HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! :D

Okay, it’s early, early December 31st as I write this, but I thought I would check in and let you know how my Yule is going…

So…

Friday, December 21, 2007: I take off for my week with Tisha. I head out around midnight and give her a call to let her know I’m on the road.

As I drive the dark Texas highways, I’m listening to Jim Butcher’s GRAVE PERIL, the 3rd book in the Dresden Files series.

Okay, that’s creepy enough…

As I drive, I come across a huge set of gray tracks that seem to be made by mud and seem to lead from the wooded area onto and up the road. Miles later, I come across a similar set of tracks (leading from the woods onto the highway).

Now, I realize I’m very likely being creep-ed out because I’m listening to a horror story written by a master and read by a genius (James Marsters). But still…

The moon is ASTOUNDINGLY full! So much so that it kind of blinds me to the road, once I’m out of city limits and ambient light.

It’s just this BIG FULL MOON.

And as I drive down the road, I keep seeing these corpses along the side! I mean, I see a few that are definitely animals (deer, raccoons, etc), but there are a few that are so large and shapeless that they might be HUMAN remains!

This is the way a horror movie might start out! (A good and scary one!)

The story and the moon and the gray tracks and the carcasses all combine to freak me out just enough that even when I stop in a small town for a refill, I’m pretty sure this is the scene when I first meet the creature pops out for the first time and I begin my long, terror-filled dash across Texas to escape this thing, lol.

Saturday, December 22, 2007: Around 8:00 am I’m in southern Lubbock and get off the loop a tad too soon, then spend some 20 minutes trying to find my way to the road that will take me to Levelland.

It’s a pleasantly moody morning, with dark, pregnant clouds, and I notice that the car’s thermometer is registering freezing temperatures outside. As I finally figure out where I am and get back on track, I notice that it’s actually snowing! (None of it’s sticking to the ground, but who knows…)

I call Tisha and she lets me in, and I lay down to take a nap, but I don’t really get to before she wakes up a few hours later.

I bought a sausage & egg burrito on my last gas stop, so I’m not really hungry when she gets up and makes herself some eggs and bacon. I chat with her as she has breakfast.

Now, there is a huge jar of brine (you know, that light green salt & vinegar water that pickles hang out in) sitting on the table, as well as an Applied Physics & Chemistry book and a few other odds and ends that must have found their way there over the course of a busy week.

So as Tisha eats her tasty-looking breakfast and we chat, she casually reaches over, unscrews the lid to the plastic vat-o-brine AND DRINKS IT! Just as normally as though it were a glass of orange juice!

I ask her, “Did you just drink that brine?” And she looks at me questioningly, apparently unable to comprehend why this might be considered odd behavior.

The conversation somehow veers back to where ever it was before my daughter took a huge swig of brine, and the subject doesn’t come up again until a day or two later, when I find out that indeed, yes, my daughter drinks brine. It is, apparently, a bit of delicacy to her…

I’m not judging, mind you… When I was 17 I had a ceiling full of dangling green 7-Up 2-liter bottles and pizza boxes tacked to my ceiling and walls. We do what we do when we’re young, and I delight in Tisha’s quirks! (I’m not particularly worried about Tisha becoming a victim of peer pressure, lol.)

After breakfast, Tisha teaches me some Chemistry, finally – after all these years since high school Chemistry – making me understand the practicality of the Periodic Table! (You have a chemical that behaves a certain way, and you want to create a chemical compound that behaves this certain other way, you quickly refer to the Periodic Table to find what chemicals will combine with the chemical you’ve got. Kind of cool, actually.)

Saturday night, I make plans to treat all 4 of us (Tisha, Connie, Dale and me) to a drive-in double feature of I AM LEGEND and AUGUST RUSH.

I fall asleep that night to THE ARISTOCATS. Very nice end to the day. :)

Sunday, December 23, 2007: I wake up before everyone else (except Connie, who is a nurse and had to be at work early). So as I lay on the air mattress laid out for me, the Christmas tree lights winking on and off, I watch MICKEY’S ONCE UPON A CHRISTMAS on my iPod.

A very Yule-Tide-y experience! :)

No one else is awake yet, so I play some Texas Hold ‘Em, Bejeweled, Majong, Music Quiz and Solitaire on my iPod until it needs to be re-charged.

I called my Gnomey Goddess and got to talk to her for a while as she wrapped presents!!! :D xoxoxo

(I LOVE YOU, BABY!!!)

Then folks wake up and we spend the day… Um… Doing stuff. I really don’t remember exactly what, because what I’m really looking forward to is the night, and going to the Stars & Stripes Drive-In Theater!

DUDE!!!

Okay, first of all, I GOT TO WATCH A DRIVE-IN DOUBLE FEATURE!!! :D I haven’t done that since I was maybe 6 or 7 years old!!! The last movie I remember seeing at the drive-in was the 1977 remake of KING KONG! (You know, Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges and Odo from STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE.)

