People change

I have a new home-care nurse. I receive Pamidronate through my port and since there aren't enough beds and chairs for me to hang around the chemo suite waiting for it to finish infusing, it gets disconnected by the home-care nurse.

Now that I'll be receiving Pamidronate every eight weeks instead of every four, the home-care nurse needs to flush my port in between Pamidronate infusions as the port must be accessed every four to six weeks. Either way, I see my home-care nurse about every four weeks or so. I've had the same home-care nurse for nearly a year now, I think, and we've developed quite a good relationship. In fact, we'd scheduled my port flush for this week instead of next, when it should have been scheduled for next week, because she's on vacation next week.

So imagine my surprise when I opened the door this afternoon and it wasn't my regular nurse! I was a little sad, because I liked my former nurse and I enjoyed talking to her. Of course I know that this is a job for her and changing areas is part of the job. And the new nurse was able to access my port with no pain on the first try - a rarity, because my port can move around, making it hard to access - so she's clearly got the skillz. And she's very nice so we'll develop a good relationship, I'm sure.

I still felt a little hurt and maybe a little rejected, even though I'm well aware that the change is nothing personal. I suspect I'm actually reacting to something else: a friend is moving to another city sent out address and phone number updates to other mutual friends but I thought I didn't get it. It turns out that it was in my spam folder, but until I knew that I definitely felt and still feel hurt and rejected by this person. I had thought that she didn't want me as a part of her life and I didn't understand what had happened or why things had gone the way they I thought did.

I know that friends come and go but because so many of my friends die because they have mets, every one of my friends is precious to me even if I don't see them often. I thought I'd lost a friend for no reason I could figure out - and that perceived loss was as hard on me as when a friend dies. Finding out that I hadn't lost her as a friend has made me very, very grateful to still have her friendship. This experience was a bit of a wake-up call for me, telling me that I can't take my friends for granted. If they're as precious to me as I think they are, I need to treat them that way.

A bit of this, a bit of that

This walking thing is getting easier. I was out for an hour and a half today, walking through the neighbourhood next to ours. There are some houses for sale there and I've been trying to get a feel for the neighbourhood. One house actually went up for sale there last night; it's a little bit over our price range but not so far out that we couldn't bring it into what we're prepared to spend. I walked by the house today and decided that I didn't love it.

At least there are still houses going up for sale. There was another bungalow that we had planned to look at but when Ian reviewed the listing he discovered that it had electric baseboard heating. We want forced air heating, please, and we don't want to pay to convert from one to the other.

I checked out http://www.yournextshoes.com/, a link that my sister sent me, and discovered this amazing pair of shoes:

$155 000 Eternal Borgezie Diamond Stiletto

They're made almost entirely out of gold and diamonds. Seriously. How decadent is that? I like them but I'd prefer something with a heel strap. Also, I'd be concerned about the strength of the stiletto heel, if they're using gold there. Gold is a very soft metal and I don't know if it would be strong enough to take the force of the heel striking the ground. Still, these are a gorgeous pair of shoes and would be beautiful when worn out dancing what with the diamonds around the footbed.

Shoes and clothes

We watched the first three episodes of Mad Men season 3 tonight. Sadly, these episodes are not in HD, but I'm happy to watch them anyways. We had seen the first two episodes but neither of us really remember them so we watched them anyways.

I do love that show. Oh yes, I do. I fine it quite compelling, as I may have already mentioned :)

In my internet travels today, I found the best shoes ever! They're oxfords or wingtips for women, they're black, and they're covered in baby sequins!!!

Kat by Sam Edelman

I can see wearing these shoes, well, everywhere. I know that they're not right for every single occasion, but they would work with pants at a formal event. I prefer to wear dresses to formal events but if I ever wore pants it would be with these shoes.

I did actually find a more practical pair of oxfords/wingtips. They're gorgeous!

