Movies

Confetti and Streamers

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Tomorrow is my Dad’s birthday, he turns 71. Sometimes it kinda scares me when I consider his age, and keeping in mind he has heart problems and an ICD. But everything is actually going really well, the meds are doing their thing, the ICD is doing its thing, so I expect to have him around for quite a while still 🙂

We celebrated today, because the weekend is easier.  I gave him money for a present as he has said he would like a new bicycle. Together with the rest of his prezzies, he made a good start towards one 🙂 The day itself was the usual family gathering fun.

Friday and Saturday I watched a bunch of movies (Hancock, Mirror Mirror, Holes, Oz the Great and Wonderful, Robots, Epic) and hung around the house in chill mode. And tomorrow evening? Tomorrow evening I go to see Daniel Lohues at the theater with Mom.

Fencing

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Yesterday our friend and former colleague Harm (from Groen & Grond Muntendam) came to build a privacy fence around the back yard. I had to work first, so I did that from home. After working my half day I went to get my T. shot and then proceeded to assist Harm. We finished the fence between us and the attached neighbours, and the outside of the fence separating us from the other neighbours. And since I’d done this, I figured why the hell not and tortured myself at the gym with a steep ten minute stationary bike ride and a 5 km rowing course.

Fence 1

Fence 2

Today was another day off for me which came in handy as Harm returned early in the morning to finish the job. We fairly quickly finished off the remaining fence and then built a door. We ended up having to hurry as Harm had places to be, but we got it done! Hurray! All it needs is a little slide lock on the door so we can keep it from being opened from the outside when we don’t want to. In the afternoon I joined the parents for Aunt Grietje’s birthday. She turned 85 🙂

In the evening, I watched Treasure Planet on Netflix, it’s a fun movie.

Fence 3

Door

The Good Life

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Good weekend 😀

Household stuff on Saturday while Nienke was away, dishes, litterbox, garbage, laundry and such. Watched Warm Bodies and ate popcorn.

Today I had breakfast outside and wanted to dry my laundry outside. But the shiny new laundry line turned out to be a crappy laundry line as it snapped and when I fixed that, it ended up being way too saggy to actually use. So had to put the drying racks out.

Read books: Chris Colfer’s The Land of Stories #1 The Wishing Spell (good book, fun treatment of fairy tales) and Justin Somper’s Vampirates #1 Demons of the Ocean (which is quite bad).

Watched movies on Netflix (Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast) and played random games.

Monkey fought with Terror from next door, hair ALL over the kitchen… Silly monster

The Railway Man

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Tuesday I watched the Riddick movies, while working. The first one was mostly Meh. The second was way more fun, with the Necromongers and such. The third was the best of the three. Poor puppy.

Today, Gert and I went to see The Railway Man after work.

It’s a movie after a true story about a man, Eric Lomax, stationed in Singapore during World War II. After the surrender of Singapore by the British in 1942, he and his fellow soldiers are captured and transported to work on the Thai-Burma railroad. Because Lomax is a radio man, he and his troop are at first kept in relative good conditions. But then the men start building a radio. And when it is found, Lomax takes the blame. Despite it being a radio only capable of receiving signals, he is extensively tortured because the Japanese believe he has been sending signals. One of the men torturing him is Interpreter Takashi Nagase.

After the war, Nagase escapes prosecution by pretending he never did anything but interpret. Lomax gets sent home and learns to sort of live with his experiences. Years later, he marries Patti. And when she discovers how deep his trauma runs, she sets in motion a sequence of events wherein Lomax travels back to the place where he was held. There is a museum there, now, and a Buddhist Temple. And Nagase is the tourguide there.

What follows is a deeply emotional meeting between the two where they try to reconcile the past and find a way to live with what happened instead of despite of it.

The movie takes a few liberties with the real story, notably in how the meeting between Lomax and Nagase plays out, but on the whole I found it deeply moving. The movie is slow (some might say too slow) and heavy;  it cuts deep, both in the flash backs in the camp that depict the torture Lomax had to endure, as well as in the current time where the scars of that earlier time are still clearly visible. It is well served for ruminations about Human Nature, what one does in the most dire of circumstances to survive, how and what it does to you in the long run, and what is needed for true processing and dealing with things.

