I am too lazy to sort
Are you up early with the crack of dawn? How about starting it out right with some exercise? The NY Times presents the seven minute workout. This is just as good as a full hour in the gym. What a way to get started!
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the-scientific-7-minute-workout/
Fireworks provided by Heijmans via Creative Commons
I’ll be remiss if I don’t mention that this blog is going on its tenth year. Hooray for me!
Itsuki-chan’s in for repairs. Hopefully, she gets better, and hopefully, it’s not gonna cost an arm and a leg. Meanwhile, they gave me a car to tool around in. They weren’t supposed to, but I think they’re trying to buy a new one. I can’t get rid of Itsuki-chan, but this new girl is fun to drive around in.
What you see here is the Mini Cooper Coupé S in a gaudy light blue. It’s almost like the standard Mini Cooper S, but only two seats, 3/4 of the height, and more claustrophobic. It’s like a small closet. The ceiling is close to your head even cranking the seat down as far it goes. I’m 5’9″ and my head nearly touches the roof. They’ve accommodated your head with little functional alcoves on the ceiling, but I think if you’re tall, you’re gonna be ducking a lot.
The most aggravating aspect of the coupé is lack of sight lines. The rear window is small and when the spoiler extends at 51 MPH the view out back is even more obscured. The B and C pillars block the view when trying to backup. It’s small inside and hard to see out.
Yet, it still a fun little ride. Compared to Itsuki-chan, it’s feels more agile. Perhaps this is because it is more rigid being smaller and lacking the sunroof. It goes into corners just as confidently as Itsuki-chan, but without the LSD that Itsuki-chan has, it doesn’t pull as smoothly. There’s some spinning.
The coupé has about the same options as mine, maybe. The interior is black which makes the plastic look much, much better. The radio integrated into the center speedometer is better designed with both the On button and the volume button adjacent to each other rather than the way it is on mine with one down below the CD player and the other on the speedometer itself. Mini is putting better effort in making the fit of the car better. It’s come a way from my Itsuki-chan, but it feels just about worth its price.
The coupé is also a sport automatic. It’s got paddle shifters on the steering column, or you can shift on the gear selector. It’s weird because I can drive most other automatics, but in a Mini Cooper, I have to use the sport shifting.
When you drive a sport automatic, the ECU controls the shift points. I’ve put her into ‘sport’ mode during my drives hoping it would be almost manual, but the ECU kicks in and makes shifts when I don’t want it to, especially when slowing down. The ECU doesn’t help with the shifting; it hinders it when you’re used to manual.
I also miss neutral, an essential gear on a manual. In a manual, you can take the car out of gear while coasting. In this special automatic, there is no neutral to get to when needed. It’s always in gear. That’s why its tough to drive when I’m used to manual. I like to coast in neutral sometimes and it’s just not available.
I hope Itsuki-chan will be better. This dalliance is great fun, but I want her back.
Cute girls throw like a girl. Each was absolutely atrocious. If I had to pick which one was the worst, I’d pick Jessica’s. Her throw went straight into the ground at leas Tiffany’s went to the plate — 10 feet wide and rolling on the ground! If I had to to pick the cutest, I’d also pick Jessica. Cute girls, please, please, learn to throw; and you’ll be even more cuter.
Forget Warby-Parker. Get your alternative prescription glasses from today’s link.
I needed a pair of safety glasses for work, because pretty soon I may be heading to the ship yard. So I bought a pair as you can see in the bonus picture. It’s a wrap around pair which hugs my face a little bit too much. But the glasses they sell are cheap enough that maybe I might try another pair.
I’l also looking for a pair for cycling, and they’ve got several types that may work if I get the transition lenses or just the dark lenses. This site is much better than trying to get prescription Oakleys which go for 3 to 4 times the amount from RX-safety.com.
I know at least I am going to get a pair in yellow. Let’s hope my vision doesn’t go bad anytime soon.
Will Iron Man 3 break the curse of third installment curse in Marvel movies? Spiderman 3 was insufferable and squandered Spiderman 2’s greatness. The less said about X-Men 3 the better. Nuff said.
That question is a good rhetorical device as an introduction to my review, because obviously, this was a pretty good third installment. I think it was just as a good a comic book movie as the second Spiderman and that’s a very good compliment. The movie relies on Robert Downey, Jr. for the spark. I think he’s been integral to the Iron Man/Avengers franchise driving it forward with his personality. Or is it Tony Stark? I didn’t read Iron Man comics, but if he was more like Downey maybe I should’ve.
Iron Man 3 finds Tony Stark trying to be less of the man in the iron suit. He’s trying to live right by his girl, Pepper Potts, and by his friends. But international terrorists and evil genius industrialists keep pushing him into the iron suit. Or rather jumping in and out of several of them.
