The other night we watched Fracture and it was seriously pretty awesome, Adam said it was ‘pretty good’ which means he liked it. Generally when I don’t figure a movie out I tend to like it more and I didn’t figure out anything. So now every time I talk to someone I get to talking about how awesome Fracture is and in doing so have found myself in some pretty interesting conversations about Ryan Gosling. Recently, because he hadn’t seen it and said he didn’t hate romantic girly movies one of my close male friends watched The Notebook with me and you should never open that door around me unless you mean it and we were talking on instant messenger yesterday and he told me I should see The United States of Leland and I told HIM he should see The Believer. And we talked about his early career and his movie choices, how it is cool he went from mostly Disney movies and TV stuff straight into some really fantastic rolls. But I also talk about him a lot with Aughra and she mentioned the other day that he would be starring in The Lovely Bones as the father and I did not know that, I read the book of the same title by Alice Sebold a few years a go and remember that I enjoyed it so I got rather excited and then last night she sent me the link to a preview and writeup for his newest film Lars and the Real Girl which looks extremely interesting to say the very least. Anyone around for my birthday knows that Adam totally humors my wee crush on the Ryan but honestly if you ask me he should just be happy I’m over my crush on Todd Bertuzzi, it isn’t like I have any choice but to get over it now with him playing for a bloody expansion team. Gross.

Photo credit: Keira on Flickr

Last night courtesy of Rebecca and the Rio Theatre, Keira and I got to enjoy a free midnight showing of Rush Hour 3. Except for the part where the three single obnoxious jerks sat down next to the three seemingly single ladies and preceded to make ‘noises’ every single time there was a woman on the screen, the movie was pretty much exactly what you would expect from a third installment, being that in reality you shouldn’t be expecting anything from a third installment of any movie.[I have one gripe about it that I will address likely in the next paragraph or two]. Fortunately the Rio’s very gracious and extremely friendly owner Mike gave us a behind the scenes tour before the box office opened because the man one seat down from me was incredibly obnoxious during the pre-commercial-free-movie spiel.

Back in the late 90’s when I shared my residence with mice and slugs I lived a mere ten to fifteen minute walk from what is now thanks to Mike a restored, yet modernized, version of the original theatre built in 1938, a classic photo from the theatres past hangs in direct eye sight when you walk inside, a bright red curtain hangs over the one and only screen and it has a balcony. I used to always wonder about that theatre whenever I would walk by it. It was extremely dilapidated and ran shows on a very sporadic basis, but I could tell it was ‘cool old’, history old, because of its signage and character that was still evident through the mess of garbage and scattering of posters.

My gripe, [NOT a spoiler] although I realize this is Rush Hour 3 here and not a movie of cinematic brilliance and nor is that expected of this movie, like any other person on the planet there are things that erk me and get under my skin and one of those things is the destruction or disrespect to basically any countries flag. I was even born on America’s flag day, no I am not American but their rules for proper display and use are very similar to ours. I was raised on a mix of the two due to my years of involvement with Scouts Canada/Girl Guides of Canada.

* Random Tangent*

Although I enjoyed my years in Scouting, even the embarrassing years of it being seriously uncool, I have never agreed with their politics on homosexuals and find their views ancient and quite frankly disgusting. I have also always been in HUGE disagreement with the decision to allow girls into ‘Scouts Canada’. Originally there was three levels one for girls and one for boys and then at the fourth level it goes co-ed. This is how it should have always remained and it still angers me greatly even though I have no involvement anymore that this was allowed and actually became policy in 1998. It is does not seem fair to me that girls have the option to join Brownies and be with all girls or join Beavers and be with boys and girls from the get go. What about the BOYS. It was started with BOYS for BOYS in 1908 the Girl Guides started in 1910. My point, start a separate sect so the boys have the same choices as the girls.

