Jut & Jul
Went to see Guardians for the third time, with Kim, Nico and Jeroen. I love that movie more every time I see it.
Movies
Funko’s, Faults & Food
I discovered Funko’s Pop Vinyls recently. It took a while but I finally found an online retailer in this country with good prices that seemed reliable. So, after giving it some thought and compiling a rough wish list of sorts I ordered Illidan and Arthas from Warcraft. However, these were backordered, so it will be a while before they finally come 🙁
To curb my impatience I ordered some more from their in stock collection and yesterday these arrived: Robby the Robot (from Forbidden Planet), an Andorian (from Star Trek) and Dr. Whooves (from My Little Pony). They will make an excellent start of the collection 🙂
In the afternoon I headed for the city to meet up with Gert. We went to see The Fault in Our Stars. I’ve read the book a little while ago, and liked it. It was a good movie, nice treatment of the book, and hits the feels where and how it should. I cried.
After, we went to IKEA so Gert could buy a wardrobe (and have it delivered, there’s no way we’re dragging that through the city public transport…) We stopped at KFC for some food. I was pretty pleased with that, since the KFC there is the only KFC in the city and I’ve been wanting to go for years now!
We then went back to the cinema to watch Guardians of the Galaxy, again 😀
Today, I hung out with Gert again. We played some games while awaiting the delivery of the wardrobe. He’d said yesterday that he would then put it aside, so it was no trouble at all for me to hang out. But of course, as it is with new things, and especially things-to-build, it itched. So, rather apologetically, he asked if I’d mind…. And since building together is not only more fun, but also faster, especially with big pieces, we built a wardrobe.
After we were done, Gert went out and got us gloriously spicy Thai food, so we would be refreshed and ready for that night’s movie. This time we went to see Magic in the Moonlight. It was pretty good. The storyline was interesting (1920’s medium debunker falls in love with the girl he’s supposed to debunk and falls for her ‘gift’, too). The scenery was beautiful and I liked the actors playing.
PSA: Guardians of the Galaxy is AWESOME
I went to see it tonight with Jasper. I’m going again. Probably twice or so. I love it!
Fun Day
Today I picked up my new ID card, it is very pretty 😀
In the evening I went to the city to meet up with Nienke and Ingrid at Subway for food, and then on to the cinema for the first of Ingrid’s presents. My bus was late, so I ended up being a bit late, too. Fortunately we had enough time, but they were already done eating. While I was eating my sub, Gert called. Nienke was so kind to answer, and the whole thing ended with Gert also coming along to come see the movie, Begin Again, also 😀
I really liked the movie, it’s an ucomplicated romcom with good actors and a fun story. Ruffalo and Knightlet play off each other well, the city and scenery is used well, and the other characters are well developed enough to round out the film. Plus, the music is pretty good.
Three Days Make a Post
I had a fun weird dream last night 😀
There was a war going on, and I was the general of one of the sides. I don’t know who we were fighting, or even why. I just knew, my side was the French Horde. I can understand where the Horde came from, as I have been playing a fair amount of Warcraft, but why they were French, I haven’t the slightest idea 😀
Anyway, we had to assault the enemy base, which was on the other end of a large pass. The pass was generally straight, but twisty because of rock outcroppings and other nature things sticking out. Added to that, there were many, many gates in the pass. For the WoW players among us, it was basically a version of the Dragonmaw pass leading to Grim Batol, except straight.
The gates were very, very tall; easily 8-10 meters high. And every gate was swarming with defenders. We couldn’t get too close, because they had archers and would throw all kinds of crap down on us. Boiling oil, pitch, rocks, etc… All the while yelling insults at us, Monty Python and the Holy Grail style.
Fortunately, we had trebuchets, and with the copious amounts of rocky outcroppings we had more than enough ammunition for them. And lucky for us, the gates were wood. So it took us a long time, but we managed to break down the various gates.
