Posts Tagged ‘movies

26
Mar

A Bever-leisurely Time

By Deb 0 Comments
Categories: Massachusetts
Tags: , , , ,

This’ll be short, but I just wanted to jot a short post and throw out a big “howdy-do” from New England!

I have this week off from work which is just as fabulous as it sounds.  Most of the week I’m actually spending up here in Beverly, Mass. - a small town on the North Shore (just outside Boston) where Esther lives.  Les is out of town on business so I’m chilling w/Es and the girls.  Today’s Riley’s first birthday (yay!) and since Es has Wednesday morning activities, I’m spending a few hours online at a nearby Panera Bread.  What can I say…I’m a sucker for free wireless. :)

So Chena and I drove up Monday afternoon and arrived around 9pm.  Yesterday we spent just sorta hangin’.  We drove to a park so Chena could run free for a bit.  After nap time we left Chena at home and drove over to a playground to meet up with a couple of Es’s mommy-friends and their little energy balls.  I managed to practically give myself a concussion by standing up under a steel beam on the jungle gym (clearly I don’t have the necessary mom-sonar).  When we got home, discovered that Chena had managed to get out of the blockaded kitchen and somehow got herself locked into the baby’s room upstairs.  That’s my dog.

Last night we watched Becoming Jane with Anne Hathaway.  If you haven’t seen it, you must.

Today, as I said, we are each doing our own things until lunch or so.  Tonight Es & I have a babysitter coming so we can go out to dinner.  I’m not sure exactly what that’s going to look like for me…  We’re going to The Cheesecake Factory which I haven’t been to in AGES, but who doesn’t provide nutritional information for anything from their menu, so the items I have been able to find are WAAAAY over my WW Points balance for the rest of the day, but I may just end up throwing caution to the wind.  My birthday is Friday, after all…

So that’s really it.  Chena & I will head back home on Thursday after the rush hour has more-or-less ended.  Hopefully the trip will go as smoothly as the one up here did!

08
Jan

I Heart Tivo

By Deb 1 Comment
Categories: Pennsylvania
Tags: , , , ,

It finally happened.  I broke down and got a Tivo.  I was waiting (albeit not very patiently) for the Comcast/Tivo partnership deal to make its way down to the greater Philadelphia area.  But it’s been a few months and the outlook was less than promising.

The final proverbial straw that landed on this camel’s back was that my Windows Media Center PC (which has been acting as my DVR) does not support HD.  I have an HD television and therefore would like to be able to record HD.  As we are nearing the start of a new season of LOST, the last thing I wanted was to not be able to watch it in HD if I happen to not be home some evening when it’s on.

To remedy this, I temporarily switched over to the Comcast HD-DVR by Motorola to see if that would be enough to tide me over, but alas.  Not that there’s anything wrong with the Motorola DVR, that is when it’s working.  However, if (or rather when) it stops working, that’s it.  You and all of your shows that you’ve recorded are toast.  Comcast will come and replace it, but you’re out everything that was on the hard drive.  This happened to me a couple of times with the Motorola DVR I had in NYC through Time Warner and it had already happened to me once in only 3 months with Comcast.  Someone I work with said it’d happened to them 3 times in the past year.

Tivo seemed like the best solution by far.  Plus they were having a $200 rebate by mail deal going on, so the timing seemed perfect.  So just before Christmas I bit the bullet and ordered my Tivo and I may never look back.

It has been a little under a month now, and as stated in the title of this entry, I do indeed “heart” Tivo.  My Tivo is smart, fun, and a quick study.  I love navigating him.  I love checking out the “Tivo Suggestions” folder to see what new things he may have found for me to watch.  I love creating Wish Lists that get automatically recorded so that I am pleasantly surprised by movies that show up under ”Now Playing” that I didn’t even know where going to be on.  I love that he is connected to my wireless network so that I can give him instructions from anywhere. 

Tivo has so completely changed the way I view television that I may never watch it live again.  Just as an example, I was home with migraine-wannabe headache on Sunday.  My head felt like someone was using a jackhammer or wrecking ball or some other heavy machinery to try and break out of my skull.  So I spent the bulk of the day sitting on the couch, popping Advil, and watching TV…or rather, Tivo.  I began by perusing my “Now Playing” list to see if there was anything I had intentionally recorded but had not yet watched.  There wasn’t, so I moved onto the “Tivo Suggestions” folder where I found all sorts of treats that Tivo thought I might like including an old Marilyn Monroe film called Niagara, Bonfire of the Vanities, a Hitchcock film I hadn’t seen called The Paradine Case, and a few others.  Tivo was right - I enjoyed them all.  Bonfire of the Vanities surprised me in the beginning as I watched Bruce Willis in the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center (for those who don’t know, that is where I used to work).  I didn’t flip to live TV once.

Let me close by saying that, with Valentine’s Day fast approaching, I feel fairly confident that if Mr. Right-For-Me has not appeared in my life by then, I will most likely be spending the evening with Tivo instead.

14
Jul

Harry Potter Fans Unite

By Deb 0 Comments
Categories: Pennsylvania
Tags: , , ,


Well this is definitely a red-letter month if you’re a Harry Potter fan. Not only did the release of the new film (Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix) enter theatres last Wednesday, but the latest, greatest, and final book of the famed Harry Potter series will be in book stores and mailboxes everywhere on the 21st.

In case you couldn’t tell, I am a fan…and I’d venture to say that almost everyone I know is as well. Sadly I was a late comer to the Harry Potter fanship. Mainly due to my personal rule to not pay much attention to the things that get (in my opinion) an abnormal amount media hype. In general, I’ve found that the books that make it big in the mainstream are usually not ones I find I enjoy or identify with as much as the lesser-knowns I stumble across or are recommended by friends.

I was living in the UK when Harry Potter mania was really taking hold. In fact, the casting call for the boy-who-would-be-Harry for the movie versions of the books took place while I was there. I can remember watching BBC when they reported that Daniel Radcliffe had made the cut and thinking that yes, despite the little I knew about the book, he did indeed look like what I would have pictured Harry Potter to be.

I changed my tune due to Jo mainly. Although my best friend had been pushing Harry on me for years, it was during a trip to Atlanta that my sister finally talked me into giving Harry a try. “If you don’t love it by the end of the first book, I promise I’ll never force you to do anything again,” she had said.

So I bought Book 1. I had all but finished it on the trip back to New York and could hardly wait to get my hands on the next 5 volumes. Not only did I love it, but I have since purchased all of the books in hardcover (I used paperback copies to read on the subway).

Now I sit and wait not-so-very patiently for the 21st to roll around… Truth be told, I even have a Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows countdown gadget on my iGoogle homepage. In the meantime, I’ll at least get to kill some time going to see Order of the Phoenix in IMAX 3D this weekend. That should help take the edge off.