*Tangent End*

A scene in the movie between five and ten minutes in length completely destroys a French flag. I find it odd that a country that has such strict laws in regards to the treatment of its flag would be so quick to idiotically destroy and disrespect one for a scene that was already gravely lacking in humor. As soon as we left the theatre and started sharing opinions on the movie I mentioned my disgust and was actually shocked that they both agreed with me [to the extent we talked about it at that time] because it is not something that comes up in many conversations and Adam also thinks it is silliness and pretty much laughs at me when I freak out over misuse and handling of flags which I have done numerous times over the course of our relationship. For one I was taught that it is to never touch the ground. I can see how something simply made from a piece of cloth could have its significance lost on some and being something that you wouldn’t really think about or care too much about, but tradition that is not wrapped in religion is rare these days and so I respect my flag and the flag of every other nation because if Canada were to ever fall, her flag and all of its symbolism, and history would go with her and I find that rather sad.

If you are interested in the Flag Etiquette for Canada the information is here, for the United States and links to other countries the information is here.

1. Gus is still limping but the Hip Action that we give her for the limping/arthritis when she doesn’t barf it up is working really well. She takes it twice a day most days. If she barfs it up it is only once and sometimes she refuses to eat two.
2. Gus loves strawberries. We just discovered that they are like catnip to her. But we have not allowed her to eat any, she goes crazy nutters when we take them out of the fridge.
3. Adam and I got an early Anniversary gift from his Grandmother it was a cook-book which means she stuck with tradition. Awesome. And then a couple days later we both got birthday gifts in the mail and they were shirts and one of them I LOVE I have worn it three times already and it got me thinking about the post I wrote on the ‘Grandma Shirts’ and how Adam wanted to wear his crab shirt from his Grandma, my GMIL. I discovered looking through our honeymoon photos on flickr that he wore it a lot while we were on it and since I wrote it I have been feeling guilty not wanting it to come across as if I don’t appreiate her and what she sends us because of course some of it is total Grandma stuff, she is his Grandma but she pays me the most attention of anyone in Adam’s family other than Adam so I love her a lot and really appreiate everything she sends us, Adam can always use new work shirts anyway.
4. My breasts have almost stopped lactating. Shit, I remember telling Jared at Blogstock that if I got drunk enough that I’d show him. Thankfully I did not get drunk enough. He brought it up man. The switch from Risperidone to Seroquel has gone rather well and I’ve been able to drop my overall dosage of medication by a minimal amount but an amount none the less. It was in fact the Risperidone causing the prolactin increase as all of my blood work and CT Scan came back normal. I still have to go for one more blood test to re-test my prolactin levels, I am sure they will still be higher than normal but not as high as to cause anymore concern.
5. I am not 100% sure how I feel about Guitar Hero Encore Rocks the 80s I have finished easy level and medium level and five stared all the songs. You get five gold stars if you get 100% in this one too which rules but also sucks for me because I totally OCD out HAVING TO HAVE 100% ON EVERY SONG!!!!!! I haven’t attempted hard level yet but plan to today. I think once I venture into hard level I will have a better idea of how I feel about it. I guess in a way I expected to know more of the songs than I do, that is sort of bothering me. But as usual with this kick ass series of games even the songs I don’t know I found already growing on me when I went back to play the game on easy.
6. I finished reading Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs yesterday and absolutely LOVED IT. I have seen the movie twice and also LOVE the movie, I also own the movie. Now I want to read the rest of his books. Which I’m sure I will do. Now, I am reading Shopaholic & Baby by Sophie Kinsella because I have some heavy books coming up on my reading list and also just as I enjoy mindless movies on occasion Sophie Kinsella does make for some perfect mindless summer reading.
7. Tonight we are going to watch the Vancouver Canadians play some baseball. I have never been to a baseball game in my life, should be good times. I won the tickets through Rebecca and her participation in the 24 hour Blog-a-thon. When she wrote that she was going to be giving away tickets I knew at that moment I was going to win them and became worried that people would think it was rigged. It was not rigged I do not even like baseball. Adam does and it is his birthday on Monday so it is perfect and technically half of my donation was from Adam SO regardless of how you look at it we won far and square.

