Wandering in the Woods

Wow! That was amazing! What a fantastic sequel! I think it definitely stood up to the first one and was easily just as good, if not better. I think the script was better this time, Aunt May makes a beautiful speech about what heroes mean to us. The way they handled Doc Oc was also very good. All in all it was a very good film, it addressed the issue of whether or not superheroes get to have a life away from being the hero all the time and how can they balance that? There were some amazing shots in there and some great fights. Kept making me cringe...ouch, thats gotta hurt! Stan Lee had his brief cameo appearance, of course. =) The opening credits were beautifully illustrated. I always walk out of films of that sort wishing that I could be a superhero or had powers or something.

This time around we were successful! There were no car problems, aside from Dragon ending up running a little late since her family needed to use the car for a bit in the morning, but we were headed out in plenty of time. Our friend, Maria Raimundo was also able to join us. Yay! I love getting to see Maria and hadn't had a chance to enjoy her company since around Christmas. That is entirely too long, but she and I have known each other so long that a little time really doesn't make a lot of difference. She and I have been friends since we were in the YMCA Father/Daughter group called Indian Princesses. I have no idea now if the organization still exists or if it's called some new PC name now, but it was a wonderful group. She and I started in it when we were about five so we've known each other over twenty years by this point.
Dragon picked me up (Thank you!) and we headed over to Maria's to get her and then were off on our way to the city. It was very foggy in there that morning. The exhibit was very interesting, although I was surprised that there were only two Tamara de Lempicka pieces featured in it. I would have liked to have seen some more examples of her work in person, but ah well, c'est la vie. The rest of the exhibit was well worth looking at anyway so it was worth the trip. I wasn't feeling terribly well since I hadn't hardly slept the last two nights and it was starting to catch up with me physically, but I managed to muddle through. I certainly wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to traverse about through SF with a couple of good friends just because I wasn't feeling one hundred percent. Life is too short for that. It really was a great day. After the exhibit we went to Mel's Diner for lunch. Mmmm...hamburger and milkshake. While eating we debated about what to do with the rest of our day. We were debating between going to see "Troy" to enjoy some eye candy or going to China Town or Japan Town. We agreed that we could go to "Troy" any old time really and headed into Japan Town. It was a little bit of an adventure trying to find parking, but we were able to locate a parking garage. I realized that I had never been to Japan Town before! How weird! I've been through China Town many times, but had never made it into Japan Town. The shops had an amazing, slightly overwhelming array of cute stuff. There were cute little plush things everywhere! Everywhere we went there was a wide selection of cute novel little Japanese style tourist trinkets. For the most part I was able to resist. Maria, because she's sweet, bought me a plush keychain Kuro Maneki Neko (Black Luck Cat). I bought a pair of chopsticks with a Kuro Neko on them at a dollar store and found a cute little magnet of Jiji from Hayao Miyazaki's "Kiki's Delivery Service." Obviously I was focused on black cats. At one shop I was able to find a proper belt to go to James' Kimono that he inherited from his friend, Liz. When I say inherited I mean that she gave it to him since she no longer wanted it, not that she passed away. Liz is alive and well! While wandering around a little shopping plaza I heard a ringing and discovered that my purse was ringing! I'm not used to leaving my cell phone on and it really caught me off guard, to Dragon's amusement I think. Imagine that, Dragon being amused by something. I actually lifted my purse to my ear to see if it was me! It was James checking to see if I was still in SF and was a little disappointed to find out that we weren't going to get to see each other that day. We wandered around for a bit more till I was starting to really crash so we headed back to Fremont and Maria and I ended up napping a little bit in the car. After getting back in to Fremont a little after six we headed over to my house so Maria could visit with my cats and we ended up deciding on going to a movie. Went to see "Shrek 2" at the Great Mall. Bought our tickets and went to the food court to get some dinner and then rushed back to get seats. It was so cute! It was a very pleasing sequel! I was actually laughing out loud at some of the jokes, that's pretty rare for me. Puss in Boots was an adorable character! So cute and vicious! It was a fun end to a great day off.

My Mom called me at work on Thursday to tell me our Water Heater had blown on us and had attempted flooding the house. Fortunately she's still off because of her surgery or it probably wouldn't have been stopped in time to save our carpets, etc. I would have been very, very annoyed if it had gone into my room and ruined my floors and I had to have my room torn up again to replace it. She had to have a neighbor turn it off out on the street so she called to suggest that since we didn't have any water at the house that I might want to be elsewhere for the night. James and I ended up staying at a motel and then after leaving from there we went for breakfast and caught a showing of "Van Helsing." It was fun, I would watch it again. I would have to say I am most pleased with the look of the werewolves in it. I think they are conceptually the best werewolf I have ever seen in a film. I'm not sure if they are quite how I would picture a wolf/human hybrid, but I liked the look a lot better than most film werewolves I've seen. They were much furrier than the the ones in "Underworld." After being home for a while my Aunt Sandy showed up. We don't get to see her very often, but she was in town for Mother's Day. After getting to visit with her Dragon came over to show me "Master and Commander." She couldn't believe that there was a film that she had seen twice in the theatre and owned that I had never seen. It happens so rarely. =)

James just showed me "The Omega Man." Interesting. It was horrible seeing The Brotherhood/The Family destroy those paintings. There were certainly other aspects of the film that were sad and messed up, but I've always found it distressing seeing precious, irreplacable pieces of our history be destroyed in films.

My Grandmother Furlong gave me a gift yesterday. She gave me a wool sweater that belonged to my Grandfather and his pilot log books from him learning to fly. He had wanted to be a airline pilot, everyone in his family learned to fly.