For the past few years, I tracked which movies that I saw in the theatre. It was fun to look back and see how many (and what) I’d seen, and this year I decided to take it a step further and add books and graphic novels into the mix, with the help of Goodreads. (I also decided to allow movies I saw on DVD, even though that tally turned out to be just one.)

I ended up tying 2007’s movie tally with 20 films, and amusingly enough that was also the number of novels I read. As for graphic novels… well, let’s just say the final tally was a wee bit higher.

Movies:

1. The Women (the 1939 version)
2. Frost/Nixon
3. Watchmen
4. Every Little Step
5. Star Trek
6. Little Ashes
7. Away We Go
8. Up
9. Public Enemies
10. The Hurt Locker
11. (500) Days of Summer
12. Paris
13. Inglorious Basterds
14. An Education
15. Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire
16. A Room With a View
17. A Serious Man
18. Fantastic Mr. Fox
19. Up in the Air
20. A Single Man

Books:

1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
2. Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
3. Wicked Gentlemen by Ginn Hale
4. All Seated On The Ground by Connie Willis
5. Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
6. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
7. Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories by Craig Laurance Gidney
8. The Cabinet of Light by Daniel O’Mahony
9. The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
10. Shell Shock by Simon A. Forward
11. Farthing by Jo Walton
12. The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories by John Kessel
13. Listening Is an Act of Love edited by Dave Isay
14. A Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear
15. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen
16. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
17. Psycho by Robert Bloch
18. After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
19. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
20. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Due to strong winds (up to 50mph) that provided a wind chill factor of 15 degrees, I went running indoors at my gym this morning instead of outside. Afterwards, while driving home, my windshield started fogging up. I rolled down the window to let it cool off, but it wasn’t until I stopped at a red light that I noticed it. Thanks to myself being particular warm and everything around me being particularly cold, I had a huge amount of steam pouring off of my head and shoulders. (Needless to say, I was rather bummed I didn’t have my camera with me.)

I like to think that people driving down Route 50 did a double-take at the steam roiling off of a driver. I know I did and the driver was me! After all, I looked rather similar to a Dr. Strange villain.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

One of my Christmas traditions is that every year, I read James Joyce’s “The Dead” from Dubliners on Christmas Eve. This year, for the first time in about a decade, I ended up spending the evening at my parents’ house instead of going home to my own bed. So it was then that I realized I had left my copy of the book at home.

But! Since I now have a Kindle (thanks to a deal I could not refuse!), all was not lost. I went onto the Kindle Store, found a free copy of Dubliners, and before I knew it I was spending Christmas Eve curled up in bed with Gabriel and Gretta Conroy. Christmas was saved, and the future is now. Sometimes, technology is awfully handy.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Apparently if there are Christmas disasters to be had, for me it’s shifted off of Christmas Day (what with the infamous “Greg comes home and finds water pouring in through his ceiling and his possessions floating in an inch of the stuff” moment) and moved to December 23rd. I say “disasters” because I’m hoping that was the worst of it.

The big thing for me was discovering that the Christmas tree had not just toppled over, but actually broken in the night. Completely unusable. Thankfully only one ornament broke, probably because most of the tree hit the couch instead of the floor (or the coffee table). It’s a little frustrating because I’d bought it last year since right now I don’t really have room for a full size live tree. I ended up taking all the ornaments off of the tree and packing them back up. I could have bought another tree but at this point it just seemed easier to call it a day. I’m hoping next year that I can just go back to having a real Christmas tree once more.

Meanwhile, Charlie ended up having all sorts of trouble at the airport due to the backlog of passengers from snowpocalypse earlier in the week. Ugh. One of the big problems of all of the airlines teetering on the edge of bankruptcy is that everyone’s killed half of their schedule. So now when a day’s worth of flights are cancelled, there aren’t tons and tons of other flights to shift all the passengers onto. What a royal mess.

(Speaking of a royal mess, half of my work parking lot is still unplowed. What are they hoping for, 80 degree weather to just melt it all? Good luck on that.)

