LadyCrimson

I've been surprised how close we can sit to the 50" and still think it looks fine, actually. Although I'm not sure what our eyeballs might actually think ... And today I did some yard work and bird-photographing.

I really like Panasonic plasmas, but the Samsungs we looked at seemed fairly decent too. All I can say is that once we became used to the 50", which didn't take long, we started thinking "glad we didn't buy the 42"." So I'm gonna have to vote for the 50" over the 42" if you have the space and the money. Especially if you're really into watching DVD movies/shows or HD programming etc. ... or when programs wants to put black bars both on the sides and on the top/bottom. Argh. The one advantage of 42" is that it's going to be a little more tolerant of poorer image quality (old video tape collections, poor TV signals etc) in terms of you being able to watch such from a closer distance without going "UGH".

Ohhhh, that nook. Well, it's a smallish house, and a lot of the older houses like this one don't have fireplaces that are flush with the wall - not uncommon. The other side of the fireplace is in the garage, which I also think is a bit odd. The living area is an open front/living/dining area in the shape of a stubby, backwards L, so the front door opens right into the living room, by that big window, if that makes sense. Some of the houses we looked at were really crazy floor plan wise, so I feel your pain. But the lot has room to expand so we might change things around later. My bitterness comes from how even small houses like this one cost $550K-$700K....

Don't like those pollutin' fireplaces eh? We don't use them very often, but once in a while it's nice. Tho now that we have wall heaters we can stand in front of, we'll probably use the fireplace even less often. I love gas wall heaters...they don't make me sneeze.

The area you're supposed to use as a living room is so much smaller, it was hard to find a spot for the cat's sleeping basket that he liked. We finally found a spot, but in the winter, he's gonna have to move. :D

Sweeny Todd. Interesting. Not as fantastic as I was hoping/expecting, but it was typical Burton, being a little more camp than horror/drama, so I enjoyed it overall. Alan Rickman in those funny pants and singing was worth the price of rental alone, imo. :D And that "pretty women" song is one that gets stuck in your head.

Ideally, I'd like to be an "audiophile" but when I see the probable cost my lips pucker up in distaste and suddenly I decide I'm not very demanding, after all.

Finished moving. Not finished with all the little stuff that goes along with moving. I hope we don't have to move again for at least six years. Nice thing: our cable internet is much faster up here, since we can get a Comcast business account w/absolute static IP's, which we couldn't down where we were before. We had to switch to a different firewall unit cause the old one was too slow and limited the incoming speed. Not-so-nice-thing: I'd forgotten how much more drivers are "crazy and rude" up here, on average. I'm sure it won't take me long to join in as being one of them.

I use a pair of Sony headphones that I think I paid about $75 for. They're nothing super-special, but sound pretty good for both music and games. They are a little light on the bass, tho. But I'm really into high quality bass and tend to think all headphones in the $50-$125 range are generally light/wimpy in that area. They're a lot better than little earbuds, absolutely, but they certainly don't "boom" imo - the cones just aren't up to it. I'm happy with headphones that don't turn my ears to mush on the high frequencies, which I'm extremely sensitive to. I think any "decent" quality/brand headphones in the $80-$150 price range will serve you more than adequately, unless you're a very demanding audiophile. I didn't even know they had made "surround" headphones. That sounds odd...

Interesting. I guess I don't embarrass easily or care about being embarrassed, very often, so I don't see the humor.

Jason and the Argonauts & The Wizard of Oz. Sometimes I love the Turner Classic Movie channel.

The weekend was full of patching small holes in drywall and painting. And a cooler full of soda and beer. We know how to have a good time.

Yes, Okona has a similar characterization as Atton. And Han Solo. I wish my Star Trek Companion book wasn't packed away. I thought it was confirmed in there that the writers/producers/whatever definitely had Solo in mind when they created him. But I'm not 100% sure - my memory isn't always, uh, reliable.

Hehe The point being - it's boring to listen to to unless you're somehow "in" on the joke.

Another old film: To Die For, w/Nicole Kidman. I'd forgotten how enjoyable the movie is to watch. It's not a belly-laugh film, but a good piece of satirizing America's unending fascination with crime in media. Also rented I Am Legend. Great special effects and atmosphere - loved seeing the overgrown/untended NY - but mostly a big snore. Maybe I was expecting more action than the movie actually gives you and should watch it again with less expectations in that area. Oh...that one 'zombie' male they kept showing ... every time he opened his mouth to do a CGI zombie scream, all I could think about was the mummy's water/sand/dust cloud open-mouthed faces in The Mummy Returns. Heh.