Winger by Jeffery Campbell

I actually have a similar pair that I bought about ten or fifteen years ago. I need to get them re-soled because I've worn the sole down. They're a touch big for me because they're a boy's size five which is a women's seven and my feet are smaller than that. This pair looks like it might actually work as a replacement for the old shoes, if I can find them somewhere to try them on.

Mad Men

I'm definitely a Mad Men fan. There's so much to love about this show. Each episode's fashions and fabrics are a feast for the eyes but I also love it because it portrays real people living on the cusp of a fundamentally changing world. ... it's almost worth watching each one twice: once for the clothes and the second time for the story. 

If you love the fashions of Mad Men like I do, I recommend that you check out the Mad Style blog post series by Tom & Lorenzo (TLo) of Project Rungay. In this series, they describe each female character's style and show how the clothes they wear in each scene emphasizes different emotions, ideas, or contrasts in that scene. The major characters are examined in multi-part posts and minor characters receive a briefer look. This series is entertaining and eye-opening, showing how much thought has gone into the series to convey the intended message.

I'm really looking forward to the Mad Men season 4 premiere on July 25. And because we didn't have time to watch season 3 when it was first shown, I'm thrilled that this season is available on Rogers on Demand at least until July 25. We are going to have our work cut out for us, what with making sure that we get all the way through season 3 in less than two weeks along with all the other summer shows that we've been watching. Those summer shows include Persons Unknown, Lie to Me, Work of Art, and The Good Guys (yeah, I know, that last show is kind of silly, but it's funny, too). So much tv, so little time...

Movie night

We recorded No Country for Old Men off of the tv a little while ago and we were finally able to watch it tonight. In this movie, a hunter in Texas, 1980, comes across the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong and takes the $2M from the deal, starting a huge manhunt of two different groups of bad guys for him. Caught in between is the local sheriff whose way of life is changing.

It's a very good movie. It's a very dark movie, full of greed and shootings and blood and psychopaths, but a very good movie. Just about everyone is morally shady in one way or another - whether it's the cop who lets the truck driver go without giving him a ticket or the guy who takes the money in the first place or the psychotic killer. There's lots of dark humour in this movie - things that might not normally be all that funny are hilarious in this movie because their role is comic relief.

The story is compelling. It doesn't end the way you might think it should or would end or the way that you might want it to end. Still, the ending is believable, probably because it's more like real life where things don't always work out the way we think they will. The story also feels real because the characters are well-developed, making them feel like they're real people acting in a believable way.

There is a lot of realistic shooting, death, blood, and gore in this movie and if you don't like movies that show that type or level of violence, this really isn't the movie for you. There is a very good movie with a lot of depth to it behind all that violence if you can see past all that. This is an interesting, compelling movie that makes you think. We highly recommend it if you haven't already seen it.

Love this weather!

The heat really has broken, at least for now. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous day out there. It wasn't too hot and there was a bit of a breeze that just felt nice. Ian and I went for a long - almost epic - walk to enjoy the wonderful weather.

Ian bought a pair of those Reebok EasyTone shoes for our walks. He can walk so much faster than me that he doesn't get much of a workout on our walks so he figured that the shoes might compensate for the slower walk. His calves were definitely a bit sore afterwards so it's possible that the shoes actually do work. They don't appear to cause him any harm, at least.

I'd love to have a pair of those shoes, if they really did work. I'm worried that walking in them would hurt my lower back; apparently they're like walking on sand, sort of, and the last time I did uneven walking I ended up with a very sore lower back. I could barely even move for almost two days that time and I have no desire to repeat that experience. And I guess I'm heavy enough that I get quite a bit of benefit from any walking that I do.

On an unrelated topic, I've been watching the spots on my shoulders. I don't remember whether I mentioned them before or not: they're little skin-coloured bumps that pretty much cover my shoulders. They're very hard for me to see unless the light is perfect. When I can see them, they have a matte look (as opposed to my shinier skin), have irregular borders, vary in size up to about 1/4" in diameter, and appear to vary in colour a bit from very light to a light brown.

