August Administrivia

Just a reminder:

August is my hell month at work. That means that, instead of my normal half-assed effort at keeping up with LJ, I'm, at best, quarter-assed about LJ. That doesn't mean that I won't post a ton -- posting is a nice way to de-stress -- but reading will be sporadic, at best. Likewise, since I'm already eternally behind the eight ball, I won't be adding anyone until at least the end of the month (apologies to anyone who has added me recently).

So, as always, if I need to know something, let me know via email, or don't assume I know. And no, that doesn't mean that my email response time will suck any less than it always has. :-) But I am reading email, at least.

That said, a few notes

shadesong and I saw Wedding Crashers yesterday, which was very cute for a formula movie. Some truly hilarious moments, and I finally get why people obsess over Rachel McAdams.

We also, alas, sat through previews for some of the worst looking movies I've ever heard of, including Domino, which has apparently been re-packages as an action-comedy (and not a good one), and might have been the movie to sink Keira Knightly's career back to obscurity if it weren't for the two upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean flicks.

Other dreadful previews included The Man, which proves that you can easily take two funny people like Eugene Levy and Samuel L. Jackson, and make a preview without a single funny moment in it; and Just Like Heaven, which looks to be the third worst Reese Witherspoon movie of the last few years, which doesn't sound bad until you remember that she made Legally Blonde 2 and Sweet Home Alabama, and that there are porn stars that don't suck as much as Sweet Home Alabama.

Later, we had a nice chat with Elayna, who will be home in a week! She's gone from being phone-shy to spending nearly an hour talking to us. Her parents got her a Gameboy Advance, which I've got mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it does have a brighter screen (the reason they got it for her) than her Gameboy Color, and it will play her existing GBC games. On the other, plopping down $80 for a "just because" gift doesn't exactly do wonders to teach her to value money. On the third hand, Fire Emblem and Advance Wars 2 (and maybe FFT -- anyone know if the GBA version is different enough from the PS version to justify it?)! Um, not that I'd spend hours playing my daughter's game. Really.

She also speculated about the identity of the Half-Blood Prince (she was wrong, but with 100 pages to go, I wasn't willing to confirm or deny anything), and chatted about the next Lemony Snicket novel, current cartoons, and summer camp, where she won her cabin's "top camper" award!

She also told me, "you're going to want to kill grandma."

Me: Why?

Elayna: Because she bought me Heelys.

No, no interest in killing the grandma. Hell, I'd never heard of these until Elayna mentioned them. I'm just surprised that Elayna really wanted them.

Oh, and finally, I watched this week's Six Feet Under this morning. And yeah, that was an ending I wasn't quite expecting.