Somehow I got it into my head that The Road was 261 pages long and when I hit page 241 and tried to turn the page I discovered I was done. That has never happened to me before. Adam had gone to bed and I had stayed up to finish it because I knew Harry Potter was coming in the morning. Although The Road is now an Oprah’s Book Club pick and a Pulitzer Prize winner that is NOT why I read it I had heard of it before. Harry Potter aside I am not one to pick a book just because it is popular I pick most of my reads around what my friends are reading, by general interest, suggestions and reading reviews in newspapers and magazines.

When my book arrived I was still in bed, I did not expect it to arrive so early it was only 8:25am. I literally flew out of bed, forgetting my glasses but managed to throw my sandals on, ran to the buzzer and then sprinted down the stairs. It was mine at last, all 607 pages of it. I went about setting up my reading space.

1. take your medication - check

2. water - check

3. coffee - check

4. text message Aughra to let her know I have my copy - check

5. update status on messenger to read: FULL MEDIA BLACKOUT - until i am done Harry Potter - check

6. change Facebook status to similar - check

7. put up drafted blog post - check

8. say goodbye to the internet, anything but the Golf Channel [and even THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT HP!] and the outside world - check

When I opened the book to start reading I could NOT have been more surprised to see that one of the two quotes or passages whatever you want to call them, the second one to be exact, that J.K. Rowling was using as a precursor to chapter one was by none other than my blood relative on my fathers side William Penn. I had a serious trip out.

Over the course of my reading weekend Adam was awesome, he did some of my chores, he was very quiet, I think he spent a lot of time on Facebook, he filtered the email and he kept my coffee and water flowing, he fed me as well. He went out and rented Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window , I took a break and watched it with him. He also left the apartment for periods longer than a half hour at least three times leaving me in complete silence.

I finished it last night and it really hasn’t all sunk in yet, I read it so fast I am still digesting it all. It is sort of hard to believe it is over but I don’t feel sad because if you take out all of the over explaining/describing and repetitiveness the same series likely could have been written just as well in five books. As mentioned previously, not being a huge fan of reading books that belong to a series, to be honest I’m glad it is finally over. I did love it though, the whole ride and the complete and utter craziness of the entire phenomenon, I am really glad that it tuned out to be worth every minute and that all of my books were printed on 100% ancient-forest-free paper which is also 100% post consumer recycled and processed chlorine free.

I will be on a short hiatus until I’m finished reading Harry Potter.

I will not be online at all, I have a FULL MEDIA BLACKOUT in place.

SUCKS being on pacific standard time, I’m going to be one of the last of my friends to finish! SO UNFAIR!

It has basically been ten years since the first Harry Potter book hit shelves, for some ten years of waiting to find out the fate of a boy wizard with a mysterious and sometimes painful scar. I started reading the books when the second novel was in paper back, the rest of my books are hard cover. I bought books three through six on their release days and started reading them right away.

I am not normally one for books that are a series. I have read a few but not many past three books. My favourite trilogy being Sandra Gulland’s historical fiction novels following the life of Josephine Bonaparte; It really did come as a complete surprise to me that I ended up completely embedded in Potter mania. I don’t know exactly what time my book will arrive on Saturday but it will arrive and I will start reading probably as I am walking back up the stairs to my apartment where I will have all lines of communication to the outside world SHUT OFF because if any fucker ruins this book for me I am going Voldemort on their ass.

In talking on the phone to Aughra the other morning before we teed off for a round of golf, I discovered that this year she is getting hers again at midnight on Friday and I mentioned I couldn’t handle the midnight bullshit and then she said she just goes at midnight so she can start reading right away. RIGHT. Then it dawns on me with her three hours ahead by the time I get my book she will likely be almost half way through maybe further. As my anticipation builds I am wondering if I really should have reconsidered the Saturday delivery and planned to go at midnight like last time.

Although I sometimes feel slightly insane as the clock ticks down the last few overly anxious days, when I think about just how badly I want this book in my hands right now and how I have never looked forward to a novel like this in my life I know I am FAR from alone if the over 1.6 million pre-ordered copies are any indication.

I am keeping myself busy reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road right now, I should be finishing it just as Harry is arriving if all of my careful calculations and planning my life around this novel release are successful.

