Skirt

I got a sewing machine for Christmas this year (last year?), and this skirt was my first go at it.  I sort of know how to sew from making random things in high school, but it has been a while and it is different on a new machine.  But the skirt was pretty easy.  I just bought the pattern, thread, elastic, and some fabric (solid print that looks the same on both sides to make it even easier) and eventually came out with a skirt.  :)  I need to learn how to finish seams more efficiently, and I didn't try very hard with the hem because I knew it was going to be too short to wear.

All considered, it was a good first go!

The Hunger Games

Have you read this series?  Because I really couldn't put it down.  I just finished and now Paul's reading it.  We even bought them!! Well, the Kindle version of them.

PS Do you have a Kindle?  Because I really love mine.

Our House

Hey!  That's our house!  It is a 2Bed 1Bath house with a done-over garage that acts for us as a storage space.   We have a spacious backyard and front yard, but it hasn't been maintained for who knows how long.  In the summer when it rains we get a forest of weeds and any other time it just looks dead and brown.  But that is what everyone's lawn looks like, so who cares really?  We have our own mailbox with a flag (which I like to put up) and we have our own parking spot.  There are no sidewalks in our neighborhood and no street lamps either.  That is unfortunate especially when you have to walk anywhere at night.

The house itself was built somewhere in the 50's but the owners recently did it over.  Pictures of the inside to come shortly!

News

I have a happy announcement to make.

I'm going to school again! 

Actually, I think it would be more true if I said, "I am taking classes!" but either way.  I just got accepted to an online TESOL certificate program and I'm very excited (TESOL = Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).  It starts in early February and lasts 15 weeks, and then, VOILA, I will be certified!  :D

I liked school right??

Mvoies!!

I definitely spelled that wrong but I am going to leave it like that just because.

This post is for all you theatre-goers.  I hope these are all still out so that you can avoid the bad ones but catch the good ones (according to me at least).  

How Do You Know.  I didn't hate watching this movie.  There were some funny parts (mostly attributed to Owen Wilson) but in the end it really wasn't that great.  The storyline was cutup and broken, and I never really got that fuzzy feeling, oh, everything is going to be all right because they're together!  It just didn't happen, and I kind of expect that, at least a little bit, from a romantic comedy.  I never want to see it again.

Tron.  I didn't really know what to expect from this since I hadn't ever heard of the original but I thought, based on the trailers, that there might be a lot of cool 3D bike action.  Potential?  So we saw it.  But there was only one memorable action scene and the rest was long and boring.  REALLY boring. I cannot stress enough how boring it was.  Very sad for Jeff Bridges.  Until ...

True Grit.  I loved this!  It was clever and raw and heartfelt and gory and suspenseful and lovable.  It was truly gritty.  I am not too familiar with the Coen brothers, but I will most likely look at their movies in the future.  And I don't usually watch westerns either, but this really was amazing.  Go see it.

Tangled.  This was very cute.  I thought that Mandy Moore was a great voice for the main character.  and this totally outdid The Princess and the Frog, if you saw that. 

Did I miss anything worthwhile in the theatres this season??

Newer-ish

Some more of my opinions about movies.

Toy Story 3.  I can't remember if I mentioned this one yet.  I thought it was really well-done.  A lot of people had high expectations and, so far, all I've heard are good reviews.  It was funny and sad and good for the young and the old.  Go Pixar.

Robin Hood.  So, unlike Paul, I like Russell Crow.  I think he's a fine actor.  But I didn't like this movie.  I have a problem with a) British accents on scruffy mumbling men, 2) stories retold with uninteresting plot changes/twists, and d) movies longer than 2 hours.  Yeah, and this movie had/was all 3 of those things.  Half the time I couldn't understand what they were saying, and I guess I went into the movie thinking I knew what was going to happen.  But no.  and it went on forever.  I think the only Robin Hood that has an appropriate length (that I've seen) is the Disney version.

Hereafter.  This movie was slow.  It was different.  It was easy to watch, easy to follow, and, in my opinion, easy to like.  I liked it a lot.  It made me cry.  I saw it in the theatre and when it was finished I heard the woman behind me exclaim "are you kidding me?" in a sort of that-was-the-worst-movie-I've-ever-seen type of outraged exclaim.  So, I'd like to hear someone else's opinion about it.  Also, I thought the last scene was perfectly done.  Also, Matt Damon.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  This is the first and only Harry Potter movie I've seen having already read the book.  It was a different experience.  On one hand, I was glad that I had read the book because otherwise I probably would've been confused.  And it is always cool to see on screen what you saw in your imagination while reading.  On the other hand, I was disappointed at parts where I thought they should've done it differently.  But, all in all, I thought it was fantastic.  Also, poor Daniel is such a bad actor, but I think most people are used to him by now.

