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Had Myself a Merry Little Christmas
Dec. 26th, 2013 10:16 amThis year, Kimberly & I opted to spend Christmas Eve & Morning with the Wiedlins, which turned out to be a great way to spend the holiday — all the best parts of the holiday, followed by some time on our own.
Christmas Eve, Bob surprised us by picking us up in Berkeley, and we had a nice ride to San Marteen together.
They had a surprise guest, Ulf, who is a former member of the flyball team my mom is involved with. He turned out to be a quiet, super nice guy, so it was actually nice to have him there.
His dog, Gandalf, was also present. A very sweet dog, though a bit unshaky on his feet because he's epileptic and taking a few drugs to deal with it. Poor dog! The house was absolutely filled with dogs, because my mom currently has three, and then there was Gandalf, and then when Jason and Lisa arrived, there was one more — all of them huge black and white dogs. There was much chaos at times, but most of the time, there were just tired dogs strewn about the house like so much driftwood.
We had a great dinner on Christmas Eve of ham, mashed potatoes, broccoli (with cheese), and crescent rolls.
Afterward, we played games. I'd brought 7 Wonders, since I thought we'd have a lot of people, but it turned out to just me four: me, mom, Bob, and Ulf. We played the first game entirely openly as I taught the rules to a non-Euro crowd, but everyone enjoyed it, and then we were able to play a second game with closed hands. It all went over well, and I've been asked to bring it again, now that folks were starting to figure it out.
Poor Rob was sick during the entire festivities, which is why he wasn't gaming with us. It sounded like a horrible flu, as it knocked him on his butt. Bob was also getting over a cold (from his recent visit to St. Louis) and Ulf was getting sick while we were there. So, it was totally a House of Plague. It'll be a Christmas miracle if Kimberly & I don't get sick now, for the rest of the holiday break.
Christmas morning we had a great breakfast (of which the grilled chicken sausages were the best part), and then we opened stockings and prezzies.
Then Kimberly and I had a long ride home, and we opened more prezzies.
And that was Christmas.
Among the prezzies I got were three games: Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, Bora Bora, and Expeditions: Famous Explorers. Thanks Chris & Mom.
I also got some cool books on biking. Pedal Revolution is a neat looking book what the more innovative cities are doing about biking, while Bike Snob mocks biking snobs. (Amusingly, both Kimberly AND her mom got me Bike Snob; we're returning the one she got, since dupes would be silly, and I've ordered _Caliban's War_ instead, a space opera book). Kimberly also got me Soon I will Be Invincible, a super novel that I'm certain I've heard of before. I look forward to them all — but especially Pedal Revolution. Thanks Kimberly (& her mom!). Oh, and I picked up a book that analyzes the first two seasons of nuWho and a new Gene Wolfe book with an Amazon gift cert: thanks Lisa & Jason!
There were also stockings full of candies and pens and other various things.
Overall, a great Christmas.
In the evening, I wrote all the section dividers for _Designers & Dragons_, since my schedule says I start editing today. So I violated my usual no-work-on-Christmas rule.
But it was pleasant enough work, and I indeed get it done.
For Christmas Evening, K. and I went out to see our traditional Christmas movie. Despite some reservations, we saw _The Hobbit 2_. Well, despite reservations, and because there was nothing else showing that sounded particularly great.
It was pretty mediocre/bad. I often found myself (correctly) predicting the lines, which always means the writing is badly cliched (including getting the climatic final two lines of the movie word-for-word; one of them even slipped out in advance of the movie itself, which made K. laugh). The writing was actually overall quite bad, between bad dialogue and a plot that often didn't make sense (if you looked at it too deeply) and which was mainly a bunch of boring ways to keep anything from happening.
Worse, it felt like Peter Jackson was purposefully satiring himself, especially when those elves started jumping around and killing orcs in ways that obeyed no laws of physics and really didn't matter much for the plot. The absolute worse was when the (totally hot) red-headed elf healed Kili and was surrounded by a big white nimbus, and the audience broke into spontaneous laughter which was clearly *not* intended by this supposedly moving and spiritual scene. That was the "elf orgasm" scene. Really, really bad.
I was also pretty annoyed that they took my favorite scene in the book, the barrel escape from the elves, and they entirely ruined it by turning it into a computer game action scene that went on so long that you were bored by the end (much like the similarly boring falling-through-the-orc-caves scene from the first movie).
In general, The Hobbit 2 felt to me like it was one of those C-grade movies like _Barbarella_ that people might enjoy and laugh at decades later, but for its campiness, not because it was any sort of quality movie. Whereas _The Hobbit 1_ felt stretched, this one felt stretched ... and poorly written besides.
Good things about it: the aforementioned hot elf chick (who was pretty much a Mary Sue); Smaug being totally scary (before he turned into a blithering buffoon who could have been tricked by a 7-year old); and a few bits about Watson's discussion with Smaug (before it turned into another dull, overly long action sequence).
