Road Trip Update

Due to our lack of thought about what the weather might be doing in Denver (our layover spot for our trip to Austin), we aren't going to Texas after all :-(  Big snowstorm is due in with a foot of snow there.

Boo!  We may try to meet up with Cara in Denver on Sunday (hopefully the storm will have passed through by then) for a brief visit.  But it's not going to be 70 degrees there, I'm pretty sure.

Road Trip!

Bright and early tomorrow morning, Katie and I are heading off to warm (70!) Austin, Texas to meet up with Cara and Tony for the weekend.

Cara is a hot commodity in her company. As well she should be.  A smart young woman who knows everything there is to know about cars, and all of her employees love her to pieces.  In fact, when I was last in Virginia, the bosses switched everyone's territories around and Cara's people were threatening an uprising unless they got to keep her.

Anyways, she has been asked to interview for a job managing a region in Austin OR in Denver (fingers crossed for Denver!), so she's down there this week checking things out.  Pooh and us gals are meeting up with her tomorrow.

Here are some interesting things to see in Austin ("Keep Austin Weird"):

 Statue of Stevie Ray Vaughn.  We may have to go pay homage here as big Tony loves this guy.

"Liberal Mecca – Texas is a conservative state overall, but right smack in the middle, Austin, is a huge liberal center.  Whole Foods is headquartered there.  A huge local celebrity is Leslie, a homeless, mini-skirt wearing drag queen/transvestite, who tried to run for mayor.  Austin could shock the pants off small-town Texans"

Hook em Horns.  Austin is the Home of the University of Texas.  So burnt orange basically covers the town.

The world's largest urban bat colony is in Austin, evidently under this bridge.  Where do the homeless people go when the bats are in residence?

There's at least ONE good yarn store in Austin, Hill Country Weavers.  That's really all I need to know (well, I need thrift stores too)

The city celebrates "Eeyore's Birthday Party" every year in April.   I'd move there for this event alone.

We will get some pix (and yes, Pia, we will bring  you a souvenir, thanks for staying home and taking care of Lulu!) and I'll report on our Texas adventure.  BBQ here we come!

Wow

I'm at a loss for words (almost)

Pia brought home "Drive" for our viewing pleasure.  The girls love Ryan Gosling.  I don't love him but he seems kind of harmless and cute.

Then this movie.  Most violent thing I've ever seen.  Plus it has car driving, a "genre" I hate almost as much as the circus genre.

And it's not even on my Oscar list, so I didn't get to knock a film off.

I'm going to have to watch Stewie say "Whheat Thins" about 200 times to cleanse my mind of the picture of Christina Hendricks getting her head blown off.

This Makes Me Laugh

Every Time.

A Date With Al

Friday night my man Alex and I went out for a fun date.  I had originally intended to take him to Beauty and the Beast (Broadway show), but missed out on tickets for that.

We settled for dinner at Chili's and "Hugo".  He was full of chatter, including regaling me with a little hijinks where he and some pals took those plastic bags of chocolate milk (the kind they serve in the school cafeteria instead of cartons) and threw them against the walls of the school.  They didn't get caught (yet), hope Principal Skinner doesn't read my blog.  He had a corn dog, pineapple and a Slurpee type drink.  He was super stoked about the pineapple, weird kid.

We then fueled up for the movie with Skittles and popcorn.  After the film, we dropped into Game Stop and got a Bakugan game for their XBox.  Lucky for Lavs, he only looked at the sale table, and didn't ask for something rated T.

I don't get to see my little men very often anymore, so it was a fun evening for me.  And I think it was fun for Al to get a special evening with no brothers.

Watching the Oscar Nominees

I'm trying to watch all 9 of this year's nominees for Best Picture.

"The Tree of Life" directed by Terence Malick.  We watched this yesterday.  Not "Bridesmaids", for sure :-)

"Malick, a deeply thoughtful director who studied philosophy at Harvard and Oxford, reflects on the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living things, no matter how miniscule or magnificent. The death of a brother lingers profoundly in the life of his emotionally damaged sibling just as the Big Bang reverberates throughout the cosmos, and a relatively small meteorite crash instigates a cataclysmic ripple of death for the dinosaurs."

 "The Artist".  My favorite so far.  Loved everything about this movie.  Charming!

 "The Help".  Loved this too, mostly for the performances by Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis.  This was a movie that stayed pretty faithful to the book, and didn't disappoint.

 "Hugo".  I took Alex to see this on Friday, and it was still good the second time around.  The sets are amazing, and there were some good knitted costumes (always a plus for me lol)  I really enjoy the history of film, so the scenes showing the making of early silent movies was fun.  But maybe a tad long for little kids (though Al liked it)

"Moneyball".  I was amazed that a good movie could be made out of this book.  Brad Pitt is very good in this one, as is Jonah Hill (does anyone else like him better chubby?)

So that's 5 down, 4 to go:  The Descendants, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Midnight in Paris and War Horse.  I'm not too excited about the 9/11 movie (the previews are kind of annoying) and I don't love Woody Allen.  But War Horse is World War I (one of my favorite eras) and The Descendants has Cloons, so I'm up for seeing both of those.

And why didn't Tin Tin get a nod for Best Animated Film?  I liked that one.

Saturday Morning

Saturday mornings around here tend to be rather lazy affairs.  We've watched all of the HGTV shows we can handle (and yet we haven't managed to clean anything in our house today).  We are all still in our PJs. 

And while channel surfing, we came across the 80s classic "Ski Patrol".  Which was exciting, as Katie and I had just been discussing this movie, and how it was one of the seminal films of her tween  years.  And that one of the stars of the movie is BEVERLY LESLIE from "Will and Grace".  Who was the only "star" I saw when I visited Katie in LA.  Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon...

God this movie is terrible.  I may have to go clean something.