Twilight condensed

http://lucylou.livejournal.com/566295.html

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

This made me laugh - hope it does the same for you!

Paranormal Activity

My husband works in a shady part of town and working in a shady part of town enables you to come by "bootleg" movies.  So we watched Paranormal Activity at home this past weekend and I wasn't very impressed.  I think this is the same thing that happened to me when I tried to watch the Blair Witch Project at home and thought to myself "I was really scared by this??"

The effect of watching a move in the theater is the entire culmination of many elements - the entire theater gets dark when the movie does, you feed off of the crowd's emotions and you're not pulled away from the movie by text messages or a barking dog.  It forces you to get involved in the movie in a way you would never be able to from your couch.  So this is what I think we really missed out on...the visceral experience. 

Needless to say I wasn't freaked out by this movie and found the commercials were pretty misleading as to how scared people were.  Ok so the movie was shot in a "home documentary" style, but the door moved in the middle of the night, I just don't believe movies anymore.  If this was something on the Discovery Channel I wouldn't believe it either.  Sorry to say I didn't even jump once.  The movie did end abruptly and a lot like Blair Witch by not resolving anything so I guess that's the freaky part? 

My suggestion, don't waste your money, wait for the rental.

Away We Go

The description of this movie pulled right from IMDB is:
A couple who is expecting their first child travel around the U.S. in order to find a perfect place to start their family. Along the way, they have misadventures and find fresh connections with an assortment of relatives and old friends who just might help them discover "home" on their own terms for the first time.

I really enjoyed this movie.  It was refreshlingly honest and for once in the longest time it was a movie that A. Wasn't shot in NJ or NY B. showed people who weren't really rich C. showed in my idea "real life" - case in point Verona gets fat as pregnant women should.  Amen.

Yes, some of the characters such as Burt's (played by John Krasinski) "cousin" LN (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) might have been a bit far-fetched, but who am I to say?  There might be people out there who don't want strollers and let all their kids sleep in the bed with them.  But they visit friends and family in different areas, including Canada to find the right home for their baby on the way. 

I laughed a lot too, one point I remember really well is poor Verona is only 6 months pregnant and the people at the airport don't believe her because she's so big and they refuse to let her fly and they have to take the train instead.  But at the end of the movie I sat back and felt satisfied to the point that I felt I had a hand in making the movie as I do when I force my husband to watch something i know he would NEVER on his own.  It was as he calls it "one of your 'plot' movies" that focused on character-building and not blowing up buildings.  AHHHHH, nice and comforting.  So my recommendation - add it to your queue and you won't be disappointed!

Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson

I read about Pete Yorn doing an album with Scarlett in Rolling Stone and thought "great another actress who thinks she can sing" and I was immediately disappointed by Pete Yorn, who I hold in high regard for getting sucked into this duet. But I downloaded some of the tracks off their album and I am amazed. They're not bad. She's not that bad either! I think they may be using some sort of voice filter on her to make her sound "smokey" but the end-result isn't shabby at all!
My favorite track so far is Relator which is really catchy and Scarlett sounds amazing.

Check it out!

The album is called Break Up, and it's on sale in Starbucks which is probably why I dismissed it off the bat. 

Changing my last name

When you get married and if you're like me you want to change your last name.  I started with the typical places - DMV, credit cards, the bank and Social Security. I've called all the credit card companies, sent a fax to the mortgage company, waited on a pretty short line at the DMV but nothing has prepared me for the other 1,000 places I have my name and email address on file.  Every website I login to requires either my email address or username.  And like most people I used my first initial and last name for my username or my email address.  I decided recently to change my gmail address from my firstname, old last name to my now firstnamemarriedlastname.  So just today my issue was transferring the ownership of this blog to my new email address and somehow I hope that my old gmail keeps forwarding to my new email address.  All this new-age name changing business really sucks when you think about how many places your maiden name really is.  SIGH.

