Let it snow!

Well, if we were going to be here for Christmas, the chances are we'd have a while one. The snow is coming down pretty good right now, and has been since around 6:30 or so. It's pretty fine, however, so hasn't amounted to much. We're supposed to get around a foot of snow over the next 24 hours. That was enough to motivate me to check the snow blower for gas, and to make sure it would start (yes and yes). I also spent a half hour or so making sure there is room in the garage for the Subaru.

So now we're ready ... let it snow!

Latest Flick

This one was another $2 movies, and Gow and I watched this one over the weekend ...

Appaloosa (3.5/5)

I was thinking that this one had a lot of potential. A gritty western with Ed Harris (a "real" actor) and Viggo Mortenson. What a disappointment. It was very slow, which I can deal with if there's a payoff, but there wasn't. They developed these characters of two crusty gunfighters who will go into a town and clean it up for a price, but then didn't keep the characters true to themselves. Instead they introduced this awkward love triangle/square which was lame and which just confused the "lawman cleans up rough western town" part of the movie. I think the movie would have been much more successful as a "straight" western instead of trying to be more than it was. In the end, it was okay, but certainly not memorable.

The overall summary: Slow, overly clever. Should have stuck with being a western.

Movies I've seen recently:
Juno - 4.8/5
Slumdog Millionaire - 4.6/5
Iron Man - 4.2/5
Lars and the Real Girl - 4.1/5
Wall-E - 4.0/5
Traitor - 4.0/5
The Dark Knight - 3.9/5
Star Trek - 3.9/5
TransSiberian - 3.9/5
Wolverine - 3.8/5
Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist - 3.7/5
Definitely, Maybe - 3.7/5
Up - 3.7/5
Kung Fu Panda - 3.5/5
The Passion - 3.5/5
Valkyrie - 3.5/5
Appoloosa - 3.5/5
The Incredible Hulk - 3.4/5
New in Town - 3.2/5
He's Just Not That Into You - 3.1/5
Horton Hears a Who - 3.0/5
Inglorious Bastards - 2.9/5
Push - 2.8/5
Meet Bill - 2.1/5
Jonah, a VeggieTales Movie - 2.4/5
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 1.9/5
Burn After Reading - 1.5/5

Weekend Happenings

It was a fairly busy weekend for the Wildwood DeVries. So, as has become somewhat the norm, you get a summary in bullet points:

• Hit the Driehaus estate for the Woods fundraiser on Friday night. That was fun. It was interesting to see the inside of this huge old mansion. I told Cyndie it didn't impress me as much as I thought it might. I think largely because, while it was decorated for Christmas, much of the furniture and rugs had been moved to make room for people and tables. So we didn't really get a full sense of what it would look like "normally". There are some pix at the end of the post.
• Saturday we slept in! Yeah, the kids are getting great at managing themselves for an hour or so to let us snooze a bit. This day they surprised us with gifts of homemade kleenix boxes that they had made!
• Ran some errands.
• Got the house cleaned up.
• In the evening we had Coffee Shop (our small group from church) over. We went to the LG Electric Light Parade (very cold) in which Emma walked with her girl scout troop. Then we all came back to our place for heavy munchies and hot beverages.
• The church youth came over after that to watch a movie in the basement.
• Sunday we celebrated my mom's birthday by having a meal with all the LG relatives.
• Then had a fairly quiet rest of the day including church.

Here's some pictures of the Driehaus event ...

He's Just Not That Into You

Amy and I went to Walmart at 6am on Black Friday to grab a few things. I picked up some $2 movies, and Cyndie and I watched one last night while she cut my hair ...

He's Just Not That Into You (3.1/5)

This was a strange one. I'm still not exactly sure what to think about it. At the surface level, it appeared to be, and was (I think), a romantic comedy. Looking a little longer, it was really about relationships amongst 20 and 30 somethings, both married and not. It was fairly realistic in that it showed people getting together and breaking up, as well as couples experiencing both highs and lows. I guess the thing about it was was it was too realistic. It was reality, without the absurdity of reality TV shows. There was nothing really that interesting about it.

The overall summary: Real life. That's it. You could get the same thing by talking to your friends.

