It has been psychotic at work this week. Here I thought things would be nice and relaxed with the PM gone but no, all other hell breaks loose. It's now Friday morning, I'm up to my eyeballs in work, I've taken on a new minor project with the movie website which ties into VIFF which means it's time sensitive and I'm supposed to be getting some rest this weekend but I have a load of movies to watch in prep for a special gig next week.

The gig is very exciting really but I'm a little nervous. These guys have a show I listen to religiously. They're insigtful, smart and always sound like they know what they're talking about even when you can tell they're talking out of their asses. I don't want to come off sounding like I'm a film dud. So yeah, very nervous. Once details are finalized I'll pass them along.

One good thing is that D and I have decided to drive the Mean Mary down to the US tomorrow. D wants to check out some of the automotive stores out in Bellingham and I'm looking forward to checking out the Japanese super store we discovered at Bellis Fair.

Sunday will be my movie day. I've scheduled an entire day of running around town to various theaters. Hopefully the weather stays nice so I don't have to worry too much about rain. It sucks to ride transit when it's pouring. Monday will be a day of rest and hopefully I can get through a fun book I just started and squeeze in a few more DVDs. I have a feeling once classes kick in on Wednesday my life is going to come to a screeching halt pretty quick. This will be the first semester where I'm going to school full time and running the site full time. It was bad enough with just school and work but this will be the real test.

But that's enough rambling. I hope everyone has a fantastic long weekend and I leave you now with this week's playful KFF!

Oh my. I'm not sure if this video of Elijah Wood dancing with a bunch of guys in robot costumes is funny or sad but it did make me laugh (while I shook my head in disbelief at the same time).

D and I have entered the throngs of parenthood.

At 12:30 on Saturday, August 25th, D and I became the proud parents of Mean Mary, a beautiful shinny red Dodge Charger. She's the most beautiful car I've ever owned.

It's kind of cool having a car people look at. D went to the gas station and while I waited for him in the car, 2 people walked by and commented on how nice it was. BLISS!

Isn't she beautiful?

I'm in too much of a tizzy to finish the day on time to do a proper post but that's no reason to avoid this week's KFF so, here it is.


Have a great weekend everyone!

I was never a big wrestling fan (still am not) but American Gladiators was a show I used to watch with my mom and my sister. It was cool watching "normal" people take on these godlike creatures they called gladiators and we always had fun trying to guess who would win.

The show went off the air years ago and though I've never given it much thought, when I saw this story about the show making a comeback on NBC, I have to admit I got pretty excited and yeah, if it's on when I'm home, you'd better believe I'll be checking it out!

Oh jeez, I just had another though. I still don't know who won the last season of "Hell's Kitchen". Better go check that out...

The new version of Google Earth actually lets you map the sky!

I haven't checked out the new feature but The Bad Astronomer has posted his findings about the new service.

Still sounds pretty impressive and as Phil says, it's only going to get better.

Here's an interesting story.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Harper Lee recently made headlines when she made an appearance at the induction ceremony for Alabama Academy of Honor.

Last weekend I had a bad Sunday. D and I made our regular trip to Costco but I decided since we would be doing shopping and then coming right home, I wouldn't take my bad. Instead, I grabbed my wallet and sunglasses.

Things are going well, we do our shopping and pay when I realize that I'm missing something. At some point during our shopping, I put my sunglasses down somewhere. Typically, this wouldn't be a huge deal but I happen to own a very expensive pair of Dior glasses. And I'd just lost them. I was angry at myself for being so careless and after the initial grief and shock, I went back into the store and tried to retrace my steps but couldn't find them and with thousands of customers about, I figured they were gone for good.

This weekend was a bit of a write off so D and I went to do our shopping on Monday night. While waiting in line to pay, I thought I thought I'd go check out customer service to see if, by any chance the glasses had been turned in. I didn't think there was a hope in hell someone had turned them in after all, they are $400 sunglasses. I tell the lady what they look like and she goes off a little further down the counter and pulls out a basket and a glass jar full of stuff. I tell her the glasses are just loose, not in a case. She brings out a third jar packed with glasses. She pulls out the first set, a pair of gaudy things with huge rhinestones on the side that make me wonder if someone lost them on purpose. She looks at me expectantly but I shake my head. She pulls out a few more pairs and right at the bottom she pulls out a pair of black sunglasses with shell side accents. OMG. My sunglasses.

I could have cried. Instead, I jumped up and down with joy, thanked the woman profusely and walked away with my sunglasses.

D was beside himself. He was happy for me but angry too. He lost his glasses in a church in the small town of Vulcan, Alberta. I lose mine at one of the busiest stores in Vancouver and still manage to get them back.

Yes, I realize I'm very lucky. Thank you to the generous soul who found them and turned them in. I can't thank you enough.

This is so neat. D sent me a link today to Aerogel. It is nicknamed frozen smoke, solid smoke or blue smoke due to its semi-transparent nature and the way light scatters in the material; however, it feels like expanded polystyrene (Styrofoam) to the touch.

You can buy your very own piece of Aerogel silica on eBay. I wouldn't suggest you purchase it though. My understanding is that this stuff evaporates when kept for too long. By the time the auction ends and the stuff arrives, it'll only be a tiny little piece.

Still, the technology is wicked cool and the future of this technology is endless. When you consider that the military is approximately 10 years ahead on technology and we already have knowledge of this, it makes you wonder what else they've got under their sleeves.

This is one of the coolest things I've seen lately.

One of my favourite sites on the web, one of the earliest "social networking sites" (though not in the way you would expect) and something which has become a part of my life, has added a wicked new feature.

Essentially, it's a map that updates automatically with the locations of catches and releases and it's freakin' wicked cool. I've been watching it for nearly 10 mins.