Remembrance

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Friday I worked from home again. This time I tried out the bedroom so I could watch more 7th Heaven in the background. I’ve made it to the seasons where I care less about the show because of all the added characters and less of the originals. And more repeats of themes. Not too weird considering many milestones are the same one kid after the other, but it does get old. Especially as the twins are kind of wooden and uninteresting. Ruthie and Simon were much more fun and alive at that age. Anyway, while that was fun for the background, the bedroom itself is not a handy work space, so that was once but never again 😀

When Nienke came home, she had brought Kim with her. So we had dinner together and then watched Frozen. I love Frozen <3

Yesterday was a busy, but good, day. Got a lot done while still feeling relaxed. Slept in, did some cleaning up, unpacked the dish washer. Then went for coffee at the Parents. I suggested we go to the cemetery to bring some flowers to grandma and grandpa. We’d been to the cemetery for my grandparents on Mom’s side recently, but it had been a while for the other side. And that grave gets a lot less visitors to begin with. They thought it was  good idea, so we decided to go later that day.

First, however, I went with Mom to the store to assist her in buying an Actifry and getting a mini vac for myself. Then I went home for lunch after which I repacked the dish washer and then went grocery shopping with Mom. After getting the groceries home, we went to the florist for a nice little bouquet to place at the grave.

Then the three of us went to Mensingeweer where we cleaned the head stone and placed the flowers. We walked around for a bit, where, as usual, my parents point out the various relatives and tell anecdotes about all these people I never met but am connected to, through time. I dig cemeteries.

The rest of the day I spent downloading, filing and archiving. Sorting out computer stuff can be so relaxing 🙂

Today was mainly more of the same. Slept in, watched a movie (Now You See Me, good film), downloaded and filed and archived some more, watched more 7th Heaven, did the administration and played iPad games. Good day 😀

 

Seeing Things

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The TV came today! Fortunately the delivery address was set for my parents, as I had to work. After work, Nienke and I had to go to singing class first. My last time, at least for now. It was fun, we did Tears in Heaven together like we’d been practicing since last time. It went really well. Then, I got to choose what I wanted for my final song. I really wanted to do Let it Go. But I can’t make it in the female way anymore. And I can do it in a lower version, but I always sing with the song. And since I hadn’t practiced this with music only, the singing itself went quite badly. So we decided to do this one together as well, since Nienke had been singing Let it Go by herself for a while now. Together, it went much better, and it was a good way to end 🙂

Then we headed back to the Station to go home where we rode our bikes to my parents first so we could use them to help with the TV. Except, of course, these days flatscreens barely weigh anything. So in the end, I carried it home while Nienke walked our bikes. Once home, I installed it, and we gave it a test run. It is very, very pretty 😀

Yesterday was an unaccustomed long day. I changed my free afternoon for the week from Wednesday to Friday, so I had to work a full day. Afterward I went to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier with Nico. It was very awesome. This movie is sooooooo much better than part one. The after credits preview scene for Avengers: Age of Ultron was good, too!

Passion

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So… Tuesday my new manager, who I’ve had all of two weeks at the most, announced they’re stepping down. No word yet on successor, but that might take a while. Interesting to see what happens with a power vacuum like that.

Yesterday I went to the movies with Gert. We watched Divergent first. He hadn’t seen it yet, and I didn’t mind watching it again. After we had a little break and then went in to see Yves Saint Laurent. That was a very good film. Insofar I’m familiar with the fifties and sixties it seemed to me a fairly realistic film that gave a good picture of who YSL was and how he was shaped by his life and experiences.

We had dinner at Pappa Joe’s and then went for ice cream at Toscana, they have the best selection of flavours ever.

Tonight, The Passion was in Groningen.  A huge musical show and parade to play out the passion of Christ. Various singers played the key biblical figures singing contemporary songs to symbolise the emotions and events of each sequence. Meanwhile a huge group of people carry and follow this huge shining cross to the center of the celebrations. This is the third time or so they did this, and since I’m not a Christian, Easter has little meaning to me in this sense. Since, however, it was Groningen, I did watch it on TV. I tweeted some comments during (and really, they had the stupidest hashtag: tp14…) but in short: the guy playing Jesus had the right vibe going, especially beard-wise. The guy playing Judas is a musical star here and it showed. His voice was by far the best for an event like this and he had this brooding vampire vibe going which worked well.

Capture

Loot

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april12Went to see the Divergent movie on Friday with Kim. Good movie, good adaptation. I did miss a lot of details and some story parts, but as a movie, it was good. It works well separate from the book as well, as a general scifi movie.