We're fairly sure that these spots are sarcoidosis. There's a very small chance that they could be breast cancer, which can spread to the skin, but skin mets tend to look more like raised nodules and these are hardly raised at all. I guess they could be caused by some third disease but I'm refusing to consider that right now. I have enough systemic illnesses, you know?

No matter what's causing them, the problem is that these things are spreading up to my neck, down my back, and down my arm, all mostly on the right side. I've been putting the corticosteroid cream on them but it doesn't appear to be making a difference.

I need to see my family doctor about these, I guess, to get a referral to someone who can help me deal with them. I don't want to go back to that doctor who did the skin biopsy that confirmed sarcoidosis in my elbow scar because when I asked him about the thing on my leg, he said it was varicose veins and wouldn't entertain the idea that it was also sarcoidosis. Well, the corticosteroid cream made that thing almost completely disappear so it certainly wasn't varicose veins, now, was it? I don't want to go back to him. In an ideal world, I'd see someone who specializes in sarcoidosis on the skin.

I have a hard time seeing these things on my shoulders so I'd like to take Ian, who can almost always see them, to see my family doctor. However, Ian's been so busy at work that he might not be able to easily take the time away. It's not like this would be a critical or emergency appointment, after all. So we'll see. Going without Ian does have its advantages - mainly that I can do some leisurely shopping at several places, if I want, after the appointment. That's always a plus :)

The heat seems to have broken

The heat has finally broken, a bit - we had rain come through last night and it cooled things down considerably. It's still going to be warm for the weekend and next week but it won't be as crazy-hot as it was this week.

I had great plans for going for a walk today since it was so nice out but then I got tired. I've been finding myself exhausted this whole week, probably due to the heat. I end up sleeping in the afternoon but the sleep isn't restful; it's full of very vivid dreams. Some of those dreams are the kind where I think I wake up into reality but I'm really just waking up in another dream.

I think I'll assume that the dreams and lack of rest are caused by the heat. We have the air conditioner at night and I think I'm sleeping just fine then. Hopefully with the break in the heat I won't be so exhausted next week.

Yummy dessert this evening

I got to have a very yummy dessert with a friend that I haven't seen in ages. It took a while for me to remember that I hadn't seen her in quite some time but once I did remember of course I had to contact her as soon as possible.

She's one of the people I really admire because she's always been so good at handling things. She's also taught me that having cancer - even stage iv cancer or the equivalent - doesn't mean that life is over, and that asking "but what if the cancer comes back" or "what if I'm in treatment" shouldn't necessarily determine the choices a person with stage iv cancer can make. Do the things you want to do whether you've got stage iv cancer or not.

In case you think my friend is super-human, she's not... she is special, yes, but she's as human as any of us with regular problems and a regular life. I hope to see more of her over the summer. Going on a long vacation isn't really an option while we're looking for a house so I'll be around.

Game night

Ian's work held a game night tonight for the first time in ages. We both went - in fact, Ian is still there playing games but I was getting tired and figured I was done thinking.

We played two games: Container and Battlestar Galactica. I've played Container before: it's a game where players set up a mini-economy around the production, warehouse, and shipping of different coloured containers. It's interesting because all the usual problems with economies - inflation, recession, credit problems, and so on - can happen.

This game doesn't take long to learn, either, so it's a good game to try out if you're not used to complicated board games. The only problem with the game is that two of the container colours are almost indistinguishable so if you buy this game, you might want to paint one of them a different colour. I love this game and highly recommend it.

Battlestar Galactica is another animal entirely. It's a game based on the tv series, where humans try to get the ship to safety and hidden - later revealed - Cylons try and stop them. This game has tons of differently-shaped pieces and different cards and different roles and different ship attributes - and everything has different abilities. This is not a simple game to learn: the instruction book is quite a few pages and you have to refer to it frequently throughout the game.