Movies I've seen recently:
Juno - 4.8/5
Slumdog Millionaire - 4.6/5
Iron Man - 4.2/5
Lars and the Real Girl - 4.1/5
Wall-E - 4.0/5
Traitor - 4.0/5
The Dark Knight - 3.9/5
Star Trek - 3.9/5
TransSiberian - 3.9/5
Wolverine - 3.8/5
Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist - 3.7/5
Definitely, Maybe - 3.7/5
Up - 3.7/5
Kung Fu Panda - 3.5/5
The Passion - 3.5/5
Valkyrie - 3.5/5
The Incredible Hulk - 3.4/5
New in Town - 3.2/5
He's Just Not That Into You - 3.1/5
Horton Hears a Who - 3.0/5
Inglorious Bastards - 2.9/5
Push - 2.8/5
Meet Bill - 2.1/5
Jonah, a VeggieTales Movie - 2.4/5
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 1.9/5
Burn After Reading - 1.5/5

A night* out on the town!

*Immediate aside here ... it's really not a night out, more of an early evening ... 5:30 - 8:30.

So Cyndie and I have a big event tonight. We're off the rub shoulders with Mr. Richard Driehaus, he of the $30 or $40 million dollar estate. Woods School (Em and Tim's school) is having a fundraiser at the Driehaus estate tonight, and we decided to pony up the cash to go. No, I doubt Mr. Driehaus will even be there, but, you know, it's fun to pretend we're part of the elite occasionally. This guy is really good for the community. He will allow almost any community, non-profit organization to use his estate for a fund raiser. He pays for his staff to run it, pays for the food and drink. All dollars raised go directly to the organization. It's very cool.

So that's the big excitement today. Cyndie and I were planning our wardrobes last night (cocktail attire), and realized that we need to hit the stores today ... shoes for Cyndie and a dress shirt for me. We'll head out immediately after Timmy goes to school to find the right attire. I'm glad we didn't wait until 4:30 tonight to do that!

We got a nice dusting of snow yesterday afternoon and evening. It made for fun play for Tim this morning. Pepper isn't sure what to think about it. I'm just happy that it's not enough to have to plow the driveway!

Celebrating Boaterhood

Yes, the long* and winding path of Wildwood DeVries boat ownership is finally, and officially** over! Celebrate with us!

*Well, maybe it wasn't really that long, just a month plus of looking, then 3 or 4 weeks of dealing with title stuff.

**According to the state of Wisconsin.

This morning on the way into work I stopped at the Waukesha DNR office and finally got the boat registered. I had gone in once about 3 weeks ago, but couldn't complete the process due to some missing paperwork. Since the boat was a repossession, the state still showed it as owned (and registered) to the previous owner. So we needed a notorized affidavit of repossession to prove that it was bank owned. That took a week or so to get, then because of Thanksgiving and sickness, I wasn't up that direction for a few weeks. But here we are, all official and such!

In other boat news, we also got a replacement stereo faceplate, so come next spring we will be ready for some tunage out on the water!

Arranging

We're trying to get on top of the house. No, not on the roof (though we need to do that too ... to make sure the gutters are clear). We're trying to straighten up. We easily fall into the "piles in every corner" mode when we're working on a room of the house, and since we have several rooms in one form or another of construction, it's even worse I think. Our piles may have piles. We had family over last weekend, so that helped move us in the right direction. Tonight Cyndie and I worked on straightening and re-arranging the basement a bit ... we cleared a bunch of stuff out, and moved things around. It was a satisfying little adventure! I'm happy to report that the house is looking pretty good, and we're actually making some progress on the construction projects too.

In other news, almost all of Emma's girl scout cookies have been handed out, and bills collected. Timmy, Cyndie, and I pulled some bushes this morning in the front yard which will open things up a bit. Tim was a big help and enjoyed being a part of some heavy machinery work (we were using the Suburban to pull the bushes up by the roots). We had a contractor come by to look at the place we're thinking about a garage. And we went over to Gowan's for dinner and then to help Laura, Sally, and Daisy do some stuff around the house (Gow had a lot of work, and so was not there). Good times, and a full day!