Christmas... a few days early

I'll be bringing Bridget to Lafayette tomorrow to spend a few days with her parents before I head down myself on Christmas Day, so I decided we should hold a small present exchange here early, since what I wanted to get Bridget wouldn't carry easily back and forth.

See, I dislike Christmas trees - the maintenance, the set up, just about everything... I could live without, easily. Bridget, on the other hand, LOVES them. We've ad some discussions about getting one this year, but our roommate has also had som misgivings about getting one, so we held off. I talked to him today about getting her a small one, and what do you know, he'd been thinking of the same thing! So, we went off and bout a smallish tree, some ornaments, lights, and two bicycles that bridget has been wanting so we can go riding together. My roommate and I set up the tree, laid the oraments underneath it, and set the bikes up around the tree, and I led her in, hands over her eyes, to the tree. She gasped, giggled, and immediately started setting up lights. She loved it. And that makes me happy.

Poeple have been aksing what I want for Christmas - nothing, really. I'd be just as happy if I got nothing. However... if someone feels the need to get me something... I've been trying to rent Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" on DVD for some time. It seems like the kind of movie i would love... and I would love to own it, even. So, yeah. "Seven Samurai" on DVD.

Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow

Officially one of my favorite movies of the year. In the running for most favorite, even.

This movie captured the feeling of the 40s and 50s hero serials, comics, and cartoons so WELL. I felt like I was watching the old Fleischer Superman cartoons I had as a child. In fact, this movie is remarkably similar to one episode called "The Mechanical Men" (no, I didn't remember that - I looked up who made the cartoons, and a list of the episodes, and the titles reminded me of the episodes).

The movie knew when to be funny, it knew when to have a heroic moment, and it combined them both very well. Of course, being a sci-fi fan, I loved the retro era "futuristic" feel the whole movie had. There's a short story... I wish I could remember the title... about a man who can see what the present time would be like if the future imagined by the sci-fi writers of the 50s were true - we all know the pictures of "The Family of the Future" and their flying cars, and the curved glass buildings - that's kind of how this movie felt, at points.

Angelina Jolie - why did she have that role? She had like 5 lines, and maybe the same amount of screen time. The other actors did well, I felt... but I think they wasted the money on Jolie.

In Memory...

Luther Charles Veuleman, Sr, died today. For those who know him, that's Charlie's dad. We don't know the specifics of anything just yet; I just found out half an hour ago. Keep him in your thoughts, guys.

Isn't he cute?

Comics and Competition

I've been so stuck on Real Life recently. After Stumbling Upon it, I've devoured most of it - I've read most of their 5 year back issues already. I've even got Bridget hooked.

It just... reminds me of my life, I guess. The guy's a nerd/geek/whatever, has a little boring day job, lives with a couple of roommates... it's just too similar. Even Bridget thinks so.

Order of the Stick is a great stick-figure comic based on Dungeons and Dragons - absolutely hilarious stuff. Check it out, if you haven't already.

So the other day I buy a local paper, to flip through for job possibilities, and a kicking figure on the back page catches my eye. It looked like a martial arts ad, and I thought, "Sweet, maybe there's a new martial arts store opening up or something." Nope. There's a new studio opening up. Tuition cutting WAY below mine. And the instructor goes by... "Dynamite".

I kid you not.

So... I've been trying to figure out if I should feel threatened by this. I guess we'll find out.

In better news, a couple of students will be bringing by friends of theirs to check out class. Hopefully we'll get a couple of new students out of this.

Primetime at the Apollo

Don't ask about the title - it just came to me.

William calls me at about 4am, having problems balancing the credit card machine with what we've got in the computer. I was wide awake, and told I'd be there in a few minutes. He'd already been working on it for 2 and a half hours when I got there. Basically, we had one room that had checked out and paid a certain amount, but the credit card hadn't been charged... instead another one had. The card that had been charged didn't have a signed receipt, though... the other one did. The uncharged card matched the name of the guest in the room... it was hard for us to figure out what exactly had transpired close to 16 hours ago.

