Catching up ...

I felt great pangs of unrelenting shame when I saw the date on our last posting. Well we got a new one in under a month ...

So what have we been up to?

1. Moving stuff

We've got a new place arranged and a moving date in mind ... October 15. The new place is significantly larger, with 5 bedrooms. A little ludicrous for just two people and a spoiled dog, but it's the only thing in our neighborhood that would allow us to have Casey. It has a great little garden and a brand spanking new kitchen. We can fill the extra bedrooms with visitors, right?

2. Golf

My fabulous wife purchased the new Tiger Woods golf for the Wii last week. I've been playing probably a little too much. I think I'm undoing all the good teachings of my golf lessons.

3. Movies

We've been taking a few (too many??) evenings and weekends off watching some old ones and some new ones. We've seen and enjoyed:

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - fabulous piece of absurd animation. I've always been a fan of Bill Hader and Anna Faris, and any movie with Mister T as a philosophising street cop makes my list.

Waitress - actually watching this now as I'm doing the post. Great, funny, sad little movie. Interesting perspectives and great little pie recipes to boot.

Tropic Thunder - a hundred and one reasons to hate this movie, but I still split a gut laughing. Robert Downey Jr is a comic genius.

Hot Rod - probably the greatest dumb movie ever made. Definitely an acquired taste, but it suits me (and thankfully Fiona) just fine. Cool beans!

Hitchcock movies - we watched Vertigo the other day. It is a shame that people don't make movies like this anymore. Intrigue, plot and real acting - whole scenes with people just having conversations - by real actors, Grace Kelly, Jimmy Stewart, etc ...

4. Reading ... about zombies

I'm just going through the last few pages of a new classic called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Someone had the genius inspiration to mix old school Jane Austen with zombies. I can think of a few dozen other titles that could benefit from the same treatment.

5. Raging Against the Machine

We got our letters back from the driver's license authority ... rejecting our applications to trade in our old Canadian licenses for new British ones. Since our legal right to drive on our American licenses expires in a couple of weeks and we now have to apply for provisional licenses, take a theory test and pass a practical test with a local pass/fail rate of 40%. Yeah, no problem. Hence the extremely loud curses emanating from northwest Scotland last week.

6. Journeying into the Heart of Darkness

I got in the car after work today at 5:30 pm and the automatic lights came on right away. You have to keep reminding yourself of Scotland's other (many) good points during days like these. We're having a hard time keeping track of how quick the leaves are changing because it's getting dark so quickly these days.