This is a game for the most advanced players who are willing to put in the time to learn it. There's a lot to read and understand and the interaction of certain things also needs to be understood. There is a reward for all that work, however: once you figure out how to play this game with all of its roles and actions and modifiers, it's a lot of fun to play. Before the Cylons are revealed, there's mystery and intrigue and afterwards, there's a lot of battling and choosing sides. This game is worth the commitment if you're into board games and especially if you're a BSG fan.

The never-ending heat

It's still hot. We had some rain last night and that sort of cleared the air but it's still hot and humid. I actually did go for a small walk yesterday while carrying a full liter of water and drank most of the water while I was out. The walk would normally take me about 45 minutes but I was actually out for over an hour. I wound up with some wicked blisters on my feet, too, that are still quite sore.

So I stayed home all day. Being in the heat makes me very tired and I ended up having a nap in the afternoon. I was ok with that after yesterday's events.

I think we're supposed to get a break from the high heat in the next few days. I hope so.

Another friend gone

I'm so sad. One of the women on our mets board died today at 39. She was diagnosed with bone mets to the sternum a year after I was and her cancer just progressed so quickly... honestly, I thought she'd have more time but her liver couldn't take any more treatment. I hate cancer.

She and I didn't always get along. We were friends for a while: I let her stay for free in my hotel room when I went to another friend's funeral last year. At one point, though, she and others said some nasty things on Facebook about another person I know and I wasn't comfortable seeing that kind of talk. She was strong-willed and I knew that asking her to stop saying those things would have little effect, so after careful thought I de-friended her. I knew she was hurt and I tried to explain that I wasn't mad at her and that I still cared for her even though I wasn't comfortable with her behaviour. I don't think she saw things that way.

This feels almost like unfinished business, like I should have done something different or more... and I'll never have that chance. not that I didn't try at all; I sent her messages, trying to make things up with her but she didn't respond. All I could do was reach out and let her react the way she wanted to - I can't force anyone else to do what I want.

Of course I've known other people who've died with whom I didn't get along, but none that I knew so well. I'd like to think that this situation won't happen again; that I won't hurt people again, or that people I care about won't die while we're not getting along... but I think I know better. I'm not perfect, and I hurt people without meaning to, and sometimes people just don't want to be around me.

Even if my friend had lived longer, I don't know if things would have changed between us. I wish we could have been friends at the end. I hope she knew that I was sorry we'd fought and that I cared about her very much.

RIP, LisaC. I hope that you're comfortable and at peace now. I'll miss you.

It's really hot, hot, hot

Happy Fourth of July to all my American friends! I hope that you and everyone else are finding ways to enjoy the weekend and beat the heat.

It's crazy hot here and is supposed to get even hotter this week. Today got up to over 30C (86F) and it's supposed to be 34C (93F) by Tuesday with lows around 20C (68F) this week. Add in our regular humidity and smog and we have hot, sticky, humid, hard-to-breathe, feels like over 40C (105F) weather. We're also supposed to get clear skies until the weekend and  a UV index of 10 tomorrow so we'll get lots and lots of sun beaming down on us, too.

We really hoped to be in a house by now. Not just so that we could stop looking for a house but also so that we could have air-conditioning. We have a portable unit in our bedroom so at least we'll be able to sleep but it's very uncomfortable to just sit around in the un-air-conditioned house.

Speaking of sitting around, that's pretty much all we did today :) We were able to watch Legion, which we'd rented yesterday and which took over 4 1/2 hours to download. It's an ok but not great movie. It's an interesting premise: in an out-of-the-way truck stop, an unborn child and a rogue angel try to save humanity against God's attempt to destroy everyone (as in the Old Testament).

There's something missing in this movie, even though dialogue is ok, the acting is fine, and the special effects are good. Thinking back, the story is probably what's lacking here. The characters, their actions, and the situation have been seen before in other movies and there was nothing really special or interesting about the people here. The rogue angel was an interesting idea but somehow it just fell flat. In many ways, what should have been a compelling, interesting, gripping movie was just... boring. There are moments approaching greatness in the movie but those moments are few and far between.