So we have this other charge, the unsigned one, with a wholly different name - no one under that name in the hotel, nor has anybody checked out by that name. So i start looking back through our records... and it takes me a while... but I find out this guy had stayed and checked out TWO WEEKS AGO... and had paid cash at check-out.

So now I'm confused. Why in the world was this guy's card even charged? And, for that matter... for a wholly different amount than he paid originally? I don't really know. We left a note asking that same question. The ONLY thing I can think of is that our intrepid morning clerk was attempting to delete his old preauthorization (should have been done a long time ago), and instead charged his card. Those two procedures are TOTALLY different.

We tried to set a fairly even tone to the letter, but I think our intense aggravation may have shown through. This is not the first time this has happened - this time the totals were off by about $90, but sometimes it can run into several hundreds of dollars. I just don't know what she's doing up there. Not showing up on time, that's for sure - she's usually about 20 minutes late. EVERY DAY.

Sorry... this may seem kind of agitated. It is. Just thought people might find it interesting.

Let's go to the movies!

We tried to go see The Inredibles last night, but fortune seemed against us. The theater was having a problem with the projector, so we agonized and decided to watch Christmas with the Kranks, which for those who don't know is based on a book by John Grisham. No, there are no lawyers - well, Tim Allen's character may be a lawyer, but that's not the point. It was a good movie, although slow throughout the first half. There were a lot of genuine laugh-out-loud moments, punctuated by the guffawing woman in the back of the theater (I don't think I'd ever heard a guffaw before her, actually). The previews - oh my god the PREVIEWS. The entire theater was practically rolling in the aisle laughing. Vin Diesel's new movie The Pacifier looks absolutely fantastic. Fat Albert looks to be wonderful.

Christmas Festival weekend, for me at least, is now over. I worked the afternoon shift today, and it went pretty well - I sold all of the rooms we had empty, had only one complaint, struck up some good conversations, was generally helpful to people who were looking for rooms, and mostly surfed the 'net. Life is good with a wireless connection.

Kent has just bought a new DVD writer, and has loaned me his old one, so i am off to install it!

Western Nights

Sitting here at the BW, finished with my night audit, and wondering what in the world I've done. It was... just too easy. I clicked a button that said "Night Audit", confirmed that, yes, I wanted to run the night audit, and sat back while it did its thing. I felt powerless. At my hotel, you feel empowered, working your way through command prompts mere mortal desk clerks never even see. There were no tapes, no reboots, no balancing of the credit card machine... it was all done with one click. I feel sad.

Daisy and Joe came! There was great doubt that they would, but here they are, with Rosie Posie Gamgee in tow. She really is very cute, if a bit spoiled.

Did I mention that every 5 or 10 minutes, the Trouble alarm goes off over here? Probably a short in the panel... but it's annoying, as I have to go acknowledge the alert and enter a password - for those in the know, it's a typical password for these establishments.

I've been wanting to upgrade my computer recently - I haven't been pleased with game quality. For a long time, I was going to upgrade the CPU... but now I'm leaning towards a new video card. That should take care of a lot of what I need, actually.

Christmas Festival Weekend

This weekend is Christmas Festival, Natchitoches' one big event of the year. Something close to 100,000 people will gather to see about 300,000 christmas lights. Yay. And the hotel is packed, of course.

I will be working at the hotel next door tomorrow night; it's owned by the brother of the guy who owns this one, and they had no one to work it - and they're paying time and a half. How could I say no? Money is good.

Started playing Thief 3 - is goodness. Thief 2 was disappointing. There are some things about 3 that I'm not liking, but it is grabbing me much more than 2 ever did. I never even finished 2, as it kept crashing during the last level. We finally just watched the final cinematic, and were glad we hadn't finished playing. Part 3, so far, is much, much better.