Small request for my techie friends out there. Can anyone figure out how to make some sort of active screen saver out of this? That would RULE!

Thankfully, the day is nearly done. True, I did get a longer than usual lunch hour but I've been feeling a little rushed and nervous all day. It may have something to do with the fact that I'm heading off to a meet and greet type of soirée tonight. It's all part of a technology conference called BarCamp which I somehow managed to sign up for and then totally forget until Dale told me I'd registered. What a dunce. I get nervous around people I don't know. Once I'm in the thick of things, I'll be fine but the time leading up to it is a bit of a nightmare for my nerves. This will surely come as a shock to some of the readers who I also know in "real life". SURPRISE!

I need to find a better way to manage my time. I've gone down the electronic and paper route and neither works all that well for me. I really need to fix this before classes start up again in September.

Speaking of classes, I just checked my grades and rather surprisingly, I walked away from the Canadian Film Class with an A+. I say surprisingly because I don't think my final went particularly well.

I'd like to apologise for the small KFF this week. I just really like this picture.


Have a great weekend everyone!

It's true, I'm a big fan of Office Space and Milton's Swingline red stapler is something I've coveted for quite some time. Hubby saw one on sale at Staples but they were $30 and were snapped up in a jiff. Now I've found it online.

Tell me this isn't one of the most beautiful things you've ever seen...


There's even a special collector's edition.

Yes, a collector's edition stapler. Weird but SWEET!

THIS is what TV is coming to.

SAD.

Yesterday, D sent me a link to Tesla Motors, the company behind one of the newest innovations in Electric Vehicles.

Though the hybrids are just now gaining ground, this is a step beyond, providing a stylish, fully electric car at a somewhat more reasonable price. With a price tag of $100,000 it's still not cheap by any stretch of the imagination but then, it's an option for anyone out there looking to spend that kind of dough on an Italian sportscar. Seriously, this thing isn't only sleek, it's damned fast going 0-60 in 4 seconds and peaking at 248mph.

SWEET. Whoever said efficiency would never look or perform well missed the boat completely.

So, if you have a couple of grand sitting around, you may want to order one of these puppies.

Santa, I want one of these for Christmas.

I've been a bad blogger. I've been back for a week and still haven't posted the rest of the trip or even the pictures. Ooops.

I'll try to get to that at some point but I'll just let you all know that the Oregon Coast is fantastic, highly recommended and that I promise to see less sights and get more rest next year. It was a case of too much to see and too little time. We still had a fantastic time but we've been back since Monday afternoon and life hasn't slowed enough to let me rest. Still, it was fantastic and I urge anyone who's vaguely interested to go. You will NOT be disappointed.

I'm seen a couple of interesting films this week including a really interesting and very good documentary on fonts called "Helvetica" and yesterday I saw the American classic "Killer of Sheep" which has been haunting me since I left the theater. Until this point I'd very rarely seen a film that afterwards I knew was a classic and why until I saw this. Breathtaking.

Enough of that now. I have a bunch of work to get done before going home and I'd like to get out of here on time. I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend and until my next post, enjoy this week's KFF.

D and I headed off at 3:30AM from Vancouver. Pitch black out but the dead roads helped quicken the speed of our travel. By 4AM we'd arrived at the border and by 6AM we were driving, along with rush hour traffic, through Seattle. We made a bit of a wrong turn but ended up safe and sound, and not lost on the I5. Stopped outside of Tacoma for breakfast. Nothing else but McDonald's was open. Ugh. It wasn't bad but the coffee was awful. Thankfully, we spotted an open Starbucks across the parkade. French vanilla caramel machiado. BRILLIANT.

Driving speeds picked up as we exited the suburbs and by 10:30 we were outside of Portland. Again, no stopping in Portland (no Powell's! :( ) but we did stop just outside of of Portland for fuel, smokes and more coffee!

Drove through Corvallis. Wished I could have stopped because it looked absolutely charming. After what seemed like an eternity of mountains and trees, we finally saw the ocean, arriving in Newport at about 12:30. Checked in, did some shopping (new running shoes. YEY!), checked out the Historic Bayfront and then walked on the beautiful beach for a few hours. Sand as soft as flour. AMAZING.

Next on the list: some dinner, watching the sun set, hitting the pool and hot tub and getting a good night sleep to see more of the local sights tomorrow!

This is the view of the Ocean from our hotel room. Well worth every penny.

Loads more pictures on Flickr and lots more to be added over the next three days!

Gibson is doing a reading in Second Life at noon PST today. How appropriate and super Cooooooooooooooooooooool.

D and I are finally taking a vacation. We've been together nearly 9 years and this is only the 3rd trip we've ever taken and I'm not sure it really qualifies as a vacation but, it should be fun. I've taken tomorrow off which gives us a nice 4 day long weekend. We're driving out to Newport, Oregon tomorrow morning, spending 2 nights and then stopping over somewhere in Seattle on Sunday night. I'm *very* excited and plan to take loads of pictures. Not to worry, I'll be posting everything along the way!

In other unrelated news, a few weeks ago I mentioned that I'd done my film presentation and that I thought it went well. Yesterday I got back the paper that went with the presentation and I nearly fell off my chair. Not only did I get a perfect score on the presentation, I also nailed the essay with an A+. That was exciting but not nearly as exciting as this next bit. The prof has asked that I fix up the 'rough spots' and give him a clean copy for his files and he's suggested that I look at submitting it for publication in an online film journal out of the University of Victoria.

WOW. WOW. WOW.

This is the greatest thing that ever could have happened. I don't want to get ahead of myself but it would be AWESOME to be published in a film journal.

Because I'm not around tomorrow, I'm posting the KFF a day early. I hope you all enjoy. Good weekend to everyone and an extra good one for my BC buddies who get a long weekend!