Unfortunately, I awoke before we reached the enemy stronghold 🙁
My companion yesterday morning
Friday I went to see Lucy with Gert and Nienke. It was an interesting film, exploring what might happen if we could use all of our brain at the same time. Even though it starts from the old, flawed, premise that we only use 10% of our brain, it is still entertaining to watch. It has some pacing issues where the first half goes fairly slow, and the second half fairly fast. I would have liked to see it the other way ’round as I found the first half, where Lucy delivers the drugs and ends up with it in her system, less interesting then the second half, where Lucy has figured out what the drugs do to her, and goes about trying to help herself before it kills her. The movie also has Morgan Freeman in it, which is always good.
After, we went to Starbucks and dropped Nienke off at the station.
Gert and I then went back to the cinema for Hercules. No deep thoughts necessary for this one, it was pure entertainment. I liked it a lot better than I had previously expected. It was a nice treatment where the myth really is larger than the man. Good to see how his friends help, and helped, him achieve the things he gets hired for, all the while using their tricks to bolster the myth.
Hot Knife through Butter
Last month the League of Extraordinary PenPals had a swap wherein partners each had to buy a puzzle, write a letter on the back, scramble the pieces and mail it off.
Yesterday, my puzzle arrived, all the way from the USA. I built it today and it is: Spider-Man (which, for the record, I think is a dumb way of writing his name).
Yesterday it was also time for my three-weekly shot of testosterone. As usual I cycled to the clinic to see my GP for this. But this time, it was different. As agreed upon the last time around, today was going to be the first time I would do it myself.
I’ve seen him do it since December, so I was pretty sure I got the mechanics down. Of course, in practice a first time is always clumsy as you don’t know the feel of it. I started by breaking the vial so I could suck up the liquid. The vial is tougher than it looks (fortunately). But as long as I remember to keep the black dot at the back, and break towards me, the top pops off just like that.
Then there was finger acrobatics as I held the vial between two fingers and the syringe between two more so I could use my other hand to actually pull up the plunger.
With that done, I sat down, found my thigh muscle, hesitated only briefly and stuck it in. It went in like a hot knife through butter. Smooth, easy and painless. As I hoped it would 🙂
After pulling back a little to check if I hadn’t speared a blood vessel, I slowly injected the T into my body. Since the liquid is so viscous, you have to take your time to do it slow.
Afterwards I spent the rest of the day making something for Ingrid’s upcoming 30th birthday and watched movies (City of Ember, The Hunters, Zathura and Inkheart) and caught the latter half of The Patience Stone, a really good movie with Golshifteh Farahani playing the main character whose husband gets shot and becomes a vegetable. She remains in their war-torn village to take care of him. As he is unresponsive, she just talks to him and tells him of her days, and slowly she starts telling him her feelings and secrets. He becomes her patience stone, a thing from legend that one can say all their unhappiness to until it is soaked through and explodes, freeing the person from sorrow.
Lines II: Mother Earth
Been spending time expanding my genealogy some more. Trying to go back further than I already am. It is proving more and more difficult, though, as I’m firmly in the territory where names are repeated all over the place, there are very few reliable surnames and registration of events is sketchy at best.
I also started drawing again. I picked up another of my curved line sketches from 2012 or so to finish. This one is called Lines II: Mother Earth. It was coloured on the 18th and 19th, I think about 7 hours or so together.
Watched some movies on Friday with Kim and Nienke, Accepted and Not Another Happy Ending. They were fun.
Today Ingrid came by. Ostensibly to borrow my tent, but also because it was an excellent idea to drink tea, chat and play games. So we played UWO, Settlers of Catan and Blue Moon.
After she had left, a storm came by, and along with it, a refugee in the house: a small from. It hipped across and around the kitchen before I managed to grab it and release it outside. Milo was quite intrigued with the hoppy little thing.
Rottumeroog and The Fault in Our Stars
Yesterday at work I was looking out the window when I noticed they were building something down at square in front of the station. As more of us saw it, we were stumped as to what is was as we are far enough away that we couldn’t make it out. I did say it reminded me of National Geographic, but other than that, we got nothing.