This movie is worth watching if you can watch it for free and tend to like movies that you can watch while also doing something like a crossword or something.

Our internet

The Playstation Video Store just launched in Canada. We were really excited about this because you can rent or buy downloaded movies and tv shows and watch them. Even better, they have a huge selection of movies there in tons of genres!

We've been wanting to watch Legion even though it got bad reviews. it was one of the movies in the list, so we picked it, paid for it, and started downloading it. The download started over an hour ago and we're only 37% into a 4.8G download. We're not having any problems using the laptop and nothing seems to be slower than usual.... so we figure that Bell Canada, our internet service provider, is limiting the amount of traffic they'll accept from the Store.

We pay a ridiculous amount of money for full internet and it drives me nuts that they limit the internet traffic in this way. I'd be allowed to download from torrents if I wanted because they don't limit those but I can't download from a legitimate place? WTF?

Sadly, we have very little choice when it comes to internet. We have Bell (also our phone provider) or Rogers, the cable provider. In many ways, Rogers is worse than Bell. Rogers splits the signal amongst neighbours and so each person gets less bandwidth. Rogers also goes down more often and for longer periods of time... Bell tends to be up and running almost always but it's hard to think that their reliability makes up for limiting traffic. I wish we had another reliable option that didn't limit traffic.

Celebrations!

 We went to the Canada Day fireworks last night and didn't get home until very late, which is why there was no blog post yesterday. The fireworks were pretty good, although it wasn't like they told a story or anything. Then again, you don't expect a fancy story or anything from a local fireworks night, right?

The evening started with yummy dinner and ice cream followed by board games until it was time for the fireworks. We played Quarto, Gobblet, Skybridge, and Taluva. The first three games are published by Gigamic, a game company that makes sturdy, well-designed puzzle/strategy games which are very simple to learn but can be quite complex to play. These three games are made with wooden puzzle pieces and a simple board - it's amazing what games you can play with such simple pieces.

I enjoyed both two-player games - Quarto and Gobblet - the most and strongly recommend them to everyone. In Quarto, you decide which of the 16 pieces your opponent will place on the 4x4 board. Each pieces is a combination of the four attribute pairs: tall/short, round/square, solid/hollow, light/dark. The goal is to make a straight line of four pieces that share one of those attributes - all are tall, or all are solid.

In Gobblet, each player has three sets of four nesting pieces and can move one piece onto or around the 4x4 board. A piece can either go on a blank square or can "gobble" a smaller piece on a non-blank square. Whichever piece the player touches must be the one moved.

I liked Skybridge but I couldn't figure out a strategy. In this game, each player has a set of coloured blocks which are used to build towers on the 3x3 board. Each player has a bridge that can be used to link two towers together and crowns that are used to "claim" a tower for scoring.

Taluva was more complicated because it involved building landscapes up and out and building huts, temples, and towers. I couldn't really figure out when to do what move, although I'm sure that I'd get it in a second game. Both Skybridge and Taluva work better with more people playing and aren't as suited for two people. I think they'd both be fun another time.

Last night was kind of a celebration for us, I guess, because today, July 2, 2010, is Ian's and my 10th anniversary. Yep, we've been together for 10 years now. What a long time! We've kind of grown up together :) I'm hoping for many, many more years of unmarried bliss. We're celebrating our anniversary by watching tv recordings from the week. Sitting on our butts in front of the tv (ours or someone else's to watch a movie) is one our favourite activities on a Friday night.

Book review

I finished reading Dry by Augusten Burroughs. I liked it, just as I liked Running with Scissors. Both of these books are memoirs, not parts of autobiographies, which to me is a crucial distinction. As far as I'm concerned, events in an autobiography should be entirely true and have occurred almost exactly as described. I expect an autobiography to be factually correct with possibly some editorial comments reflecting back on the events described.

