Weekend recap
Well, this weekend was quiet, and occasionally quite lonely for me.
Friday evening went pretty much according to my tweet at the time - "wine, WOW and 30 Rock." In terms of World of WarCraft, Friday marked the first time in a good few weeks that I got to put in some serious playing time. Mostly I stuck to the daily quests I've been doing to build my reputation with 2 factions, and one of these daily quests involves a memory game with a time limit.
WOW expansion Wrath of the Lich King promised greater quest variety (i.e. you're not necessarily just running around killing x number of things) and the "Alchemist's Apprentice" quest is a refreshing if challenging change. You assist an undead scientist by bringing him various ingredients, each within 30 seconds. This involves remembering exactly where each of these ingredients can be found on 12 multi-level shelves in 2 different rooms. It obviously gets easier the more you do it, but it certainly demands a great deal of concentration.
I also ran my first Level 80 Dungeon this weekend, and picked up some new, appropriately darker duds for my warlock (click here to see her older outfit). I'm not quite sure about her gimp mask though...
Saturday was busy. It started with assisting at the kid's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class and doing some shopping at the Pavilion - where I actually had 2 pleasant customer service experiences. The first was at The Coachman luggage store where I bought a new suitcase. Not only had they transported the bag I wanted from their Gateway branch, but the salesman commended me on my purchase and just generally made me feel like I had made the right decision - which is really important when you're outlaying a lot of money. The second experience was at Mimmo's Pizza where I took my credit card statement to show I had been double-billed last month when their card machine was acting up. No problem. I immediately received a meal voucher in compensation.
Saturday was also unbearably hot and humid in Durban, with temperatures reaching around 39 degrees Celsius with the Discomfort Index. The only solution seemed to be fleeing back to the Pavillion to sit in a cool, dark, air-conditioned cinema and watch a movie. In this case it was the chick flick Bride Wars. Naturally you can expect my full review up here in the next few days, but the primary realisation I walked away from the movie with was "God, I'm Anne Hathaway's character".
As a sidenote, going to watch the movie provided one of my worst cinema experiences in a good long while. Apart from having to kick people out of our seats, I ended up sitting next to a poster girl for Ritalin. I had to move eventually because I just couldn't stand listening to her slurp on her softdrink, knock over her popcorn, or feel her bouncing around on her seat as she kicked the chair in front of her (causing that woman to move too), and continually kept readjusting her position so she could sit curled up on her knees.
Parents, if you have ADD children, and diet and lifestyle change isn't working, for God's sake do the world a favour and DRUG THEM! Do not, for any reason, bring them into a confined space with other people. That applies especially to airplanes and cinemas.
Anyway, after a successful attempt at mushroom-and-orzo stuffed tomatoes (my culinary experiment for the weekend), Saturday evening was too hot to do much else beyond flaking out on my bed watching Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Now I know the second film was supposed to be more fun and wacky (and I'd admit Rick Baker's mogwi and gremlin models are better) but I still think I prefer the darker original. Then again, I have always leaned towards films that are criticised for being dark, nasty and mean-spirited - other cases in point being Return to Oz, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Batman Returns.
I didn't sleep especially well on Saturday night, having had a nightmare about the bf happily hooking up with some fugly girl right in front of me. Family was around for cream tea in the afternoon, but otherwise the day was devoted to my Girlz 'N' Games webcomic and stressing when I couldn't get hold of the bf on either his land line or cell - after all, he was home alone and this is unsafe South Africa. Eventually it turned out to be just a case of bad timing though.
In the evening I finally got to watch I Am Legend out the corner of my eye while working. It's an excellent film, and Will Smith is outstanding in it, but the entire project is let down by its pointless ending (which I admittedly knew about already from all the people who saw the film during its cinema release). Why they didn't stick with the much more intriguing alternate ending, I don't know? It did at least make me keen to read Richard Matheson's groundbreaking "vampire" novel, on which the film is based, though.
Finally, you may notice the lack of Academy Awards coverage today. This is due to the fact that the show is screened this evening on MNET, and I don't want to spoil the surprise for those courageous souls who will spend the day trying their damnedest not to see or hear who won. So expect the list of winners, and a few of my random comments, tomorrow.
I was planning to get up at 4am this morning to watch the show live for the first time ever (skipping the sycophantic red carpet interview bullshit, of course)... and I partially succeeded. Up from 5:30 I got to see the second half of the show, and the main awards. The only thing I have to say at this point is that I really liked the "critical evaluation from your peers" approach to dishing out the Best Actress and Best Actor awards. I thought that was a really nice, sweet touch.
Anyway, enjoy your Monday.
Friday evening went pretty much according to my tweet at the time - "wine, WOW and 30 Rock." In terms of World of WarCraft, Friday marked the first time in a good few weeks that I got to put in some serious playing time. Mostly I stuck to the daily quests I've been doing to build my reputation with 2 factions, and one of these daily quests involves a memory game with a time limit.
