Oliphant Parts

Earlier Today:
We overestimated the crowds today; an hour early for the latest Pirates flick and the theatre is empty. Yesterday we were twenty minutes early and there was nothing but breakneck seats left: Front two rows, twenty feet (at best) from the screen and far too low to see anything without a near-ninety degree head tilt. Ouch. We walked out.

Today the crowds are not, or at least not yet. If only to make me feel less the fool for wasting an hour of my life in an empty theatre, listening to the same ten minute loop of bad audio commercials, I hope for standing-room only by the start of the flick.

Arrrgh, Pirates! Will I like it? Totally irrelevant; I am here today as a parent. As long as the chilluns are happy, it will be a successful squat in the dark. If only the fecks, er, folks, running this joint didn’t pump in snippets of pop music and bad soundtrack albums. Teriyaki Boys? More like Turkey Suck Boys. Give me Chemical Brothers or silence. Still, the stadium seating is nice. With luck we will have a cell phone and yap-free experience today.

Time for a popcorn and slushy break — my eyes are getting tired of trying to make out the page in this low light.

Several hours later:
Pirates. Argh! Lots of action, although it looked like they tried hard to make it look more like a Disney ride. Funny, that. Sorry to blow the suspense for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, but it ends unresolved. A complete mess, actually. People who died in the last one are back for this one. I guess the first is like the whole “Who Shot JR?” episode of Dallas: A dream sequence. Hmmm. Plenty of laughs for the kids, although one thought it seemed kind of violent. I guess we’ll have to see the next one to see how it all turns out. Or watch any other adventure movie. Still, kind of fun in comparison with spending those two and a half hours mowing.

Somewhere between mid-afternoon and late afternoon naps, and in between the fits of incessant shopping that mark the season, I managed to fit three movies and a novel into my busy schedule this past week. I think I even gave up my monthly visit to the gym. However the scheduling worked out, I managed to find the time to relax and enjoy the escape. The novel was Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel by Susanna Clarke, and the movies, in no particular order, were Danny Deckchair, Lemony Snicket’s A series of Unfortunate Events and Stealing Sinatra. Of the four escapes, my favorite by a good lead was Danny Deckchair, so I will discuss the novel first.
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So, Thursday yielded a great sandwich for lunch from Salvaggio’s (sp?) Deli and a very good dinner from Thyme on the Creek. I chose a salad this time, with spinach, prawns, portabella mushrooms, and a creamed goat cheese from a little place called McKinleyville, CA. It’s kind of fun being somewhere like Denver and discovering a taste of home. The apple crostata with vanilla ice cream was delicious. If it weren’t for the miserable butt-death chairs at the tables and the cigar smoke in the hallway, it would have been a most excellent dining experience. Maybe I just need to take up drinking so the little things like horrible chairs and smoke don’t bother me as much.

First, let’s take care of the important things. Christine, if I managed to get it right, Happy Birthday! If not, damn. And now, the review.

A month or so I purchased a Mr. Coffee coffee burr mill, model BMX 3. As a non-coffee drinker, it might be considered an odd purchase. To those who pointed this out to me, I just have to say “Thank you for the obvious” and “Bite me.” Mr. Coffee designed his mill with 16 different coffee grind settings and a handy timer that occasionally can only be shut off by unplugging the grinder from the socket.
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