Dunkin Donuts coffee - secret "coupon"

I love Dunkin' Donuts coffee more than any other coffee in the states. On my recent trip to Mykonos, Greece I did fall in love with Greek coffee, but once I left the island the "main-land" version of Greek coffee fell way short of what I was accustomed to and I chalked it up to the hotel, the water, and well the love-of-the-Greek that kepy that great tasting coffee safe in the hands of the staff of the Mykonos Grand. But I digress...
Dunkin' Donuts coffee is so great that we buy it in pound bags and brew it at home. Once you've had it you will never be able to artfully master drinking Maxwell House without a look of total disdain. But here is my secret, in the stores they sell 1 pound of coffee for $10. And while it may go on sale for $8.99 or so a pound, NOTHING will beat the deal in the store.
I have heard that not every store "participates" in this deal but the few stores by me have a deal where you buy 1 get another for $12.99 total. So that equals 2 pounds of coffee for $12.99. I have been to stores (but not too recently) that told me they don't participate in this deal and I have promptly walked out. So if you are on the quest for the liquid crack I called Dunkin D Bags coffee - the surprising twist is that it is cheaper at the actual store, now who would've thought?!
Keep this in mind next time you take the turn down that aisle in the grocery store that smells like the Columbians have peed brown liquid coffee gold all over the floor and haul your cookies to the closest Dunkin' Donuts.

Note: I did check their store online because someone left a comment that they don't have a DD store by them and unfortunately they don't give you the discount online but it's still cheaper than buying it in a store.  

Wedding and thank-yous

I recently got married and one of the final things to do was hanging over my head, writing thank you notes. I sat on the couch last week with the pile of cards and started the painful task of writing them. How can you say "thank you for the money" without really saying so?
Since a lot of my family is from New Jersey many (or almost all) got the "thank you for making the trip to be with us on our special day" note and "thank you for your generous gift".

I'm not sure if telling people that their gift went to good use on our honeymoon would make them happy or not but being the truth, I included it in many cards. We did use their money on our honeymoon for shopping, drinks and dinner - so thank you because while planning the wedding, paying our mortgage and other bills we somehow managed not to save a dime for the honeymoon and were praying that our families would be generous to give us money. Thank you family.

But one thing I did notice is that an overwhelming amount of people who came to our wedding, did so empty-handed. Now I don't want to sound anything less than grateful that they did come to the wedding but seriously, do they think that we wouldn't notice they didn't even bother to give us a card. I understand times are tough but really, even the lack of bringing a card in my mind is inexcusable. I guess just like RSVPing you can't teach people manners, we did have a total of 6 people who said they were coming to the reception and didn't bother to show. 1 couple did at least give us a pretty valid excuse at the ceremony but the other 2 couples no good excuse, or even a lame one. SIGH.

All I have to say is after planning a wedding for 140 people I truly understand why people hire wedding planners and why many people elope. It is hard work and something that people who haven't been through it before have any clue about. I had an amazing time and am very proud of myself for getting 50-something thank you cards out in the mail about a month after the wedding. But then again, I am a pretty responsible person and don't put things off...

I am full of blogging fever!

Maybe the Julie & Julia book has renewed my blogging or the fact that it's another crappy weekend day and I am forced to be inside and can't stand the thought of wasting away in front of the TV again, or maybe it's because I have so much to say that I am blogging so much today.
So far my day has been - reading a bit more of Julie & Julia, making a crock-pot Hungarian goulash which is filling the house with the most delectable smells, filling in more of my wedding scrapbook that my sister, Amy gave to me and finishing up the Thank You cards for wedding gifts.

If you've never had Hungarian Goulash you are missing out. The recipe varies from cookbook to cookbook but the overall premise is the same. I was at the ghetto Safeway yesterday (read: Jason's sister works there and swears they have a rat problem) and I saw a big ol' package of beef stew beef on sale for $9 for 2.8 pounds of meat. At the time I had no idea what I would do with it but I figured I would make beef stew with red-skinned potatoes in the crock pot. But today when I got out my Fix-It and Forget It 5-Ingredient Favorites crock pot cookbook I saw that I had written in the cover the recipe I had found for goulash.

After a call to my parents for some consulting - "Can I add potatoes; and the recipe calls for 2 pounds of beef but I have 2.8, should I add it all in now or saw off half this hunk of meat and freeze it?" And started cooking it. It's a very easy process, you cut the meat into pieces, in this instance I added potatoes, so I cut them into small pieces and cut a whole yellow onion and added 3 cloves of garlic of varying sizes. Then I mixed together ketchup, worceshire sauce, dry mustard, paprika (a must have along with garlic for almost all of my cooking and all Hungarian cooking), salt and brown sugar. I added this all to the crock pot, mixed it together and set it to cook for 9 hours. Being that I started this process at 1 PM my dinner won't be ready until 10 or 11 PM so my plan is to make Chicken Marsala for dinner and have the goulash for tomorrow's night dinner. I have to cook this chicken, it's been defrosting in the fridge for days now and will go bad if I don't do anything with it and I noticed the mushrooms I bought the other day have a small hole in the plastic covering the container which means they will go bad soon, too.