WOW expansion Wrath of the Lich King promised greater quest variety (i.e. you're not necessarily just running around killing x number of things) and the "Alchemist's Apprentice" quest is a refreshing if challenging change. You assist an undead scientist by bringing him various ingredients, each within 30 seconds. This involves remembering exactly where each of these ingredients can be found on 12 multi-level shelves in 2 different rooms. It obviously gets easier the more you do it, but it certainly demands a great deal of concentration.
I also ran my first Level 80 Dungeon this weekend, and picked up some new, appropriately darker duds for my warlock (click here to see her older outfit). I'm not quite sure about her gimp mask though...
Saturday was busy. It started with assisting at the kid's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class and doing some shopping at the Pavilion - where I actually had 2 pleasant customer service experiences. The first was at The Coachman luggage store where I bought a new suitcase. Not only had they transported the bag I wanted from their Gateway branch, but the salesman commended me on my purchase and just generally made me feel like I had made the right decision - which is really important when you're outlaying a lot of money. The second experience was at Mimmo's Pizza where I took my credit card statement to show I had been double-billed last month when their card machine was acting up. No problem. I immediately received a meal voucher in compensation.
Saturday was also unbearably hot and humid in Durban, with temperatures reaching around 39 degrees Celsius with the Discomfort Index. The only solution seemed to be fleeing back to the Pavillion to sit in a cool, dark, air-conditioned cinema and watch a movie. In this case it was the chick flick Bride Wars. Naturally you can expect my full review up here in the next few days, but the primary realisation I walked away from the movie with was "God, I'm Anne Hathaway's character".
As a sidenote, going to watch the movie provided one of my worst cinema experiences in a good long while. Apart from having to kick people out of our seats, I ended up sitting next to a poster girl for Ritalin. I had to move eventually because I just couldn't stand listening to her slurp on her softdrink, knock over her popcorn, or feel her bouncing around on her seat as she kicked the chair in front of her (causing that woman to move too), and continually kept readjusting her position so she could sit curled up on her knees.
Parents, if you have ADD children, and diet and lifestyle change isn't working, for God's sake do the world a favour and DRUG THEM! Do not, for any reason, bring them into a confined space with other people. That applies especially to airplanes and cinemas.
Anyway, after a successful attempt at mushroom-and-orzo stuffed tomatoes (my culinary experiment for the weekend), Saturday evening was too hot to do much else beyond flaking out on my bed watching Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Now I know the second film was supposed to be more fun and wacky (and I'd admit Rick Baker's mogwi and gremlin models are better) but I still think I prefer the darker original. Then again, I have always leaned towards films that are criticised for being dark, nasty and mean-spirited - other cases in point being Return to Oz, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Batman Returns.
I didn't sleep especially well on Saturday night, having had a nightmare about the bf happily hooking up with some fugly girl right in front of me. Family was around for cream tea in the afternoon, but otherwise the day was devoted to my Girlz 'N' Games webcomic and stressing when I couldn't get hold of the bf on either his land line or cell - after all, he was home alone and this is unsafe South Africa. Eventually it turned out to be just a case of bad timing though.
In the evening I finally got to watch I Am Legend out the corner of my eye while working. It's an excellent film, and Will Smith is outstanding in it, but the entire project is let down by its pointless ending (which I admittedly knew about already from all the people who saw the film during its cinema release). Why they didn't stick with the much more intriguing alternate ending, I don't know? It did at least make me keen to read Richard Matheson's groundbreaking "vampire" novel, on which the film is based, though.
Finally, you may notice the lack of Academy Awards coverage today. This is due to the fact that the show is screened this evening on MNET, and I don't want to spoil the surprise for those courageous souls who will spend the day trying their damnedest not to see or hear who won. So expect the list of winners, and a few of my random comments, tomorrow.
I was planning to get up at 4am this morning to watch the show live for the first time ever (skipping the sycophantic red carpet interview bullshit, of course)... and I partially succeeded. Up from 5:30 I got to see the second half of the show, and the main awards. The only thing I have to say at this point is that I really liked the "critical evaluation from your peers" approach to dishing out the Best Actress and Best Actor awards. I thought that was a really nice, sweet touch.
Anyway, enjoy your Monday.
Comments
My children are always well behaved at the movie theatre.
The vast majority of the time I find children in cinemas to be actually really well behaved. It's the adults, tweens (as it was in this case) and teens who are typically the obnoxious, irritating ones.
And as for using "discomfort index" I think we would always use it because here in balmy, tropical Durban "wind chill" never seems to apply. Much like in Miami I suppose. "Feels like" just sounds so dumbed down and meaningless...