Cable on-demand has some of the British version, and I tried to watch it. I still didn't like it. It's just not funny ... I guess the humor is far too subtle for me and is too much like watching people in a real office occasionally mutter to each other - it puts me to sleep. Hubby doesn't like it either. I guess we're not with it.

I don't have Vista, since I still haven't upgraded my 'puters enough to warrant bothering with it. Always something else more important to spend the cash on lately, instead. I think by the time SP2 is released, I'd be ready to try it out then. But I'd still keep an XP PC around. heh I suspect I probably would find some things very irritating about Vista and grumble a lot at first, but overall I'd eventually get used to it - pretty much par for the course for all Windows O/S, imo. Still, I'm in no hurry.

I've never seen the British version of "The Office." Maybe I'd like it better. I don't find the American one funny at all, even tho I do like Steve Carell. I often like cynical/sarcastic satire/attitude & humor (the dad in that 70's show, George Carlin, Dr. House, Monty Python etc.) but something about The Office ... I've tried to watch it repeatedly but it never makes me even crack a smile. :/

The thing that set St. Patrick's Day apart in my personal mind is it's also my father's birthday. It made for some strange celebrations at our house.

All three of those things apply to me. At least on some days. There's definitely a difference between "mannerly" and "rude" to me - when I think of the former, I think of stuff like "Miss Manners", which I couldn't give a hoot about. Purposeful/sullen rudeness, particularly if it's carried out even after people ask for it to be stopped, is what bugs me.

Hey, now ... I've met plenty of blokes who are rude as heck ... ladies too, but it all tends to balance out, for me. I think basic manners - where people acknowledge other folks actions or even just their presence - has been on the decline for years. But doesn't every generation think that? Grandpa's griping about rude young whippersnappers. If people hold open doors or give up seats, I say thanks. I'll wave drivers or walkers to pass first if it seems safe and polite to do so. If I see someone in obvious distress I'd ask what's the matter. And if someone's right behind me I'll hold the door open till they get through to make sure the door doesn't whack them in the face. But I'm not generally over-solicitous about the small things often lumped into the "manners" category as a rule. Neither are most people I encounter, and honestly, 95% of the time it doesn't bother me if they aren't, since I'm not thinking about it either. That gal having her feet up on a seat on crowded bus, that would bother me, tho, because that's not about going an extra mile to dash over and hold open doors for people or whatever - that gal was plain selfish/thoughtless re: a certain social environment need. People who put their feet on the back of a movie-theater chair when someone is sitting in that chair- especially ones that "jiggle" their legs - really bug me, as well.

This afternoon I discovered that after 12 years, the plastic "shade" film you can use to cover your windows (to block sun - just use water to stick it on) will be so dried out and stuck on the glass that you'll have to spend a couple hours scraping it off with a razor blade. Dust mask and eye-protectors necessary. Ugh. Remind me never to use that stuff again ... if only because I'll forget it's there and thus leave it on too long.

It's all relative to area, or even street by street sometimes. In "expensive" cities, $1100 is fairly cheap if you're only talking about price and nothing else. Course, size of the rented space + features + area/street is more important in terms of defining what "cheap" is. A 1-3 bedroom, 600sq. ft. to 1500sq. ft. place might be between $1200-$3500 a month where I live. Tiny 400-500sq. ft. studio apartments (those w/out any separated rooms except for the bathroom) might run between $900-$1300. Most apts/condos would have at least 1 covered parking space and complex laundry facilities - even if that only means a single washer/dryer shared by 8 units - but not all the very cheapest rentals do. Rents were higher a few years ago - they've been going down/stabilized some now. That's based on my observations of the area, others might think differently. But in some areas of the US, it's a lot cheaper to rent than where I am - ie, you'd get two or three times the rental for the money, so to speak.

I finally saw The Postman, a film my hubby rented ages ago but I never bothered to watch. The first half wasn't too bad, and I loved Will Patton obviously having so much fun hamming it up as the bad guy, but the last third became progressively more silly in the typical over-blown & over-earnest Costner way. Still, I'm not sure it deserved the outright general critical panning it received when it came out 10(?) years ago. It's not great and it's about 30 minutes too long, but it's not completely awful either.