Secondly, I got to watch this double-feature with my daughter!

Thirdly, I AM LEGEND RULED!!! I read the script that was written in the ‘90s – when Arnold Schwartzenegger was planning to star in the flick – and this is pretty much that movie. But in that script, the vampires had a whole society, more like THE OMEGA MAN and this film keeps the vampires more monster-like, in keeping with the original novel. And the ending is almost a 180 from the novel, but it’s GOOD! It’s a really deep, emotionally satisfying movie! (As well as being all bad-ass and cool!) I think that if you enjoyed I, ROBOT you will probably enjoy this one.

Finally, AUGUST RUSH IS A PERFECT MOVIE!!! :D

I knew NOTHING about this flick! Tisha was excited when she discovered that it was the second feature, and described it to me: An orphaned boy who is into music believes that if he continues to play music his parents will be able to find him.

And my thought is, “Huh?”

But Tisha really wants to see it, and I’m thinking that I REALLY want to experience the whole double-feature thing, so what the heck, right?

THIS MOVIE WAS MUSIC!!!

I’m serious, the images and story serve this gorgeous collection of score and songs that almost never stop throughout the whole film! It’s not like the film is a musical or an extended music video, the movie IS MUSIC! It’s as though someone who is really, really into the magic of music said “Why don’t we make a movie that IS music?”

I was encouraged by the opening credits: The story was by someone named Paul Castro and by Nick Castle. Nick Castle was the original Michael Myers (known as The Shape in the screenplay) and then went on to write ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, THE BOY WHO COULD FLY, HOOK (“screen story by”), and ESCAPE FROM L. A., and direct THE LAST STARFIGHTER, THE BOY WHO COULD FLY, and DENNIS THE MENACE!!! The screenplay was by Nick Castle and James V. Hart. Hart wrote HOOK, BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, MUPPET’S TREASURE ISLAND, CONTACT, TUCK EVERLASTING, LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE and SAHARA!!!

These are storytellers I trust!  Between the two of them, they have given me hours of cinematic joy! Some of it really definitive for me, too!

Also in the opening credits, I note that Keri Russell is one of the stars (I’ve been crushing on her since FELICITY and can’t watch enough of her!) and there is an “and Robin Williams” credit, which means that he may not get as much screen time as one might hope, but his role will be important!

Oh, and William Saddler’s in it!!! (He’s the bad-ass evil guy from DIE HARDER and the bad-ass sheriff from ROSWELL and The Reaper from BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY, just to name 3 of his almost infinite list of great roles!)

All very good signs if you’re going into a flick you know nothing about!!!

Plus, the flick begins with gorgeous music and a boy’s voice stating that music is everywhere if we just listen.

Very encouraging!

The titular star is played by Freddie Highmore, whom you may know as Peter from FINDING NEVERLAND or Charlie from CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY! This is a TALENTED KID!!!

I spend the next 100 minutes, or so, drawn deeper and deeper into this emotionally stirring fable that I could never do justice to if I tried to explain it to you!

Afterward, I’m texting friends and telling them they have to see this movie, and I discover that women – somehow – already want to see this movie.

HOW?!!

I mean, after I see the flick I remember having seen one – ONE – 30-second spot on TV that just DID NOT grab my attention in the slightest!

So how is it that women know about the film and actually WANT to see it?

I mean, turns out they’re RIGHT. It’s a BRILLIANT movie! I was so moved I had Tisha (who drove us) stop at Walmart so I could buy the soundtrack. But how did they know?

When we get back, we finish the day with Stephen King’s THE STAND! :D

Oh, that’s right! Okay, earlier in the day (the part I couldn’t remember) Dale and I watched TV while Tisha crashed in one of the comfy chairs next to us, and THE STAND came on. He had never seen it, so we watched. But it’s, like, 5 hours long or something, so we had to stop watching it before it was time to go to the movie.

But they own it on VHS, so after the double-feature, we resumed the flick.

It’s worth mentioning that they have this HUGE TV with surround sound, so watching stuff on TV there is like watching it at a movie theater! That was the first time I watched THE STAND and it felt like I was watching a movie! (As opposed to a made-for-TV mini-series.)

I don’t remember what I fell asleep watching that night.

Monday, December 24, 2007: Christmas Eve was ridiculously relaxed, lol.

The 4 of us going shopping for the Christmas feast. We watched THE POLAR EXPRESS on their big-ass TV, and the movie was so much better that way! (I didn’t see it at the theaters, so that was my first big-screen viewing of it.)

Tisha kept popping in Christmas movies, and we watched, and they were fun.

Dale stayed up all night, cooking the turkey so that we could eat before 6:00 pm, and I stayed up chatting with him. They had been given a bottle of Crown Royale as a Christmas gift, and I think I had 2 (maybe 3) glasses. I finally crashed after the sun started coming up and so…

Tuesday December 25, 2007: I woke up to a very annoyed Connie and Tisha, yelling at me to wake up, lol!

