So it was pointed out to me that I've been extremely lax in my maintenance of this blog. I already missed writing about all sorts of mildly interesting events like my visit to Toronto and San Francisco. Pics from San Fran are
here in case you missed 'em. You need to sift through them though because I didn't bother filtering out the boring ones.
Last night we had a pretty laid back valentines. Natalie dressed up like a rose and we went to Macaroni Grill before seeing Music & Lyrics, the new Grant-Barrymore masterpiece.
For starters, dinner was interesting. We had a pre-dinner drink at the bar where the frazzled bartender referred to both of us as "ladies" and asked if we wanted anything else. I forgave him the slight against my honor and still tipped generously because one of the drinks was of the sugary-sticky type and I know how much bartenders hate to make those.
When we finally sat down, we found out our server was out of his mind. He offered to play a game with us, allowing each of us 4 questions and the opportunity to guess his age. The only hint was that he is a single father of 3 kids. The reward: free dessert. Needless to say I was both onto his scam (he'd just say it was someone's birthday to score the free cake) and that I was very much on board for the challenge.
The meal progressed and we grew fat with anticipation for the big reveal. We each wrote down our guesses. I said 38 and Nat wrote down 28 (which was actually a number my gut pointed to but I ignored). We had a side bet going about whose guess would be closer, but that's a private matter. The waiter is 37, and his birthday is in April, so I was damn close. Win or lose, we still got our free cake with ice cream and even free coffee. It was such a treat getting a $25 bill for such a thorough meal that I ended up tipping him handsomely too. Besides, like Benny the cab drive from Total Recall, this guy has 3 kids to feed!
We somehow stumbled our way over to the movie theater to catch the flick. If Natalie had written this movie I would have criticized it for not having much of a conflict or satisfying adversity for the characters to overcome. Shows what I know, this movie got made and will probably do just fine in the box office.
Some notable lines:
"You have to see my roof, it's upstairs!"
and
"Why are your pants so tight?" "They force all the blood to my heart"
The movie is also full of welcome digs at 80's pop sensations, complete with an opening music video that mashes up my memories of A-Ha, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and others.
There is one scene that was so poorly shot and edited that I couldn't even pay attention to what was happening. It was a simple conversation in a coffee shop, and Drew's character was sipping on a cup of iced tea. Simple enough, right? Well apparently not! Every cut would have the cup magically change. Sometimes you would see the logo, sometimes there was no logo. Sometimes Drew's character would pick up the cup, the camera would cut to the other angle, and the cup would be on the table again. It quietly drove me nuts that movie makers have so little respect for their trade that they would let big gaffes like this go just because they're too lazy to reshoot an effin' coffee shop conversation. It's not like they'd have to re-sink the Titanic!
As you can see, there has been no actual progress on the bridge project. I think the lesson here is that one of the defining differences between software engineers and real engineers is that the software variety are incredibly lazy.