In a memoir, I expect that the events in the books have some basis in reality and aren't just made up completely. The events could be a pastiche of other events and may even have been massaged for better dramatic and comedic timing but will have some basis in truth. In many ways, I expect a memoir to read like a novel and to be emotionally, if not completely factually, true.

These memoirs are very well-written and do read like very good novels. There's something about the way that Burroughs writes that I really like. He describes events in a self-deprecating and yet deeply truthful way. He never really comes and and says what he's feeling: he never says that he's ashamed or sad or grieving or scared. Instead, the reader infers how he feels based on the event itself and the words he uses. 

In this way, the reader becomes emotionally invested in the events that occur and really feels what the writer is feeling. I've been in similar situations as Burroughs and I found that I could really relate to those events. Reading those events actually brought up some past memories of mine... memories that I don't like to examine all that often. Examining them in the light of these books made them less terrible and more bearable and that made these books very powerful for me.

The family portrayed in Running with Scissors felt that they were inaccurately portrayed and they sued the author for defamation even though names and identifying details were changed. The family wasn't informed that this memoir was going to be published and were shocked at what was there. I can't imagine that most authors would necessarily get permission from the people in their books but I do think they should notify those people about the project before publishing. The case was settled out of court and on subsequent memoirs of his it's made clear that details and events might be changed.

Even though Burroughs didn't lose the case, the fact that he didn't contact the family before publishing the first book is very much in keeping with type of person the author is... he's selfish, vain, and shallow. He's a jerk. Oddly enough, even though he's a jerk, I still enjoy his writing. Maybe it's because he doesn't try to pretend he's someone else: he is who he is. I like that. I don't think I'd like him as a person, but I do like his writing style and his books and I plan on reading more of them soon.

Both Running with Scissors and Dry are quirky, interesting, funny, and easy to read. They're worth reading if you're interested in unusual families (Running with Scissors) or what it's like to get sober (Dry).

Dinner and stuff

I saw my friend for dinner tonight - I'm so glad that she was available tonight after I cancelled yesterday. It was great seeing her and I wish that we got together more often. I see her about every six months or so and there's just too much catching up to do over dinner when there's that much time between visits.

She works for the company that recently employed me and I do feel sort of sad, hearing about the trials and tribulations of working there. I miss being there in the thick of things, you know? I wish my body was able to handle that much stress because sometimes it sounds like such fun. Then again, it can also be awful, and why would I waste my energy on something awful?

I think my friend is planning a game night soon and I hope we'll be able to go and see everyone. She promised to keep the number of people there to a low number which should make the games more interesting. I look forward to seeing her again.

On another topic, I'm getting quite tired of receiving calls from telemarketers. We're on the national Do Not Call list and so we're not supposed to get calls like this at all but they don't even bother to check whether we're on the list. I looked into reporting these people and it turns out that you don't need much information to make a report: you only need the date and time they called you, the name the person calling gave you, the company name, and the company phone number.

So when I received a call yesterday from one of these telemarketers (from an alarm system company, he was), before he could get into his spiel, I asked him to repeat his name, which he did. Then I asked for the company name, which I confirmed with him. And I asked him for the phone number of the company, which he gave me. Then I told him that I was on the Do Not Call list, which meant that I should not have received this call and that I was going to report this call. I also told him that the person who made the call as well as the company itself can fined for calling numbers not on the list.

Then I reported the call.

If you're not on the Do Not Call list, I urge you to register your number there. If you are on the list and are receiving calls from telemarketers, I strongly urge you to report those calls. The more we report these calls, the more that can be done to stop them.

An adventurous day

I was supposed to have dinner with a friend of mine tonight but I was so tired after my adventures this afternoon that I had to postpone dinner until tomorrow.

I finally had my appointment with the surgeon who did my biopsy last month. As I thought, the incision is healing just fine. He'll be referring me to a respirologist as well; he faxed the referral over and now I need to wait for an appointment to come up.

