Poor Man's Operation

I'll start by saying that I finally saw The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy Friday night, and I really enjoyed it. Now, this my have been due to lowered expectations. I am a huge fan of the books, and they seemed like they would be very hard to translate into movie format (if you have any doubts, check out the 1981 BBC version. It was terrible. But anyway, the new version definitely skips around, glosses over much of the book, and has a very hollywood ending but in general it was enjoyable.

Saturday I did a lot of stuff. I started out with a 13.1 mile run (it was supposed to be 13, but I figured "let's just make it a half marathon") that I finished in 1:53. It was hard, but I did it. From there I went to the Woodbury's to work on their deck (which I do pretty much every weekend, and several weeknights) and it's almost done. We had to knock off early, so I came home a mowed my dead grass pile of a lawn. Seriously- it's 90% brown, but the parts that aren't dead grow all big so you still have to mow. What a pain.

I was going to go see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 at 4:00 with some friends, so I toasted a bagel to eat first. This requires a little explanation. The only toaster I have right now is the one my grandma gave me in college which is unique in that the toast doesn't pop back out the top, it kind of shoots out the bottom. Daniel and I found this to be amazing back in our apartment, until we realized that instead of trapping all the crums internally, it sort of blasts them out all over the counter with your toast. Hence, my counters here are covered in crumbs. So anyway I put my bagel in it, got out the peanut butter and waited. When it was done, my bagel didn't drop out. I examined the problem. The short explanation is that there are side supports and bottom supports. The bottom ones are closed and the sides open when it's off. When you push the lever, the sides close then the bottom opens. When it's done, the sides let go, presto, and then the bottom closes again. So, I pushed the lever back down to open the bottom. I didn't want my bagel to get burned, and I couldn't reach it with my fingers, so quick grabbed my peanut butter knife and started pushing it out when I realized that I was STABBING A METAL KNIFE INTO AN OPERATING TOASTER. That's right. I'm an engineer for Navy aircraft. Luckily I stopped and unplugged it before I got some nice 110 running through me.

Pirates 2 was good. It wasn't the best plot in the world, but it was serviceable. It was however pretty much constant entertainment. The action sequences were plenty and well-done. I think that was my favorite part- the whole movie was well thought out and polished. It looks like they're going for a Back to the Future or Matrix type trilogy: the first movie was stand-alone, but 2 and 3 are basically one long movie. Hopefully unlike the Matrix they won't completely drop the ball with the 3rd movie. Anyway, I sincerely enjoyed Pirates and was waiting to talk about how great it was with my companions, and the first thing one of them said when the lights came on was "Well, that sucked." So I could be wrong.

I had high hopes or today productivity-wise. I really needed to clean up a little in anticipation of my family visiting next week. Here's the thing about me: I'm neat, but not clean. I hate clutter and have to put everything in it's place, but I never sweep or clean the bathroom. So today was the day, plus I needed to fix a faucet in the guest bathroom that's been leaking for weeks (I did turn off the water, so I just couldn't use it). To make a very long story short, I did get some cleaning done but it took 3 trips to Lowe's to fix the faucet. Remember, Lowe's is about a half-hour round-trip. Now I think I'm going to waste the rest of the evening.