Oh well. If that’s the worst of it I suppose I should consider myself lucky, right? Minor stuff in the grand scheme of things. Here’s to a quiet and sedate holiday from here on out…

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Huh. We actually got one for a change. Well, at least some people are excited about it.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Ok! Better late than never, right? Here’s another great gift idea, and it’s one that you can just as easily give to yourself as to someone else. Even better, it’s a gift that helps others and is on sale. What might that be you ask?

My favorite small press publisher of prose, Small Beer Press, is having a sale. And, for every book you buy from them, they’ll donate $1 to the Franciscan Children’s Hospital. SBP co-owners Gavin Grant and Kelly Link have had a family member in their hospital for a while now, and in general I think the idea of a hospital specifically for long-term care of children is such an incredibly necessary thing. (You can read the full story of their time with the hospital at this link.)

Anyway, they have a lot of great books for sale. Some of my favorites include:

The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories by John Kessel. Kessel’s “Lunar Quartet” is alone worth the price of admission, but “Pride and Prometheus” and its merging of Pride and Prejudice with Frankenstein has to be read to truly be believed.

Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart. Stories about people who can see ghosts are a dime a dozen, but Stewart’s book is about family and dead relatives and promises and the things that bind us. Breathtakingly beautiful prose. (His book Mockingbird is also available and I love it to death too.)

Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link. In the future, everyone will know about Kelly Link’s genre-defying short stories. They’re hard to describe and all peculiar but in a twisted, wonderful sort of way. Seriously, if there’s one book you’re going to buy, make it this one.

Second Line by Poppy Z. Brite. I haven’t actually read this one, but I have read Liquor, her novel which also stars the same characters (two chefs in New Orleans who eventually open a restaurant where all the food is cooked using alcohol in some way, shape, or form). Brite made her start as a horror author but it’s her novels about cooking and living in New Orleans that have made her into a must-read author for me. Seeing someone shift genres so effortlessly was a real revelation, and a reminder not to automatically push someone into a narrow box.

Or, buy something entirely different! Those prices are ludicrously cheap. I rarely buy prose books these days because of space; instead I keep visiting the library. I make an exception for books from Small Beer Press.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

I’d told myself that December would be the month that I really started updating online a lot more, but then everything hit at once. To top it off, my own site got hacked and it took the better part of a day to scrub it clean of all the nastiness. (Moral of the story? Some people suck.)

Anyway, I kept telling myself, “You need to update,” and not doing so. But then I read Kate Beaton’s latest online strip, and it’s one where she talks to her younger self, and it kicked up all sorts of flashbacks of my own.

(Go on, read it. I’ll be here when you get back.)

It’s strangely comforting to know I’m not the only one who can still carry around guilt related to past gifts. I remember getting a microscope one year and within about 12 hours having spilled some dark blue dye all over the kitchen table and the tablecloth. Stained for life. I remember years later still feeling horrible about that. And despite one of my favorite childhood books being one titled Greg’s Microscope (I have multiple copies, so please don’t think tracking one down for me is a good idea), I too had no idea what to actually do with a microscope once I had one. You know how that goes. I look back now and I just wince. Such a thoughtful present that never got used to its full potential.

Anyone else  haunted by the ghost of a past gift?

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

I have some amazingly talented friends. This is, really, not so much news. But I was thinking to myself this morning, “Greg, some of your friends don’t have big publishers pushing their books, or prints, or (insert awesome creation) here. And they would make good Christmas gifts if only people knew about them. I wonder if you could do something about that?”

So! As I have free time (a rare commodity these days, to be fair) I thought I’d point people in the direction of some talented friends’s websites and products.

First up! My good friend Britt, whom I’ve known for over a decade now, recently started her new website The Photo Garden Bee, where she visits gardens all over the country and takes some amazing photographs of them as well as writing up a travelogue. I’m not a huge garden-visitor but even I find this pretty enthralling.

