movie The Rock, where Sean Connery escapes from Nicholas Cage. Goldman recalls watching this and being stunned when Cage recaptures Connery, meaning there was no point at all to the car chase. Bay is NOTORIOUS for putting crap in his movies because it looks neat. (That reminds me of Ben Affleck's amusing commentary in the Criterion edition (!!!) of Armageddon - he kept pointing out all the helicopters that keep showing up in shots for no particular reason except they look cool).

So anyway I told you that to tell you this: Christopher Nolan is the anti- Micheal Bay. I'm not saying Nolan's movies are super-sophistimicated, I'm saying they are smart and they get people talking after the movie is over. And Inception made a boatload of dough, so maybe there's hope for Hollywood yet.

I wouldn't bet any money on it though.

Dawn on Monday

IMG_0107, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

I took this photo shortly after dawn on Monday morning. We received about 6 inches of snow, which isn't a record but it's definitely the largest snowfall we've seen since moving to Alabama. The last time I can recall a significant snow was New Year's Eve 2001 and that was at maximum 3 inches.

We had a home inspector come out and look at both our house and the one we are looking to buy. For our house everything looked ok except the roof shingles need replacing - apparently because of hail damage. Fun!

The other house looked pretty solid except some of the wiring was done by someone with a pocket knife and electrical tape, especially in the kitchen. I don't know who remodeled the kitchen but it wasn't someone who liked to cook. There is tons of counter space, which is wonderful, and the kitchen is open, which is terrific, but the stovetop is jammed up caddycorner to a column of cabinets plus the oven. I need to post a picture. That might not sound like a big deal, but the microwave is just below the stovetop and there's less than 11 inches of clearance between the stovetop and the bottom of the microwave(1). Seriously, how the hell can you cook on that thing?

Needless to say, the first thing we're doing to that house is moving or replacing the cooktop (ok second. Repairing the wiring and putting in proper junction boxes comes first).

We made an offer, the owner counter offered, and after a little bit more we settled on a price. Jon and I have been collecting all the paperwork for the mortgage which mysteriously requires a lot more paperwork than when we got a mortgage in 2003 and 1998.

Brenden has had 3 snow days in a row. At this rate his school will stay in session well after Memorial Day. That's annoying because we have vacation plans for around that time. Teach us to make plans.

Rest in Peace, Sir

Dick Winters November 1944, originally uploaded by carljay725.

So I am up and was surfing when I read a news article that Major Richard Winters has passed away. He died January 2nd after a long illness. Here's a wikipedia article on the man or you could rent Band of Brothers to get an idea of what an amazing soldier he was.

Wish I was here

Soper's Hole, Tortola, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

So Jon has the dz sold, and apparently he misses all the stress, because he wants to buy a new house. It's about the same size as our old one, except it's on 5 acres, there's no pool (Yay! No - Boo! Crap, I don't know), and there's a huge storage building / garage, hopefully big enough to store all of Jon's stuff.

It's also a couple of miles from our old house and in the same school district so Brenden won't have to switch schools.

I just got my VA guaranteed loan certificate of eligibility renewed (and I must say it was effortless and took just a day and boy is that a humongous improvement in the system!) and we're making an offer. Yeesh! Stay tuned...!

And in other news the weather people are predicting more white stuff for Alabama Sunday night through Monday. Since I'm not planning to go any where I doubt it will happen.

2010: Not so eventful but not too bad

IMG_1145, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

January: Not a damn thing. Brenden made a joke.
February: Not a damn thing. I do remember it was so freaking cold we had a fire in the fireplace almost every day.
March: Not a damn thing. Katheryn Bigelow won Best Director, I guess that's something.
April: Brenden plays Tee ball. He enjoyed it and so did we.
May: St. John! The highlight of the year, especially since the family we went with "got" St. John and loved it.
June: Brenden's 5th birthday, culminating in a trip to the Tennessee aquarium.
July: I saw one and only one movie in the theater this year but it was a great one: Toy Story III.
August: Brenden started Kindergarten.
September: Impromptu trip to Gatlinburg. Fun! The traffic still sucks though.
October: Brenden played soccer. He likes Tee ball better though.
November: Not a damn thing. Fringe got good - that's about it.
December: SNOW ON CHRISTMAS IN ALABAMA! Naturally we were elsewhere.

The one thing I really liked about 2010: I made no trips to the hospital. Yay! Also: we sold the drop zone. Double yay!

So what are my new year's resolutions? Same old - lose some weight, exercise more, finish paying off the HELOC.