Naturally curious that I am, I decided to go down there in my lunch and check it out. Which is when I found out that it was, in fact, National Geographic who put it there. It was a photo exposition of photos taken on the wild island of Rottumeroog by photographer Jasper Doest. It will be there until July 27, go see! It’s beautiful.
Today I had the day off because I switched my shift (so I’m working tomorrow). I spent the morning in bed reading The Fault in Our Stars. It’s a very good book, very moving. I’m looking forward to the movie!
Tonight I watched Elysium on TV. It was worse than I expected.
Movies Galore! Also Lego! And Theater!
Did a bunch of movies this week, by myself and with others. Monday after work I went to see Edge of Tomorrow. It was a much better movie than I was expecting. I really like Full Metal Bitch and I didn’t even mind Tom Cruise in the movie 🙂
I also ordered tickets to go see War Horse with Mom. We’re going January 14!
Tuesday I finally went to see The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. The movie is hilarious! It’s been a long time since I laughed out loud at a movie that much. It’s been compared to Forest Gump, but it’s better than that. The titular character, Allan, gets put in a home when he blows up his hen house. Then on the day of his 100th birthday he decides to escape the coming party and attention and climbs out the window and walks off. As he goes to buy a bus ticket at the station, he gets asked to watch a suitcase for a minute and decides to walk off with it. It turns out the case is full of money. Criminal money. Cue an awesome road trip where he meets all kinds of people while being tracked and followed by the criminals that want their money back, interspersed with flashbacks to Allan’s long life where he experienced important events and met important people all the while being mostly oblivious to the importance of it.
Wednesday I had my shot again. Had it done in my arm because I still had some movies planned. Am never doing that again, though. My arm hurts like hell now still, and it’s Sunday. A quick Google has taught me that arm muscle is just not big enough. The way T. shots work is that the fluid bubble sits in your muscle and is slowly absorbed over the three weeks until the next shot. A leg muscle (or your ass 😀 ) is big enough to stretch around the fluid bubble, but arm just isn’t.
I also went to Bedum and Uithuizen with Mom to check for World of Warcraft Lego (Megabloks technically) at the Action
. Nico had seen it there, they had a big Stormwind Demolisher Set, a smaller Goblin Shredder (which I already have), about six or seven mounts+riders and eight single character figures with a small piece of scenery. They didn’t have all of them anymore, but I got a fair bunch
At the end of the afternoon I headed for the city to meet Gert. First we saw Grace of Monaco. It took me a while to get into but that’s mostly because I had the wrong idea and expectation beforehand. I’d seen trailers of the movie before, and that gave me the idea it was more a biopic of her life from marriage on and further. Until her death basically. But instead, it focuses on a specific period (early sixties) and shows how it was difficult for her to get used to life as Princess, torn between acting (Hitchcock offers her the lead in Marnie) and her family and duties, and how she could influence people, both behind the scenes, as well as the general populace. Once I figured that, the movie fell into place and things like pacing made sense.
Afterwards I had planned to go home, but we sat and talked for a while and decided on a whim to also see A Million Ways to Die in the West. I won’t dignify that movie with too many words. Suffice it to say that it is a stereotypical American comedy that runs on sex and poop jokes. The basic plot is fun, and there are occasional good, clever, jokes. So if it had been more of that, it would not have been so bad.
Thursday I also had the day off since I had to work yesterday. Nico was off early, so we decided to go see X-Men: Days of Future Past. It’s a good movie, I really liked that we got to see the merging of the old trilogy and these new films. Even though the timeline of the old trilogy is fairly effectively wiped by the events of this film, I like that they didn’t just go fingers-in-your-ears-it-doesn’t-exist-la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you 😀
Back home, I finally ordered my theater tickets. As I said on Facebook, it cost me three organs and some change. But I have seven shows (in addition to the earlier mentioned War Horse) to go see in the new season two of which Mom will join me for.