Adam left last Friday morning for a fishing trip with his work buddies and some other dudes and I never said anything because I didn’t want any crazies knowing I was all alone. He didn’t catch any fish though, thankfully, because I can’t stand fish. The thought of the smell of it in here makes me want to barf, just thinking about my freezer and there being a fish wrapped in whatever, newspaper, meat packing paper I don’t care just keep it out of my freezer. Granted I don’t even cook I have no say in this had he have brought home a fish I’d be screwed. I’m being over dramatic I don’t hate fish THAT much, I would have cared had the fish not been cut yet though. Enough about hypothetical fish.

On Saturday morning I was watching bad movies on TBS when I found out that David needed help moving and so I went over to help only to find out he was at my place because everything went to shit and he couldn’t move on Saturday. When we were both back at my place we messed around with some stuff with my site that I can’t figure out, we weren’t successful in figuring anything out we got shawarmas and decided we were going to go see the 10:30pm showing of Harry Potter. We had reviewed the times it was playing and were already skeptical of getting in but also knew that 7 or 7:30 on a Saturday would still have way too many kids for us. We had lots of time so David suggested we watch a DVD he said something like, don’t you own any DVDs? I don’t know how, I don’t normally need a reason but The Notebook came up, I laughed it off though like as IF I thought David would watch The Notebook, I torture Adam with it every now and then but he has seen the end more than the whole movie. I thought we were going to watch Running with Scissors when David said he didn’t hate romantic movies and it had in fact been him who had told me to watch Spanglish. I said he should not have given me that opening and put on The Notebook. Half way through I turned to him and said, look at it this way, at least now you and Adam can BOTH pick on me whenever it comes up.

Considering that David hadn’t gotten to move the day was pretty good, the whole Notebook time might not have been fun for David but I am just talking over all, we don’t get to hang out one on one very often anymore, he and Adam get along great which is awesome but it is still nice to have just David and I time. Anyway, we got to the theatre and BIG SURPRISE Harry Potter was SOLD OUT. I get all CAPITAL LETTERS over BIG SURPRISE because we had reviewed the times of the other movies playing earlier in the day only to find out that Transformers was in a million theatres and it is on to its second weekend. David has seen Transformers and said it was horrid and he is a BIG FAN, he said the transformers hardly talk, they hardly transform, most of it is about stupid humans and that the general consensus is that because they are robots that maybe it doesn’t need a plot and that because it was done by Michael Bay it was basically just a bunch of sunsets. I think Adam is seeing it tomorrow. Harry Potter’s evening shows were ONLY playing at 7, 7:30, 10:30 and 11:00. We got there shortly after nine. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. IT IS HARRY POTTER!!!!!!! In the long run Harry Potter is going to make so much more money then Transformers it is basically ridiculous. I’m still furious about it even after having gotten to see it today it should be playing every bloody half hour like STUPID Transformers is. It is also playing at stupid times during the day as well we only had a choice between 12:40 and 3 something. Pure insanity.

Adam had today off work so the three of us went to see the Potter movie and it was very good, my dad saw it and gave it a ten but having read the books there is no giving it a ten for me and I liked the last movie better. There were a couple of parts that I did not like, for example the character who dies in this movie is big BIG deal to Harry and the scene where the character dies is extremely underdone. I cried in the book I felt nothing in the movie. I am so excited about my book arriving on Saturday morning I CAN HARDLY CONTAIN MYSELF!!!

I’ll just come right out and say it: we, have been watching the reality show Age of Love, hosted by Mark Consuelos. If you haven’t heard of it, this other dude also named Mark but with the last name Philippoussis, he apparently plays tennis I’ve never seen him or if I have I never noticed he wasn’t at Wimbledon, he gets to try his hand at tying down one of seven cougars and six kittens. Or rather seven forty something women and six twenty something women, he is thirty. Personally I think they should have had the guy be thirty-five but that is just me and I do not run NBC.