Yeah, we'll watch the third, because we watched the first two. (It's now too late to stop.)
Christmas Eve, Bob surprised us by picking us up in Berkeley, and we had a nice ride to San Marteen together.
They had a surprise guest, Ulf, who is a former member of the flyball team my mom is involved with. He turned out to be a quiet, super nice guy, so it was actually nice to have him there.
His dog, Gandalf, was also present. A very sweet dog, though a bit unshaky on his feet because he's epileptic and taking a few drugs to deal with it. Poor dog! The house was absolutely filled with dogs, because my mom currently has three, and then there was Gandalf, and then when Jason and Lisa arrived, there was one more — all of them huge black and white dogs. There was much chaos at times, but most of the time, there were just tired dogs strewn about the house like so much driftwood.
We had a great dinner on Christmas Eve of ham, mashed potatoes, broccoli (with cheese), and crescent rolls.
Afterward, we played games. I'd brought 7 Wonders, since I thought we'd have a lot of people, but it turned out to just me four: me, mom, Bob, and Ulf. We played the first game entirely openly as I taught the rules to a non-Euro crowd, but everyone enjoyed it, and then we were able to play a second game with closed hands. It all went over well, and I've been asked to bring it again, now that folks were starting to figure it out.
Poor Rob was sick during the entire festivities, which is why he wasn't gaming with us. It sounded like a horrible flu, as it knocked him on his butt. Bob was also getting over a cold (from his recent visit to St. Louis) and Ulf was getting sick while we were there. So, it was totally a House of Plague. It'll be a Christmas miracle if Kimberly & I don't get sick now, for the rest of the holiday break.
Christmas morning we had a great breakfast (of which the grilled chicken sausages were the best part), and then we opened stockings and prezzies.
Then Kimberly and I had a long ride home, and we opened more prezzies.
And that was Christmas.
Among the prezzies I got were three games: Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, Bora Bora, and Expeditions: Famous Explorers. Thanks Chris & Mom.
I also got some cool books on biking. Pedal Revolution is a neat looking book what the more innovative cities are doing about biking, while Bike Snob mocks biking snobs. (Amusingly, both Kimberly AND her mom got me Bike Snob; we're returning the one she got, since dupes would be silly, and I've ordered _Caliban's War_ instead, a space opera book). Kimberly also got me Soon I will Be Invincible, a super novel that I'm certain I've heard of before. I look forward to them all — but especially Pedal Revolution. Thanks Kimberly (& her mom!). Oh, and I picked up a book that analyzes the first two seasons of nuWho and a new Gene Wolfe book with an Amazon gift cert: thanks Lisa & Jason!
There were also stockings full of candies and pens and other various things.
Overall, a great Christmas.
In the evening, I wrote all the section dividers for _Designers & Dragons_, since my schedule says I start editing today. So I violated my usual no-work-on-Christmas rule.
But it was pleasant enough work, and I indeed get it done.
For Christmas Evening, K. and I went out to see our traditional Christmas movie. Despite some reservations, we saw _The Hobbit 2_. Well, despite reservations, and because there was nothing else showing that sounded particularly great.
It was pretty mediocre/bad. I often found myself (correctly) predicting the lines, which always means the writing is badly cliched (including getting the climatic final two lines of the movie word-for-word; one of them even slipped out in advance of the movie itself, which made K. laugh). The writing was actually overall quite bad, between bad dialogue and a plot that often didn't make sense (if you looked at it too deeply) and which was mainly a bunch of boring ways to keep anything from happening.
Worse, it felt like Peter Jackson was purposefully satiring himself, especially when those elves started jumping around and killing orcs in ways that obeyed no laws of physics and really didn't matter much for the plot. The absolute worse was when the (totally hot) red-headed elf healed Kili and was surrounded by a big white nimbus, and the audience broke into spontaneous laughter which was clearly *not* intended by this supposedly moving and spiritual scene. That was the "elf orgasm" scene. Really, really bad.
I was also pretty annoyed that they took my favorite scene in the book, the barrel escape from the elves, and they entirely ruined it by turning it into a computer game action scene that went on so long that you were bored by the end (much like the similarly boring falling-through-the-orc-caves scene from the first movie).
In general, The Hobbit 2 felt to me like it was one of those C-grade movies like _Barbarella_ that people might enjoy and laugh at decades later, but for its campiness, not because it was any sort of quality movie. Whereas _The Hobbit 1_ felt stretched, this one felt stretched ... and poorly written besides.
Good things about it: the aforementioned hot elf chick (who was pretty much a Mary Sue); Smaug being totally scary (before he turned into a blithering buffoon who could have been tricked by a 7-year old); and a few bits about Watson's discussion with Smaug (before it turned into another dull, overly long action sequence).
Yeah, we'll watch the third, because we watched the first two. (It's now too late to stop.)