She’s now selling black and white matted prints of some of her flower pictures, and they look fantastic. I mean, c’mon, just look!

Very reasonably priced, and just gorgeous. Hello, easy Christmas shopping idea! Go buy some!

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

So! Thanksgiving. The plan was pretty simple: get up early Thursday morning, fly from National Airport to Charlotte, then from Charlotte to Birmingham. Then, late on Saturday, we’d fly back home. Of course, since I said, “the plan was pretty simple” you know that means that the end result was anything but.

It started out on target; got up at 4:15am, Charlie picked me up at 5:30am, and by 5:50am we’d parked the car, checked in, and checked our luggage. (There were plans to go running several days, plus nice clothes and casual clothes packed, so the bag was otherwise bigger than I’d have planned. It could have still fit in the overhead compartments, but since it was a full flight I figured I would just find it easier to not have to struggle.) At 7am, our flight was completely boarded and we soon took off for Charlotte, despite heavy fog in DC.

It was around 8am that the pilot came on the intercom. I thought he was going to say we were descending to Charlotte, but instead he started explaining that they had mechanical difficulties and the flaps on the wings wouldn’t come back up after take-off, which would make landing tricky. And, because of heavy fog in both Charlotte and DC, they couldn’t land safely at either airport. So as a result, we were being diverted to Pittsburgh. Yes, instead of going 330 miles southwest, we were going 191 miles northwest.

After we landed, they started working on the plane. And working. And working. And working. After an hour or two, we realized that we were in trouble, because there was no way that we would make our flight to Birmingham. Worse, the only other flight from Charlotte to Birmingham was already overbooked. So that wasn’t an option either. Charlie got on the phone with USAirways, and after a lot of talking they booked us on a Delta flight from Charlotte to Atlanta. It’s only two hours from Birmingham so it wasn’t impossible, right?

Except the airplane still wasn’t ready. After several hours they finally let us off the plane to stretch our legs (and get food if necessary), then they moved us onto a new plane. Finally we took off, back to Charlotte. We landed there at 1:30pm, a mere five hours and fifteen minutes late. And too late for the Delta flight to Atlanta.

At this point, we wanted to just go home. Getting to Birmingham for Thanksgiving was impossible, and staying in Charlotte was not our idea of a good time. That’s when we discovered a new snag. The woman at the ticket counter wouldn’t change our flight because we were only flying one way on USAirways (the way back was via Delta), so she said we’d have to buy another ticket. Aaarrrgghhhh.

I stood in line for the assistance counter, with about 25 people in front of me, while Charlie got on the phone again with USAirways. After an hour, I still wasn’t at the front of the line, but Charlie had someone on the phone that said yes, they’d fly us back and no, we did not have to buy new tickets. Charlie went to a new ticket counter where the woman proceeded to say that we’d have to buy new ones. Fortunately, Charlie had kept the guy on the line and handed her the phone. (Also, around the same time, another passenger from our flight who had also given up on getting to his intended destination told her to stop giving Charlie a hard time because we were from the same mechanical error disaster.) Finally we got our boarding passes, got on a new flight now seating back to DC, and at 4pm were back where we started.

Well, except for our bags, which we didn’t get until the next evening. But I rather expected that.

Exhausted (we’d been awake for 12 hours and in airports/airplanes for 10 of them), we drove up to Rosslyn, had pizza at Piola, and then went home and crashed. For better or for worse, the most memorable Thanksgiving I suspect I will ever have. Hopefully next year things will be a bit calmer. (And hopefully next year I will get to do what I’ve wanted to try: brining a turkey.)

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Holy cow, it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow, isn’t it? (Well, at least in the United States it is.) I’m actually heading out of town for Thanksgiving this year; pretty sure the last time I wasn’t around for the day itself, I was in the back seat of a station wagon and my age was in the single digit zone.

(I am vaguely disappointed that Birmingham, Alabama, is not a balmy 90 degrees this time of year. What’s the point of living there?)

So, as I’ll be out of town, here’s an advance photo essay on things that I am thankful for.

