afternoons and coffee spoons

I've always liked Eliot. So I borrowed some of his best for the title. If you've not read The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock you should. It will certainly be more entertaining than the couple little paragraphs you're going to get here.

Finished off Riordan's recent collection of  Percy Jackson inspired short stories. They were fine. One of them was apparently by his son. Slightly different writing style (his Dad tends to be funnier and not quite as ... formal I guess is the best word) but not bad. If you like the Percy Jackson stuff and have followed up with the new series you'll like it well enough.

We watched The Woman in Black the other night. Well, lovely wife watched it. I dozed through the beginning and then watched the last half or so. Which is a shame, as it looked like it was pretty good. It is a little slow (period horror piece after all) but don't blame the movie for my inattention. That's all sleep deprivation. It differs a touch from the book, but it's fine. Mostly the ending. And the beginning, but you need to see the ending for that to make sense.

I want to see the new Bourne movie...

The kids are all back in school. That's nice. They are no longer quite as bored as they once were. Although McK is longing for the days when she could sleep in. Early morning seminary is apparently quite early. She's even up before I leave.

Briefly spooky

I finished reading The Woman in Black by Susan Hill. It's a decent period haunting tale. I'll be a little interested how they do the movie as honestly, filming the book would probably provide about a 45 minute long movie. Maybe. The story itself is told as a recounting of earlier events that offer some decent questions to wonder over as you read and the conclusion is suitably shocking. Certainly worth checking out if you're interested. It's also a pretty quick read. (See previous comment on possible film length)

Lovely wife and I watched the remake of Fright Night last night. After taking a bit to adjust to weird remake changes, I settled in and enjoyed the film. It's a decent re-telling that doesn't really supplant the original while still managing to be worth seeing on its own. And the Chris Sarandon cameo was pretty amusing. David Tennant plays a suitably amusing modern stage magician with issues of his own (I was amused by the scene where he divests himself of all the trappings of modern stage magic) and Colin Farrell is a good menacing vampire. Some nice little twists on the old one as well as some decent homages.

I've been on something of a magic kick lately. Wanting to learn magic tricks, see magicians, etc. I downloaded a magic app on the iPad that teaches you a couple tricks. It's interesting. And I think the Library has some decent books on card tricks. I keep meaning to put some on hold. I've decided to give Criss Angel's Mindfreak Season 1 a go and see if I can tolerate modern street magician/reality tv enough to see some tricks. I also checked out a documentary on some teenage magicians vying for a chance to be the best in a Vegas competition. I'm hoping that has some fun tricks in it.

Little (and possibly littlest) sis should check out Triple Town. Totally addicting match three game. I wish I were playing it right now. It's free in the app store. (Not sure if there's an android version, but there might be) Also if you always wanted to try pitchcar but didn't want to drop the $80 or whatever it's running for right now, there's Disc Drivin' HD on the iPad. It's certainly cheaper. It won Best Local Multiplayer over at Boardgame Geek this year.

I finished off Uncharted 3 the other night. The ending was ... interesting is probably the best word for it. I liked the bit at the very end and I enjoyed some of the stuff just prior to that, but it suffers from some of the things most of the Uncharted games suffer from (so I'm not sure that it's really worth complaining about that, I should probably just be used to it by now). Overall, great game. Will play again.

I need to play some board games!

The snowpocalypse is a lie

So here we were expecting all manner of snow yesterday afternoon and instead we get rain. I'm of mixed emotions on that one. It's nice that my commutes have not been disasterfied, but a little snow this time of year is nice. Especially as we really haven't had any to speak of. Seriously weird winter...

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is awesome. K needs to see this right now if she hasn't. Little sis might get a kick out of it as well. You have your good ol' boys on vacation to fix up their new vacation home and the college kids convinced that they're out to get them. This is not helped by the fact that they "kidnapped" one of the girls when she fell in the water and hit her head on a rock. They were simply trying to save her life, not start a slasher movie. It gets funnier from there. I won't say too much more lest I spoil things. Best line? Probably, "It's true, you're half hillbilly." Although there are some close contenders.

I am currently reading The Woman in Black in case I want to try to get to the movie. It's pretty good so far.

Lovely wife and I had a nice evening out at the beginning of the week. Some Indian food and some games with friends. I reminded myself why I don't play Alhambra much any more (everyone else is much better at it) and once again discovered that you should never play card games against Kim. First she killed us at Gang of Four a few weeks ago, and then she was managing a pretty tidy victory at Dwarf King. Serious voodoo.

I am intrigued by this.

It sounds like you can start making your own books for iBooks. I guess the app is for desktops, so I can't play around with it any until we get a new computer but I am intrigued. Maybe I'll make a version of I was a... that short story I wrote for lovely wife. It would be fun to include some photos or other little effects.