Dale had an excuse: He was cooking the turkey.

I did not.

I became conscious as we all opened our presents, then we watched the last half of THE SANTA CLAUSE 2, which was really fun! AND, the movie was playing again immediately after (on one of the cable networks) so we watched it from the start.

I called Brian to see how he liked the LEGO STAR WARS: THE GAME I had left for him to open. He seemed excited about it. (Kelly had recommended it to me. He’s been playing it on his PSP and loves it.)

The meal was AMAZING, and I regret that I didn’t have enough room to have 2 or 3 huge helpings of everything!

Then we digested while watching more Christmas movies.

It was a really nice Christmas! It was intimate (I prefer small gathering to huge crowds; I’m just like that), and it was well relaxing! Spending Christmas with Tisha is usually a madhouse with tons and tons of family packed into a single house. But this year was just the 4 of us.

I believe we all went to sleep fairly early that night, lol.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007: Dale and I watched a marathon of THE UFO FILES while Tisha slept in one of the comfy chairs.

I kid you not, that’s how we spent the day after Christmas.

That night, Tisha and I went to see SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET and it was GREAT!!!

It was a great deal more bloody than I expected. I’ve seen the play live once, and a video recording of the Broadway version (the one starring “Mrs. Potts” as Mrs. Lovette) a couple of times, and I was shocked and surprised by all the blood.

I later figured out that it’s because the play doesn’t use blood. The killings are kind of mimed. It works in the play just fine, so you never notice it.

But on screen, when you actually put the blood in at the appropriate times, the movie becomes a true horror flick! ;P

One of my presents to Tisha was a Liar’s Dice set. Brian & Tommy & I have had so much fun playing this game that I wanted Tisha to own it!

A surprising amount of my relationship with Tisha involves us playing games – just the 2 of us or the 2 of us and her family or the 2 of us and her friends. When she was into Pokemon, I had a couple of starter decks, and we played every time we were together for several years. I keep a “travel version” of Clue with me at all times (it’s basically the game without the board) and Tisha and I have played that more times than I can remember.

So after we got back from the movie, I taught Tisha Liar’s Dice with her new set (it’s a replica of the cups and dice Davey Jones’s crew used in POTC: DEAD MAN’S CHEST) and we played for hours!

She won the first couple of games, but then I had a lucky run AND SHE CALLED ME A WHORE!!! lol

That was a shocking thing, being called a whore by Tisha, lol! (I believe my response was “Yes, but don’t tell Wendy” which made Tisha laugh.)

(Note To My Gnomey Goddess: I’m not really a whore, baby, I’m a nympho slut. More accurately, I‘m YOUR nympho slut. ;P )

After half an hour or so, some of Tisha’s friends came over and joined the game. I don’t remember who won the most games, but I’m tempted to say Tisha did. We all played for about 2 more hours, until it was entirely too late for them to be there, lol.

Thursday, December 27, 2007: After the game, Tisha and I stayed up talking until Connie got up for work. I said good-bye to everyone and hit the road before the sun was up. (Only about an hour earlier than I was originally planning to head back, really.)

I resumed listening to GRAVE PERIL on the trip back, stopping in Early, Texas for an hour-and-a-half nap.

The audiobook finished up just after I pulled into my parking lot. I had time to check the mail and unload the car as the book ended. (Very convenient timing!)

Back home, Brian’s at work, so I call him, then Tish and my Mom and let everyone know I arrived home safely.

Um…

Then the last few days have been a blur, lol.

There was drinking… I met my friend Lothar in SL for a while… Did a bit of writing…

Ooh! Brian & I watched Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN and all the behind-the-scenes stuff! That was cool!

Since today is New Year’s Eve, I didn’t drink yesterday. (Thought I might want to sober up a bit before I ring in the New Year, lol.)

Last night, Brian cooked-up these Uber-Burritos: Beef, fajita chicken, refried beans, tomatoes, black olives, guacamole, sharp cheddar cheese and sour cream!

HEAVEN!!!

We chowed on too much food while watching the first 8 episodes of LOST: Season 2.

VERY cool! :D

(Yes, I know, we’re so behind on LOST. But we don’t have cable or a TV antenna, so we watch our shows on dvd.)

Oh, yeah, and the night before last Brian and I caught halfway up on REAPER! The series (well… the 10 produced episodes, anyway) is available on iTunes, and I used some Christmas money to finally buy them all.

And that pretty much catches us up.

Tonight is New Year’s Eve, and I have no idea how that’s gonna play out, but I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be fun! :D Sci-Fi Channel is having this 48-hour TWILIGHT ZONE Marathon, and Brian thought that sounded cool, so we’ll probably be watching a lot of TWILIGHT ZONE as the new years rolls in.

Other than that, no idea.

Which is just fine by me! :D

HOPE YOU HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! (And tons of fun in the remaining few hours of 2007!)