I am thankful for…

Child stars smoking dope!

 
The Spidey-Signal!

Cross-dressing Sailor Moons wearing sneakers!

Uncomfortably snug pants!

Chanukah ham!

Awesome parking jobs in my office lot!

And last but not least…

Betty White reminding me to end the joke here.

Happy Thanksgiving, regardless of whatever you’re thankful for.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

It’s funny, with some technology I’ve been an early adopter; I had a Wii before anyone else I knew locally, for instance, and I was using a second generation iPod before there was such a thing as Windows support. (Ah, back in the day where you had to use something like XPlay to transfer your music to and from your Windows machine.) I had my Palm Centro before the advertising campaign even really kicked in.

But in the past week I finally embraced the Bluetooth earpiece for cell phones, and bought an iPhone. Which makes me perhaps one of the last people on the planet to do so.

I’d actually given a Bluetooth earpiece a try a few years ago. The experience was horrible; constant crackles of static, echoing voices, and sound regularly cutting in and out. I try and use a hands-free device for if I have to use my phone while driving and after a week I gave up on the Bluetooth and went back to a wired earpiece. Said earpiece just died a few weeks ago, and after a trip to Target revealed no wired earpieces being sold, I did some research and gave Bluetooth another try.

The nice thing about not being an early adopter? They fix the bugs. It’s amazing how much better things sounded. So while I still feel like an extra in “Rise of the Cybermen,” I’m sold. Mind you I only use it while driving. I still draw the line at just wandering around with it on. It always makes me think that there are crazy people talking to themselves walking down the street until they get close. Why give people another reason to think I’m nuts?

As for the iPhone, while I liked my Palm Centro, there was a lot less functionality between it and what was coming out now. I thought about a Palm Pre, but a combination of there being far less apps available (and let’s face it, that’s half the attraction) and Sprint not offering a reasonable deal to re-up my contract and give me a discount on the phone, and the choice was easy. So, my contract expired on Saturday, and on Sunday afternoon after brunch I walked out of the Apple Store with my new phone. So far, so good. (Although I am a tiny bit surprised that plugging the iPhone into the computer won’t charge it, like any other iPod-like device up until now. Slightly annoying.)

And of course, one nice thing about being the last of my friends to get an iPhone is that I already have their huge recommendation list of apps to get. I’m already on the third screen worth of apps…

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

I’ve now had nine “adult” teeth removed, although on the bright side each extraction has gotten easier. The first four removed were from back when I had braces as a teenager. As part of the re-arranging of my mouth, they had to come out. Two of them came out quickly, but the other two had double-roots and weren’t so willing to budge. I still have vivid memories of a dental hygienist holding my head in place, while the dentist and a second dental hygienist simultaneously tugged at the stubborn tooth. When it finally came free, they shot backwards across the office and slammed into a wall. Meanwhile, I had so much novocaine pumped into my face that my eyelids were asleep.

The next four were my wisdom teeth, which came out in 1993. It actually wasn’t a bad experience; the teeth came almost all the way in (and were actually cutting up the sides of my mouth) so there was very little cutting that needed to be done. A new extraction, though, happened yesterday. Years ago after a tooth cracked, I needed to have a root canal that went through two teeth. (Eek.) It started bothering me this summer, so I went to an endodontist who was able to fix the one closer in that was causing pain. Unfortunately, the other one (which wasn’t actually causing any pain) needed to come out. So after a lot of delaying, I finally bit the bullet.

I have to give the oral surgeon credit, that was much less painful than I’d imagined. I’d been warned that the tooth was brittle (as all root canal teeth are) so I “might hear some cracking noises.” Eeek. I had mental images of the tooth shattering in the process and then them having to dig the roots out of my gums. Not good, right? But I was worked on for less than five minutes and suddenly the surgeon was taking the brace out of my mouth and saying, “All done.”  You know it’s gone well when even the receptionist is startled at how fast it was taken care of.