This morning I went to a second hand book market with Nienke and her parents. I was fairly short on cash but managed to scrounge up enough loose change to be able to buy some. When we got there, there was a large selection and even a decent bit of English and non-fiction work. The one big gripe I had with it, no price tags. Some books had price post-its on it, but most had nothing. A lot had a price in the front so I went with those numbers. Which meant that after I had carefully selected five works, I was done. However, when we got to the entrance where the paying was to be done, it turned out the price in the front of the books wasn’t the sell price at all… They basically made it up on the spot, about a euro per book. Which meant I easily could’ve picked up five or so more books! But as the others were ready to leave, I had no time for that 🙁

Still I’m really happy with my loot 🙂

And tomorrow? Tomorrow it’s Rijksmuseum time! Woohoo!

Also, have some cats 🙂

april12cats

Sunshine Day

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april2-1

Went in to work a little earlier today so I would be free at noon to meet Gert for a movie. We had lunch at Subway and then crossed the street to sit in the sunshine with coffee and cake at TOET. I can definitely live with moments like that, it was an hour well spent. The we crossed the street again to hit the cinema since our showing of The Monuments Men was at 13:30. It was a pretty good, fun, movie. Insofar a World War II movie can be “fun”. I liked the characters and the actors playing the characters. It was also interesting to watch and get a glimpse of what the real guys were doing back then. I missed a good through line. There was no real plot, it felt more like several vignettes that featured the same characters. Not in itself bad, but not really good either. The movie is saved by its casting.
Tonight I tried yoga at the gym. I’m used to Pilates, and figured yoga would be calmer and more zen and stuff. Instead, I died o.0 It’s crazy intensive and much more challenging than Pilates is. Although it did end with a nice couple minutes of meditation.

april2-2Yesterday I finished After Earth, the book of the movie. Now, the movie was really bad, but the book is actually pretty good. It helps it was written by Peter David. This is also what convinced me to take the book when I was over at Kim’s the other week to rummage through her box of books-to-get-rid-of. I’ve read several Star Trek tie-ins that Peter David wrote and I really enjoy those. He’s a good writer. Which was evident throughout the book. Of course he has to follow the script but he really managed to make it his own and work in a lot of extra background info about the world of After Earth that rounded out the story. The book is much better than the movie.

Long Weekend

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Quiet start of the free Friday. Kim came by later in the morning for tea and book talk/borrowing. In the afternoon it was time for singing class. I’ve been growing frustrated with singing the last few months since I’m on T. I definitely notice vocal changes and it messes with my ability to sing in that I can’t reach what I could before and in the lows it doesn’t do what I want it to do yet.
I finally expressed (some) of this during class. We decided to focus more on excercises and easy stuff to ease the frustration and such. We’ll see how this goes.

Even so, I’m not sure I want to continue with this beyond this year. I like singing very much, and I learn a lot, but I’m just not that invested and I notice I’m loosing my desire to sing. I don’t sing as much freely anymore, and when I do work on stuff for class, I’m so focused on matching the timing and such rather than being in the song. I’ve always liked either singing along with the artist, or doing it by myself without music best anyway. I’m in it for the lyrics mainly 🙂

Saturday morning Mom and I went to Uithuizen for groceries and some other errands. Bought some decorative stuff at the Action and various tasty things. Then we went to the florist to get a piece for my aunt and uncle’s fiftieth anniversary. We’d been invited to the celebratory dinner that evening. I also bought a beautiful fake floral arrangement. Big blue vase with various forms of greenery in the top and some twigs.

march29At the end of the afternoon, the Parents came back to the house to pick me up and we drove to Assen to eat at Yankee Doodle. It was a very fun evening. I hadn’t seen most of my cousins in quite a few years, so it was really nice catching up with them and trying to figure out which kid went with which cousin since they were wee ones (or not even born) when I last saw them. The youngest of the kids nicely had everyone dancing to her tune as most everyone ended up being face painted. Don’t I make a pretty tiger?

Today I slept in and finished the little explosion book I’ve been making of Tessa. I wanted a photo book of her for myself too, ever since I made Mom and Dad the giant ass one I gave them for St. Christmas. But instead of doing another print on demand thing, I decided to make one and settled on the format of an explosion book. This is made from three squares of paper and ends up being this cleverly folded thing. There’s an excellent tutorial in my pinterest pins somewhere. Ah, here. Watched The Little Mermaid and The Emperor’s New Groove while working on it. The Emperor’s New Groove was funnier than I was expecting, good movie.