It was a gorgeous afternoon and I wanted to take advantage of it so I thought that I would wander up to the next bus stop. I should have done some planning and wore different shoes, however. I've walked quite a bit in these shoes before but for some reason, today I got blisters. I went into the pharmacy next door to the doctor's office and bought some bandages to put over the blister.

About a block later I noticed that the bandage wasn't on and just made the blister worse so I put another bandage on. A block after that, the bandages were coming off so I went into the hospital pharmacy and bought some more bandages. And some paper tape, which we'd been running out of.

I put the bandage on and everything seemed ok until all of a sudden, about two blocks later, my foot started hurting again. So I put another bandage on. Two blocks after that, my foot started hurting even more so I took the bandage off and put two on, overlapping them so that they would stay on and wouldn't hurt.

This time, I was in luck. The bandages stayed on until I got off the bus. I'm getting ahead of myself, however. I did manage to walk around and on the way to the bus I passed by my favourite local independent bookstore. They had a bunch of books on sale in a display outside and being the devourer of books that I am, I stopped to take a look.On the table was a book I've been looking for: Dry, by Augusten Burroughs. I've already read Running with Scissors, his memoir of his childhood, and I wanted to read this next memoir about when he got sober.

I wandered around in the bookstore for a few minutes to see if there was anything else that I wanted but I didn't find anything. Unfortunately the extra time in the bookstore meant that I missed my bus by about one minute. I took advantage of the fifteen minutes I had to wait to sit and read my new book. It's as good as I'd hoped it would be. When I got off the bus my foot still hurt so I took the bandages off and left the blister bandage-less for my walk home - surprisingly, the blister didn't hurt so much.

On my walk home I found a report card. I knew it was the last day of school and that report cards were given out but you usually don't find them on the sidewalk. I didn't really know what to do with it - I had these visions of me taking it home and trying to phone the kid's parents to try and give it back, but that wasn't something that I thought I should do, even if I wanted to do it. I also didn't think that the report card should just sit on the ground like that.

The school was only a few blocks away so I decided to take the report card back there and let them deal with it. Even though it was way past school dismissal time I hoped that one of the teachers would still be there and I was in luck: there were three cars in the parking lot. The doors were locked, though. I went around the whole school and tried to open - and then knocked on - every door. Thinking back, it's a good thing that I had the report card in my hand, because those inside may have thought that I was trying to break in or something. Maybe they thought that anyways. When I got back around to the front door I could see someone inside, so I held up the report card and she unlocked the door to take it.

She seemed to recognize the name on the report card; I got the impression that maybe the student hadn't dropped it accidentally on purpose but that something else had happened. I can't imagine what that something else could be, but either way I was happy to not have the report card in my hands any more.

After all that I finally got to go home - only an hour and a half after I could have been there. but then I wouldn't have bought the new book or had the report card adventure.

In other news, the laptop we ordered arrived today. It's nice-looking and I'm sure it's much more powerful than the current one. We thought that the current laptop had a 17" screen so that's what we ordered. Surprise! Our old laptop has a 15.4" screen. I guess we should have measured to save some money. Oops. It is a lovely laptop and it even has a numeric keypad, which I love... so we'll learn to live with (and love) it's ginormosity.

A Sunday evening movie

We're still very excited about our fancy new tv. Since the resolution on this tv is so much better than on our old tv, we were interested in seeing whether the display from a Blu-Ray in our PS3 on this tv was better than on our old tv. To do that, we went to the video store for a movie. We were quite surprised at how many titles there were that we'd wanted to see. Clearly we haven't been watching enough movies lately! Almost every title interested us.

In the end, we chose to rent The Book of Eli, which we'd sort of planned to get until we saw that there were so many other choices. This is a post-apocalyptic movie that follows a "chosen man" who is journeying West through a wasteland while carrying a book that has the power to restart humanity. There is a battle between "good" and "evil" where each side defines their beliefs and what is precious in almost identical ways but to different ends. Nothing is really black and white, though; bad characters have good in them and vice versa. There's a lot to this movie, if you want to look at it that way - but you can enjoy it for what it is, too.