That unfortunately meant lots of packed gauze and painkillers for the rest of today, and I’m still taking some 600mg of Motrin to ease the pain today, but it’s not that bad. (I actually just feel unusually tired and run down today more than anything else. We’ll see how the day progresses. Hopefully all will still be well.) I’m also not looking forward to the implant that will need to come for replacing the tooth, as I know that’s the more hefty of the procedures. But still, that’s a few months away.

Hopefully this is the last tooth extraction for a long while. I appreciate that they’ve been getting less and less painful, but still. I’d like to not have to gum my food down the line, right?

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

I just heard the most awesome thing ever, and it was on my local NPR station, WAMU. One of the classical music CDs they were playing as part of their program “The Big Broadcast” started skipping. And not just a little bit. It sounded like an old 33rpm album cranked up to 45rpms, during an earthquake so the needle jumped every half second.

I normally reserve my hysterical laughing at NPR programs for “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” and “This American Life” but it turns out there is something out there even funnier.

After about five minutes, I gave them a call and let them know what was happening. Much to what I’m sure was great disappointment to the other listeners, they did then fix it about 90 seconds later. (Or rather, the station went silent, and then turned on a BBC radio news feed.)

Craaaaaaaaaaaazy radio!

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

While heading up to a friend’s shindig this afternoon, it hit me that if I took the Baltimore-Washington Parkway up to the top of the Beltway (instead of the George Washington Parkway up to the side of the Beltway), I’d drive right past IKEA. And since I recently used up the last of my lingonberry preserves, well… a trip to the IKEA “grocery store” might be in order.

If you’ve never had lingonberries before, it’s a tiny bit hard to describe them. They’re a little tart but sweet at the same time, and they’re an essential ingredient on swedish pancakes. (Places like IHOP actually offer a lingonberry syrup for their swedish pancakes.) As I’ve been on a pancake kick lately (and really, why not?), more lingonberry preserves was a must.

I actually picked up two other similar foods that I’ve never eaten before, though; cloudberry preserves, and gooseberry jam. I have no idea what either of them taste like, but how can I resist something called a cloudberry? It sounds like what Frodo and Sam would have picked off of bushes on their trip to Mordor. Or maybe something Mario would eat to get a temporary power-up while trying to save Princess Peach from Bowser. I, for one, can’t wait to try them. (A gooseberry doesn’t sound quite as interesting. But in the interest of trying something new I bought it.)

If I had been going directly home I suspect I would have bought stuff out of the frozen section, too, but I was saved by warmer temperatures outside this weekend. Perhaps next time I’m up in the area…

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

[Sandra] Lee’s official Food Network bio states that, “Lee then attended the world’s leading culinary art institute, Le Cordon Bleu.” Lee enrolled in a recreational two-week course at the school’s Ottawa outpost, which she acknowledges that she did not complete.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

You know when you see a really good deal online, but it’s for something you wouldn’t have otherwise bought? Those are so often my downfall. “Oooh, but it’s so cheap!” I hear in the back of my head. “I should get that!” That said, the best way to avoid such a thing is to just steer clear long enough. My latest victory is avoiding buying the first four hardcover collections of The Walking Dead for a ludicrously low price. I read the series for quite a while, but eventually grew a little weary of it and decided to move on. So I didn’t need the collections, not one bit. But they were so cheap… and calling…

Happily, by stalling long enough, the deal expired. Phew! Saved from the evil voice in the back of my head.

Besides, I did recently spend some money on getting a netbook; it was also ludicrously cheap, but in this case it was something I’ve actually wanted for a long time. Perfect for travelling and the like, in size and weight, and has more than enough power to watch videos and surf the internet. Yay! (I’m also happy to see that Amazon, in an effort to keep up with B&N, is going to be rolling out a Windows version of their Kindle application. Which means that I can put it and/or the B&N software on the netbook and then download free books for it. There are enough ones that don’t cost a dime that I don’t need to actually spend any money on such a venture.) Really, this netbook is going to be attack of the free software. Firefox, OpenOffice, Avast, public domain books… hurrah for free!

Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.

Just about everyone knows about the film Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I suspect a lot of those people know there was a sequel in the movie theatres, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. And a fraction of those people know about an animated series spin-off that ran for 20 or so episodes. (We’re already in obscure territory at this point. Comics fans may even know about the 12-issue series helmed by Evan Dorkin.)

But even I didn’t know until this week that there was also a live-action tv series that lasted a whopping seven episodes on Fox in 1992. And now that I’ve seen the trailer, I cannot un-watch this nightmare.

On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a negative 17. I love how the two leads were clearly chosen based on the fact that one of them was be easily given blond curly hair like Alex Winters, while the other one could do a semi-recognizable impersonation of Keanu Reeves’s voice (and had a gnarly wig slapped on his head). There’s even some full clips from actual episodes of the show on YouTube, but I don’t recommend watching them in the same way that I don’t recommend staring directly into the sun. I mean sure, you can do it if you really want, but don’t come crying to me when your retinas are burnt to a crisp.

Then again, it also turns out there was a Benji television spin-off involving a hunt for aliens (no, really) so this clearly is not the most inane movie-to-tv-series decision ever. But it’s still pretty impressive in a bad sort of way.

Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.

Been a while since I’ve done one of these, but things have been so nuts this week otherwise…

Trader Joe’s Pear Sauce. Where has this been all my life? I’m actually not a big fan of applesauce, it’s always very bland and uninteresting to me. I will buy ones that have berries or some other fruit mixed into them, although finding applesauce with both something else added in but not having sugar added can be tough. Well, Trader Joe’s is now offering pear sauce. No sugar added, and using pears instead of apples. Quite frankly, it’s outstanding. It’s got a crisp taste to it, and there’s actual texture to the pear sauce, you aren’t just eating mush. Yay!

Visqueen – Message to Garcia. In March 2005 I went to see Shonen Knife at the Black Cat in DC; super-small show, a ton of fun. But the group that grabbed my attention even moreso was Visqueen, the opening act. I ran out and bought both of their albums and absolutely loved them, a group of indy rockers from the Pacific Northwest. After what’s felt like a small eternity of waiting, their new album hit about a month ago and I’ve been entranced with it ever since. More and more of the songs are slowly lodging their way into my head. You know that normally I would never send you to MySpace, but I’ll make an exception here so you can listen to some of their songs. http://www.myspace.com/visqueen

Sushi for lunch. Such a simple but easy pleasure. Mmmmmm.

Marathon training almost being over. It’s so nice to know that I only have one more long training run this year, for January’s Disney World experience. As much as I enjoy running, 20+ mile runs are no longer exciting or interesting or something to look forward to. It’ll be good to focus on shorter distance runs for a while once it’s all over.

Finishing mind-numbing pieces of work. I know that doesn’t sound great. But after spending seven hours fixing two PDF files (more if you count all the time spent on them yeserday), it is a genuine relief to finally have those two nightmares out of my non-existant hair. Seriously, I almost did a dance of joy, I was so excited that they were finally working properly.

Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.

If you don’t have a problem with heights, you may develop one after watching this video of someone walking across Caminito del Rey.

In the words of Wikipedia:

The walkway has now gone many years without maintenance, and is in a highly deteriorated and dangerous state. It is one meter (3 feet and 3 inches) in width, and is over 300 meters (984 feet) above the river. Nearly all of the path has no handrail. Some parts of the concrete walkway have completely collapsed and all that is remaining is the steel beam originally in place to hold it up. One can latch onto a modern steel safety-wire to keep from falling, though it can’t hold much weight. Several people have lost their lives on the walkway in recent years; after four people died in two accidents in 1999 and 2000, the local government closed the entrances. However, many adventurous tourists still find their way onto the walkway to explore it.

Seriously, I actually felt dizzy watching this 6-minute video, and had to stop several times because it was scaring me so much. There are plans to restore it but I think they should take that money and just demolish the trail instead. *shudder*

Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.