Let’s Play Catch….. up!
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Yeah, I’ve been a little lazy on my writings lately, so here’s an attempt at catching up on the last couple of weeks.
Where to start?
I guess I’ll throw a vinyl on the record player, grab a cold brewski (not the dog) and settle in for some serious typing…
In an earlier post, I already mentioned Leslie’s Birthday (Happy Birthday to choo!), well part of her birthday gift wasn’t mentioned!
I promised to arrange for a professional photo shoot and put together a portfolio for her.
But then after thinking about it more… why spend a couple hundred dollars on a photo shoot that lasts only a few hours, when I can take all of the pictures myself… whenever we want… as often as we like. I have a lot of the same equipment a pro would use, and we could use the money we would have spent on the photographer on wardrobe and props! So that’s exactly what we did.
So far we’ve taken several hundred pictures, but I’ve only had time to go back and edit a few. Here is our favorite so far.
We were going for an “old timey” look. Classic!
Look for more to come soon.
I also created a blog site (like this one) for her to write in, but so far it’s fairly empty.
I feel like there should be plenty to write about since the last post, but honestly it’s been pretty boring around here the last couple of weeks.
A majority of our free time has been spent searching for a new place to live. Living up here at 9,000 feet has been great, but we are ready to get back down to civilization. The 1 hour round trip drive to get a gallon of milk has lost it’s charm!
We’ve looked all over! Why is it sooooo hard to find a house to rent that doesn’t cost $2000 a month? And why is it, that the places we do find in our budget don’t allow pets? And why is it that the places we do find, in our budget, that allow pets… view the Alaskan Malamute as an aggressive breed and therefore won’t rent to us? It’s really frustrating.
And the bum deal about the whole thing is that we are ready to buy a house rather than rent. We’ve been pre-approved for a decent mortgage and everything, yet don’t have the $$$$ for a down payment that would make the mortgage feasible. Anyone have any suggestions on how to come up with $15,000 quick and easy? So, we’ll just continue to rent for now, and hope our finances somehow break through!
During the nights… we’ve had lots of opportunities to catch up on our movie watching. One of my last posts talked about “You, Me, and Everyone We Know”. That is a great flick that everyone should make time to watch, but I’ve got another couple movies that I’ve got to give props to. We’ve kinda been on this “Documentary” kick lately. I’m not sure what started it, but here are 2 that you need to rent soon.
1. Air Guitar Nation
The movie is a true story documenting the first ever Air Guitar contest.
Pretty much the whole thing is about this guy from the east coast (New York I think) named C. Diddy!
He beats out another guy who goes by the name of Bjorn Turoque (pronounced like “Born To Rock!”).
So Bjorn gets beat in the New York competition but gets Carson Daily to pay for him to fly to L.A. to compete again and hopefully win the title of “Nation’s Best Air Guitarist”.
He of course loses to C. Diddy again.
After the National Championship C. Diddy travels to Finland for the World Championships. And who finds a way to the competition as well? Bjorn Turoque!
And guess what… he loses… again. It’s a crushing blow to his ego and… well life!
That’s about it really! It’s amazing how serious these guys are about their air guitar. The funny thing is… they really aren’t that good. It’s compared to an art form such as ballet or figure skating, where the competitor has choreographed routines to music. However, they aren’t very well thought up or performed. I think if this “art form” ever really took off, the so-called “innovators” and people like C. Diddy and Bjorn who were the first ones to start it all… will be put to shame!
Anyway, it’s good for a laugh! It’s fun to see how crazy people can be out there!
Speaking of CRAZY!… the next movie takes the cake.
2. The King of Kong: A Fistul of Quarters
I don’t even know where to begin with this one.
Some of my favorite movies are the Christopher Guest’s “Best In Show”, “A Mighty Wind”, “For Your Consideration”, etc.
This movie feels like one of his flicks… but it’s totally real!
Every person in the movie is real. The whole thing about this competition to be the best Donkey Kong player on the planet is ALL REAL!
I really can’t do the movie any justice by trying to explain it here, and I definitely don’t want to reveal any spoilers. You need to just rent it and see for yourself.
All I can say, is that I had to question just about everything I encountered afterwards. It totally screwed with my mind. To believe that these people are real and that the events that take place during the movie are real… just blew my mind!
After watching the movie, I turned on the John Stewart show and he had the Governor of New York on as a guest. I swear to you I actually believed that there was NO WAY that man was the Governor. I can’t explain it. My mind just didn’t want to believe it for some reason. This side effect continued pretty much the rest of the night. I don’t know how to explain it. Just see it, and you’ll understand!
Another movie I watched recently was one I took the time to see in the theaters
Anyone that is a fan of The Beatles MUST SEE this movie.
It is a musical, and to be honest… when I saw it in the theaters, I almost walked out within the first 5 minutes.
I’m glad I didn’t, and for some reason… I didn’t have that same feeling seeing it the second time around.
Some of the characters get on my nerves (Sadie), but for the most part, I enjoyed the whole thing. This one is definitely a DVD worth purchasing. I can see myself watching it again and again. Several cameo appearances by Bono and Eddie Izzard were cool too.
Let’s see… what else is new?
We’ve had a couple of decent snow falls recently. None of them have been too much, or at least so much that getting in and out of our driveway has become a problem.
However, what happens almost every time we get snow, is that we’ll get a full day and night of heavy winds. Down in the frontrange, these Chinook winds (Eskimo for Snow Eater) melt all the snow. But up here, all that wind does is blow the snow around… and every time it creates drifts over our driveway that make it pretty much impassible.
The last time our driveway got in this shape, we invited friends and family up to help dig a path for our jeeps to get out. For their hard work, I supplied some delicious chili and whiskey to warm us all up.
This time around… I decided to go ahead and just pay to have a plow truck come through and clear it out. It was much easier on my back, but harder on my wallet!
However, $98 later I can see portions of my driveway that have been hidden by snow since December. We’ve also got a 9 foot wall of snow that dogs (and me) love to climb and play on now!
Last weekend we went to visit Leslie’s Dad (Mike) as he and his roommates were having a bonfire party.
It was good to get out of the house. Mike cooked up some porterhouse steaks on the grill and they were quite delish! Didn’t stay long. Had to take off when the hippies started breaking out in to song 
No, actually… we just needed to get back to the dogs. They had been alone for about 7 hours and usually in that amount of time Nanook finds something to make a mess of. This particular time was no different!
Another thing I’ve recently been working on are some home videos. I created a YouTube account and started posting some of my work.
Check them out when you get a chance, and let me know what you think.
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–Valentine’s Day!
To celebrate V-Day we went out on an old fashioned “dinner and a movie” date.
Had some delicious Grub at Gordon Beirsch, followed with Juno at the movie theater across the way.
I thought Juno was going to be funnier, but it was a good movie. Definitely a happy ending, and the whole thing was….
well, cute! That’s the best word to describe it. There were a couple of uncomfortable parts with Jason Bateman’s character and Juno, but otherwise it was an easy watch.
I think I’m caught up now.
The hunt for a new place to live still continues.
The weather lately has been awesome. Temperatures have been in the high 40’s and the sun as as hot as ever!
We’ve got some visitors lined up to come out and do some skiing and snowboarding in the next couple of weeks, so that should be exciting.
All-in-all, things are good!
