My wife and I went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button this morning while the kids were at school.  We actually saw it with an audience full of senior citizens.  I now know what the 55+ crowd is doing all day while I’m at the office. Don’t get me wrong — I want to hang out and watch movies when I retire.

The movie stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, with a supporting role by Tilda Swinton.  This is, coincidently, my 2nd Brad Pitt movie watched in the theater — first was Ocean’s Eleven.  I have seen his other movies generally as a DVD rental. Sooooo, what did I think?  My wife and some movie critics have hit the nail on the head — it’s basically Forrest Gump all over again.  Interestingly enough, writer Eric Roth wrote the screenplays to both Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump.

It’s a slow movie (nearly 3 hours), sentimental, and generally decent.  You watch Benjamin’s character observe others and life itself, which is fine, but I thought it was just a bit too long.  I gotta say that I’m disappointed in the actual movie trailers online.  They basically tell the whole movie, without giving you a sense of the scenes themselves.  If you are planning to watch the movie, don’t watch the trailer.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

I’m sure this isn’t really noteworthy, so please go ahead and yawn. I’ve never been good at jigsaw puzzles.  The Ipes didn’t do them growing up, and whenever I tried to participate in other people’s jigsaw puzzle adventures, I got frustrated early on.  This time around, Nums (as always) introduced me to doing jigsaw puzzles in a new and better way.  Following her lead, I enjoyed it, worked with her to complete it, and I felt relaxed.

This was a 550 piece puzzle.

Joel's 1st jigsaw puzzle

Listen, I know that sewing technology has evolved over the centuries.  We had sewing by hand, spindles, the loom, foot-pumped sewing machines, and the modern electric models you and I are most familiar with.  Blame my naivete, but I had no idea that the industry was still revolutionizing the modern home sewing machine.  Check out the Brother Quattro 6000D, as noted by Engadget.

Brother Quattro 6000D

• A 4.5 x 7-inch Sharp HD LCD display and embedded runway lighting.
• A camera right next to the needle to give the user a birds-eye view on the LCD to allow perfect placement before stitching.
• Advanced embroidery features and built-in tutorials.
• 3 USB ports.

If Captain Kirk gets a tear in his tunic, he can use this to sew it right up, right as rain.

So, it’s official.  Our daughter Lily is crawling.  It’s been slow for her the past month — a lot of backwards movement, unable to figure out how to change from sitting to crawling, but she’s been figuring it out.  She has also done a lot of circling/spiralling instead of crawling.

No longer.  I’m excited and impressed, just as it was with Josh two years ago, to watch my daughter developing and figuring it all out.  Moving two feet on Saturday, a couple more feet last night.  It’s fun to watch and observe.

My wife and I both had the day off today, so we celebrated by having a date.  With no kids in tow today, we went to see the critically acclaimed Slumdog Millionaire, a movie by Danny Boyle. Frankly, an excellent movie all around.  This is a movie that I can appreciate and adore.  You have great character development so the audience can understand and empathize with the characters, you have a moving drama to keep you interested, eye-catching cinematography, and a toe-tapping soundtrack.  I also appreciated that the movie didn’t pull any punches — when bad stuff could happen, it did.  I hate that fake Pollyanna stuff.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

I recommend this movie.  The movie trailer is here.

I picked up some new stuff this week.  I got Ratatouille and Wall-E on DVD for Josh….and myself.  The Wall-E DVD comes with a coupon to download a free digital copy (e.g. Apple’s iTunes store), as did The Dark Knight DVD I received for Christmas from my secret Santa. Speaking of which, I am officially done with purchasing DVDs from brick-and-mortar stores.  I’ve said it before, but I’m more official now.  Wall-E on DVD at Target is $34, and $37 after taxes.  I found the same exact 3-disc Wall-E set on Amazon.com for just $22.  With Ratatouille @ $19, and free Super Saver Shipping, the total was just $43.  For $6 more than I would have spent at Target, I got two Pixar movies.  Egregious.  I’m more Mr. Online Shopping than ever now.

In other news, I’m rebuilding my Dad’ PC next week.  That includes wiping it out, putting on a fresh install of Windows XP, and installing an additional 2 Gb of RAM.  I remember when PC memory used to be so expensive back in the early 90’s.  Adding a few Mbs of RAM would cost you hundreds of dollars.  I’m adding 2Gbs of RAM for just over $23.  My Dad’s PC only has 512 Mb of system memory, so I think it will only help.

I thought about how cheap the memory was, thought about the 1 Gb of system memory that I have, and ordered some for my Dell as well.  Hey, I don’t know about you, but $23 is a bargain. It arrives Tuesday.

My sister and her husband Rob organized and hosted a suprise 60th birthday party for Rob’s father.  It went pretty well, and I think Pop was generally surprised.   Folks, including my sister, cooked up all the food, and put together a great event.  I took photos with our temporary disposable camera, so I’ll publish those when I get them developed.

This is Lily’s first Christmas. It’s actually been a sedate Christmas, without a lot of hoopla.  We’ve been so busy, we only put the Christmas tree up on Sunday.  We’re also keeping the gift-giving for ourselves pretty low key.  Seriously, how many yachts can you give to each other?

Last Sunday, my sister Julie and her husband came over for our 2nd iteration of “Christmas Excellence.”  We cook a fancy dinner, break out the fancy-shmancy wedding china, drink, eat, and be generally merry.  Not to be forgotten, there’s also the gift exchange. Last year, it included watching the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special (against my will), but it was a late night, and we skipped any kitschy stupid Christmas specials.  Sometimes, I think I can influence people with my mind after all.  Too bad I couldn’t prevent last year’s tragedy — that He-Man/She-Ra “very special episode” was horrendous.

He-Man & She-Ra Christmas Special (1985)

I worked from home on Wednesday, as the kids had an early dismissal from their school.  In the evening, we met up with my sister-in-law and her family at church for a Christmas Eve service.  Afterward, we drove over to my in-laws’ place for dinner and another gift exchange.  Also, the cousins got a chance to run around with each other and make lots of noise, er, I mean, merriment.

Christmas morning, Nums made blueberry muffins, and we exchanged gifts.  One of the cooler gifts I got this year was Season One of the old Muppet Show.  I’m waiting for an opportunity to watch it this weekend, if I get a chance.  I loved the old show when I was growing up.  It’s probably dated now, but who cares? Life is about being corny sometimes.

The Muppet Show - Season 1

I was up late doing some work, and I figured I’d watch my latest movie in the Netflix queue while I worked — Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. A review of the sequel should include a little background on the original movie.  I like a lot of aspects of the story, mythology, and characters from the series so far.  I like all that occult stuff, plus the idea that there is a lot going on that we in the normal world are not aware of.  Maybe that’s why I liked the original Ghostbusters movie and the 80’s animated series when I was a kid. 

Hellboy 2 was another decent movie from Del Toro.  It had good action, amazing creatures and special effects, and I liked the story.  I didn’t like the ending to the original movie (too cliched), but the ending to this movie was much more satisfying.  I say it was a decent movie, as it still felt as if there were so many themes thrown in, but Del Toro and the writers never dug deeper to focus on the key themes.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008)

So, where the hell is the camera?

We are asking this question daily.  We can not find our Canon S80.  It is not here, it is not there.  It is not high, it is not low.  This house is not that big.  We haven’t gone anywhere.  Where is the camera?