This show is a titillating array of sexy slutty boobs up to their chins prancing princesses up against sexy slutty boobs even with their elbows prowling women out for one man. The only thing new here is this supposed test of whether age matters. I’d say the show is still run by the hardness of his dick divided by each meeting with each girl times how many times the old ladies jam their tongues in his mouth minus the timid barely open mouth kisses from the kittens. It is really hard to tell which team is winning he apparently has ‘feelings’ for all the girls left.

We are hooked we have watched every show. It is getting intense the twenty somethings have been forced to move in with the forty somethings and this one girl Mary will NOT STOP CRYING. I call her Crier Pants Deux. In episode two he said he was not going to ‘make out’ with all the women. He has now made out with ALL the women by episode four. The forty somethings all have really hot bodies not unlike those of the twenty somethings you can really only see their age in their faces and the height of their boobs.

All the women claim to feel a connection to Mark there are six left, three of each, it is just a matter now of how strong of a connection he feels to how many girls, all the women say the word connection a lot. Mark says it too it is important that he has a connection with the girl he chooses. He is confused and next week it looks like it is really going to heat up there may even be some LOVE connections.

I like Amanda for the kittens, she is twenty-five and fluent in Spanish and I like Jayanna for the cougars she is only thirty-nine [not sure how she made it on??] and is looking for a man who will sweep her off her feet. Good luck ladies.

I hope the relationship with whichever woman he chooses at least makes it to the interview they’ll get on Regis and Kelly.

Or blame the experiment still afoot with my meds. I some how got it in my head that I was smarter than the medication and could beat the feeling like a zombie by simply cutting back on my clonazepam figuring the seroquel was strong enough to keep any side affects at bay. Nope wrong. SO WRONG. First maybe two days of that experiment had good results and then BAM I was screwed I can’t even describe what it was like but it didn’t feel like my body at all and I was wide awake. I went out for a run on the day I felt the worst having to concentrate pretty hard to not fall off the sea wall, I already have naturally bad balance and drift right constantly while walking. It went well I ran past a woman chugging a mickey of vodka and was thankful it wasn’t me. I had to turn back to look at her though even at the risk of falling it was before noon and she was going to finish it in what looked like one gulp. I was going to tough out the clonazepam withdrawal but gave in and took it because I needed to sleep, exercise wasn’t helping, breathing exercises weren’t working and lowering it wasn’t even in the program and was just complicating things. I am still looking for the right dosage so that I can stay up all day, yesterday I did not take a nap and today I have to power walk over to therapy so I will be kept from napping by that. I am not really feeling that bad aside from being stupid tired. I think I need another week to see how the seroquel is going to work, had I not gone into ‘MUST CONTROL ALL MY MEDICATION’ mode I’d likely be some what adjusted already but I am still too shaky to give it a yes or no.

Wimbledon is where most of my- I could be blogging right now time is going. I’ve been too tired to read much. I just picked Fall on Your Knees [Ann-Marie MacDonald] back up after a short break and have about 100 plus pages to go in what is becoming a rather epic story at almost 600 pages in length. Then I figure I should be able to get another two books in before Harry Potter arrives and I’m reading it before I even get my door unlocked after grabbing it from the Canada Post person [Saturday delivery] likely still in my PJ’s like last time. Book six I went to midnight madness with David and Adam and it was so lame I would NEVER EVER do it again, whereas for book five I did the Saturday delivery and was happier than a pig in shit.

I have never seen the amount of rain delays that Wimbledon is having before in all my years of watching Wimbledon which is a lot of years in case you were wondering. There was thunder and lighting one day and it took a record 95hours to finish one of Nadal’s matches, I can’t remember how many times it was started and stopped. For a good portion of the Championships it has looked as if all of the top players were going to battle it out for the slam title but no one but Federer has pulled it through. Venus snuck up on the women and looks set to win her fourth title. If all goes according to MY plan we’ll see a Nadal/Federer final, although it’s been seen their meetings never lack anything but the best tennis that there is to be seen anywhere right now. Sharapova, out by a beat down from Venus may have the game face perfect but her actual game is lacking to the point that it looks like she may have to wage a major come back with some adjustments to her game BUT she will never EVER be a Kournikova.