Cinematically, this movie is quite unusual.. It takes place not in a big city but in rural communities and the real stars in it are the ground and the sky with hardly any differentiation between them. This lack of differentiation is achieved in part by the sepia-ness of the movie. There are very few colours throughout most of this film, which contributes much to the atmosphere of this movie

This is a compelling, very good movie that we highly recommend. There is violence, and there are some disturbing scenes, but it's an excellent movie. So good, in fact, that I think it stands up to multiple viewings. The special features add a lot to the movie as well - they aren't all just trailers or re-telling the story; there's more too them. Like the graphic novel that they basically wrote to define their scenes and shots. If you see this movie, watch the special features, too. They're worth your time.

Oh - and yes, this new tv definitely has a better Blu-Ray picture. Everything is crisp and the colours are as graduated as we'd see in a theatre. We're very happy with our purchase. :)

Games night!

We went out and played games tonight for the first time in ages! We played games with a different crowd than we used to which was fun. I knew some of the people there but I hadn't seen them in ages so it was great to see them and catch up a bit. I'll have to get together with them again because I shouldn't have to wait this long to see them again. There was a great mix of geeky people like us at the games party, probably because we were also watching episodes of Big Bang Theory, so we got to meet new people, too.

We played Apples to Apples and Sputnik. Apples to Apples is a fun party game that we've played before. Sputnik was new to us and it was a really fun game to play. Each player starts with a rocket piece on a landing piece surrounded by stacks of galaxy pieces. Each player moves their rocket piece to a galaxy piece next to them and then removes another galaxy piece if one is available. If a player can't move to a galaxy piece, they can transform their landing piece into a galaxy piece on an empty space near them; if there's no place for the rocket to move, the player is out.

It's a simple game to understand and play but the strategy can be quite complex, which makes it an interesting game to play. We recommend it.

We also bought a new tv today. We've been waiting to buy a really, really big tv for when we get a house - we'll put an entertainment area in the basement where we'll be able to play video games and watch movies on a nice, big screen. But we don't have a house yet and our old tv was a flat-screen CRT model with HD capabilities. It was fine for regular tv but it didn't have enough resolution for video games or some of the fine HD stuff.

So we decided to spend a little money now to buy a replacement 37" LCD tv that's bigger and has better resolution than our old tv. We'll probably put this tv in the living room or great room or whatever we end up with in the new house, so that we can watch tv while cooking or hanging out on the main floor for whatever reason.

A bit of this and a bit of that

Apparently the longest Wimbledon game ever so far was recently played. I don't follow Wimbledon, but there's a live blogger talking about the games for those that like that sort of thing. The entries about this particular game are hilarious! Even better, you definitely don't need to understand tennis in order to get the humour.

The entries are here; the whole thing is entertaining but the real fun starts at about 5pm. Have a look if you're in need of some giggles - and really, who doesn't need giggles once in a while?

I went for a two-hour walk this afternoon. I almost didn't go out because I was feeling lazy but I ate way, way, way too much ice cream last night and I figured that I should do something other than sit around at home. I managed to find a fairly long path through the closest woods. It was so nice in there, with the birds singing and the light coming through the leaves. I think I may have got too much sun on my face, though. Ian says my face has a few extra freckles and it feels hot. Oops.

This weekend we'll go to some open houses, as usual. There are hardly any tomorrow and too many on Sunday. Most of the houses won't be right, of course, but we've had our eye on a couple of them for a while: one that's a bit out of our price range and another that's way down by the 401. It isn't worth taking up our realtor's time to see them but we'd still like to see what these places are like. If we like them, then we can see them again with our realtor.

It turns out that seeing places that we like twice is a good idea for us (well, for me, anyways). The first time through we kind of wander around looking at the overall picture and react with our feelings or intuition. The second time we see a place, we look at things more carefully. It's hard on my emotions but at the same time, I do have a hard time thinking critically about a place I'm looking at when my feelings about it are so strong. Love is blind, as they say.