Letters to Juliet.  For girls only.  It was very cute, wholesome, and predictable.  Basically, it was your average chick flick.

The Duchess.  I felt about this movie pretty much the same way I felt about The Other Boleyn Girl.  If you've seen both I hope you understand what I mean.  I thought it was good.  But, I have to comment on Keira Knightley's teeth.

Those are the newer-ish movies that I've seen recently.  Oh wait.  Paul and I watched Old Dogs and thought it was awful.

I also saw Gallipoli, an early Mel Gibson movie (1981), and thought it was pretty good ... powerful message.

Houston, TX

I suppose I should rename this post "Space Center Houston", because that's pretty much all we did there.

There is a family friendly museum at the space center.  It has the dorky movies, the interactive games, and scientific exhibits etc.  It was fun to wander around and learn about life in space.  And we enjoyed acting like kids.  Just a little bit.

This is a copy of the screenplay of Apollo 13, signed by the actors.  It was in a case with a bunch of other souvenirs/memorabilia from the film.  It's one of my favorites.

As part of the museum we took a tram to the real Lyndon B. Johnson NASA Space Center.  Here we got to see the buildings where NASA employees work and train.

This is mission control.  The mission control room where Gene Kranz directed the Apollo missions, including Apollo 13.  Cool, huh!

Paul poses with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins of Apollo 11.

Above are some pictures of a training facility that they let us see.

The last thing that we saw was the largest rocket in the world!  You really can't tell how big it is from the pictures.

We had a really fun time.

New Orleans, LA

On our drive home to San Angelo our first pit-stop was New Orleans (how do you pronounce that???).  The drive around the gulf was really beautiful.  There were long, long bridges across miles of shallow marshy water.  There were bare trees growing up out of the water, and it was eerily foggy while we were driving.  It was kind of creepy and I kept wondering why someone decided to build a bridge there, and why was it so long??

It took about 5 hours to get to New Orleans.  I tried to get a really awesome picture of a barge on a river, but I couldn't get my camera out fast enough and Paul wouldn't slow down, so this is what I got instead:

We got stuck in New Orleans traffic and spilled turtle water all over the front of the van during the stop and go.  We used Brenda (our GPS) to get us to the Naval Air Station where we had booked a room.  We waited in line for quite a while and then found out that we were actually staying at the other Navy Inn.  It might have been helpful for them to put the address of the hotel on the confirmation page, but they didn't.  So we drove some more.  We finally checked in and drove to the hotel, but our key didn't work.  So we drove back and forth again and finally got in our room.

Our plan was to take the Algiers Ferry across the Mississippi river to get to the french quarter, AKA where everyone goes to experience New Orleans.  We took Brenda out in the dark and followed her through a sketchy neighborhood (emphasis on the sketchy) toward the ferry.  I lost some faith in her when she had us in the sketchiest of sketchiness and said "YOU HAVE ARRIVED".  uhhh ... no, we hadn't arrived anywhere.  So we went baaaack to the hotel, looked up the real address and eventually found the ferry.  We parked the car in a sketchy lot and hoped that we'd find all of our stuff (6 weeks worth of it) in the car when we got back.

We made it across the river (which I did spit in) on this ferry.  There were a lot of people on the other side, which was comforting.  I had studied a map enough that I kind of knew my way around the streets.  So, we just started walking.  We happened upon a restaurant that I had read about and decided to eat there.  It was called The House of Blues.

We walked through a brightly painted alleyway to get to the front door and there were some employees ushering concert goers into a line.  I asked one of them what the concert was that night and he said, kind of laughing, that it was a burlesque show.  hmm, well yeah, we didn't go.

Dinner was good.  We both ordered southern dishes (I forget what they were at the moment), and I thought it was delicious.  But I have to remember that I was absolutely starving by the time we got our food, so I might've just been enjoying the fact that my tummy wasn't rummbling anymore.

The streets of New Orleans were historical and colorful.  We walked Royal Street, Canal Street, Bourbon Street, and the streets in between.  I enjoyed the jazzy, southern, Louisiana feel.  Bourbon street was packed, and looked like it could be fun if you were drunk or wanted to get some.  or both.

We took the ferry back and luckily our car was still locked and full of our stuff.

The next day we drove on to Houston.