The Wii Fit

About a year ago when the Wii Fit first came out I gave into all the hype and bought the balance board and actually played with it for awhile. I have to say that I HATE WORKING OUT. I'm not one of those people that once I get to the gym who actually enjoys being there, I hate it.
I started working out last January and did so on a pretty steady routine for about 5 months, and I didn't lose 1 freaking pound. Everyone around me told me it was because I was turning fat into muscle and that muscle weighs more than fat. Bullshit. Not bullshit that it doesn't weigh more, but bullshit that I don't care. I wanted to lose weight and I wasn't. It sucked.
So about 2 months before my wedding I completely lost all motivation and stopped working out entirely.
Back to the Wii Fit, it was fun for awhile trying all the yoga poses, but the mastery of the poses was your ability to hold your balance, which is not the purpose of yoga. I got bored with the same old routines that lasted for about 2 minutes and the fact that you can't program a continious workout session, you have to keep picking up the remote and choosing your next workout pose. So needless to say, it lost my attention.
Recently I bought the Wii Fit EA Sports Active Trainer. It comes with "resistance bands" (read: a long rubber-band with 2 tie on straps) and a leg thingy. But it promises to be an actual workout routine complete with trainer and on-going workouts. I haven't tried it yet as it's been nice out after work and I've been walking with my dogs after work for about 1 mile a day.
But today was the beginning of Daylight Savings Time so that means unless I get out of work at 4:30 I won't be able to walk the dogs in the daylight. And the people that drive down my street barely avoid me when it's light out, and there aren't any sidewalks on my road, some of the routes that I chose around the neighborhood so have sidewalks, but not all. So I really don't feel safe walking after dark, and well it makes me lose all motivation to do so. When I leave work and it's already dark out all I want to do is go home, put on my PJs and watch TV.
So I'm hoping this new workout game will give all it promises and make me start to workout again. We'll see.

Julie & Julia

I am almost done with reading this book, I am hooked. It is hard to put down, even though I know the entire story from seeing the movie I still enjoy the writing.
I will say that the book is making me really want to cook. I went to bed last night thinking about the thawed-out chicken in my fridge but also the beef stew beef that I bought yesterday at the store and how I want to make beef stew. The fact that the chicken has been sitting undefrosted in the fridge for going on 3 days is what's setting me off, I need to cook it - today.
I've also been thinking about making truffles from the Sarah McLachlan cookbook, Plenty. They are actually really easy to make, it's just chocolate and milk. But I am a newlywed and still trying to lose that honeymoon weight, so truffles probably aren't the best way of achieving this.
SIGH.

Movies

Being a netflix addict I do watch a ridiculous amount of movies. We are on the 3 at a time unlimited account setting, which some people would say is just too much. But being as it is - there are still times that we don't have any movies in the house or anything that we really want to watch. Case in point - The Exorcist, the original. This movie sat on our entertainment center for days before we actually were "in the mood" to watch it.
I've never seen it before so I had no idea what to expect, Jason had seen it but it was years ago. I knew that it was set in Georgetown and was pretty creepy but that's the end of my expectations. We started it on a Friday night and in my house, Friday nights are pretty lame. We are both so exhausted from the workweek that we rarely stay up later than 11 PM. And this night wasn't very different. We started the movie late and I ended up falling asleep half-way through.
We finished it Saturday night and I was grossed out more than scared. And I didn't remember the set of stairs that Jason swore we stopped at near the gas station on our way home from Georgetown a few weeks ago...it obviously didn't mean that much to me. And if you haven't seen the movie yet you won't really know the meaning behind the large set of stairs, and the role they play in the movie.
So all in all, I think I missed the window of scariness for The Exorcist, I shoudl've watched it a long time ago when I was a small child for it to be really freaky. But my parents were good about not letting me watch inappropriate movies and I'm pretty sure The Exorcist would've made that list.