- Chamber Choir of St. Petersburg: Vespers of Rachmaninoff ( 25-09-2014)
- Toneelgroep Amsterdam & Toneelhuis: Maria Stuart (10-12-2014)
- Musictheater Transparant & Claron McFadden: Lilith (05-02-2015)
- Sara Kroos: Van Jewelste (25-03-2014) with Mom
- Toneelgroep Amsterdam: Koningin Lear (03-04-2015)
- Various Comedians: Onceuponatimethegodfatherflewoverthecuckoosnest (29-05-2015) with Mom
- Marrugeku: Gudirr Gudirr (dance performance) (06-06-2015)
Friday, after work, I spent the evening reading and avoiding football. Not very lucky with that as I sat in my bedroom with the window open so I could hear the whole street erupting every time we scored. And we scored a lot.
Then, yesterday. I had a late shift, which I can normally do at home. But I realised this too late and since Kim was also working, I came to Groningen. Got a message from Gert half way through, he was at the Action, did I need any more Lego? I was indeed missing some, so I had him take a picture and saw they had ones I didn’t have yet. He was so kind as to buy them and bring them to work for me. I took my break and met him at Starbucks. I had just enough time to get a drink and chat briefly, before having to head back.
Today I slept in, and just as I was gonna go to the Parents for Father’s Day, Mom rang the bell. Dad was out cycling, so she came to ask if I wanted to take a walk with her. I joined her, and then after went back to their place for coffee and merriment 🙂
A Week in the Life [+ The Normal Heart]
I came home Tuesday to a new edition of Flow on the door mat as well as next season’s theater catalog. After the first run through, I was on 9 shows I wanted to see.
My Uncle’s birthday was Wednesday so went there in the afternoon.
Then Thursday I had planned to go see The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared after work, but it rained so much I decided against it. Instead I went to the Bruna at the train station and bought books (including The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman). Once home, I watched The Normal Heart (I had recorded it when it premiered on HBO Sunday).
It’s a movie, after the play of the same name, about the beginning of the AIDS crisis in New York City in the early 80’s. Main character is the, gay, writer Ned Weeks. As more and more people around him get ‘gay cancer’ and die from it, he notices that mainstream medicine and the government choose to look the other way. He and his friends form Gay Men’s Health Crisis, an advocacy group to raise awareness and money and help those affected and afflicted by the disease. Ned favours a more aggressive, vocal approach which conflicts with the more diplomatic way the rest of his friends choose. Meanwhile, in his personal life, he falls in love with journalist Felix. The two start a relationship, but then Felix gets AIDS as well.
It is a difficult movie to watch. It is raw and deep and open, quite literally like a festering wound. It is beautiful, intensely fragile and strong at the same time. Watching it left me devastated and in pieces. I will be watching it again, and I will definitely be buying the blu ray when it’s released. And I only buy blu rays of movies I really, really, love.
Saturday: Lounging on the bed with Milo 🙂
The Normal Heart stars Mark Ruffalo as Ned, Matt Bomer as Felix and has, among other, Jim Parsons, Julia Roberts, Jonathan Groff and Alfred Molina in it.
Friday I went to the cinema with Kim to see Maleficent. I liked the movie. The visuals were very pretty, and the back story they gave for Maleficent was nice. The acting was okay to good. Angelina Jolie was good, as was the guy playing her lackey. But the dude playing the king sported the most awful fake Scottish accent. And later on, in a scene at his castle, all of a sudden mid-scene half the men there acquired the same horrible accent… And the ending felt rather rushed.
Back home, I went through the the theater catalog again. Got it down to 7… But am talking with Mom about going to see War Horse in January…
Saturday I played a lot of Warcraft, and I read The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It’s a lovely, lovely book. It tells the story of a little boy who meets the people who live at the end of the lane, the Hempstocks. And there is something odd about this family. There are no men, and they have an ocean in the garden. And then an old evil manages to enter this world, and he needs the Hempstocks to survive. It has magic and supernatural stuff and all those things you find under the veneer of modern day life (well, modern day sixties life). It is definitely a recommended read.
Also, the new birthday calendar I ordered to hang in the downstairs toilet came. Unfortunately packed, but very, very, pretty 🙂