The one thing wrong with the film though is that there are too many characters especially the villains. Every minute a new bad guy showed up. And they absolutely wasted my girl, Rebecca Hall. Too many bad guys! And the ending turned into Lethal Weapon 3! When you get a bevy of Iron Men, you need to use them not focusing on witty banter between black and white buddy cops.
Summer movies man. Got to catch ’em all.
4 of 5 stars.
I am stuck in neutral. If I thought March was bad, April is even worst. There is no slope in that graph. It hovers around 203. It doesn’t go below 201. It doesn’t go above 205. It is a stalemate. Me against fat and no one is winning. I am not losing though.
I barely rode the rower. I only did about 50 K. Last month I did 150 K, but last month had a rowing challenge. This month the challenge was in my head and I failed.
On the eating side, I’m eating like I did before. Not too much vegetables, and not enough fruit. My craving for breakfast sausages is at a peak. I’ve been eating McDonald’s breakfasts lately. I had their #4, sausage biscuit, but also a steak and egg bagel. Steak and egg! Steak! For breakfast. Who knew.
I’m gonna have to turn this around. I changed my target. It’s down to 197. I have to hit it by June. That will change. Make it July. Maybe.
When will I get on the bicycle?
I’m not too sure about Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain. I enjoyed it while watching it, but soon after I felt terrible that I enjoyed it. In fact, I feel that it is a vulgar film. It asks us to try and make sense of these idiots who try a “Fargo,” kidnapping for money or to get their kidnappee’s estates. You can’t. Floridians are idiots — white Floridians especially.
Pain & Gain follows Marky Mark and his gym rat crew as they kidnap people who they try to blackmail them out of their own homes. They bumble their way through the first one successfully. Yet, they need more money, do it again, and cause all sorts of mayhem. Needless to say, they were unsuccessful. When things went wrong, they went wrong quickly and ugly.
The movie was a comedy yet it was somewhat of a thriller. You’ll laugh at the dummies and cringe at their dumb antics. Michael Bay makes you forget that it is a Michael Bay film. The only hint is that he spins the 360 shot in an important and crucial scene. It’s a Michael Bay special.
One good thing about the movie is The Rock. He’s pretty awesome and it shows. He’s very natural and easy going even when he’s doped up on cocaine. The Rock is so lovable.
You better watch this before the summer movie train’s in full speed. It will be soon gone and on digital download.
3 of 5 stars.
I was over my moms this evening.
“I want to show you something. It’s weird.”
“Weird? How?”
She was leading me to the far side of the the balcony.
“Oh. We can’t see it from here.”
“What? What’s weird.”
When my mom uses the word, weird. It is rather unsettling. It’s not like us younguns who casually toss it off. It’s disturbing.
We head upstairs for a better look.
“What’s weird? What is it?”
She won’t tell me. She wants to show me. We look out the window into the small briar patch between the houses.
“Do you remember the chairs that your Tita Mina brought over? I think that’s one of them there.” [In the woods]
Creepy. Who would’ve done that. How? Why?
“Gabe said that there were homeless living in the Haunted Woods by school.”
I don’t think this put up by a homeless man. There’s kids playing in the backyard. They could’ve set up the chair as part of their ‘fort.’
Still, the chair sits in the vegetation waiting for someone to sit in it.
Tom Cruise once again tackles science fiction in Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion. Kosinski is the director of the notorious Tron: Legacy. Tron: Legacy was a movie I looked forward to, but afterwards, I wanted to burn my Mac mini. It was stupendously boring and superficial. Looks pretty like Olivia Wilde, but ultimately looks were deceiving. So would Oblivion be the same?
I digress. We were supposed to be talking about Oblivion, Tom Cruise, and the director, Kosinski.
Oblivion was written by Kosinski from one of his stories that became a comic book. I can see the comic book panels now and understand the langorious pace several issues would combine to match the first hour and a half of the movie. There was lots of mood setting placing Tom Cruise into the barren, post-alien apocalypse Earth. It took a while before we get into the meat of the story. Tom Cruise must save the remnants of the post-alien apocalypse Earth from the alien invaders. Or was is it the other way around? I should’ve put spoiler alert there. Or are you now keen on one of the many twists! Spoiler Alert!
Tom Cruise was Tom Cruise. Shirtless. Looks the same as he did years ago. Wears the same Yankees cap from the other alien invasion film: The War of the Worlds. He’s the star. Show him as much as possible. And don’t forget to have him running, running, running. Letting those little legs carry him as far and as fast as they can.
The thing most fascinating about Oblivion is that the it started to make sense once the movie began unraveling its mysteries. Things that felt like coincidence where actually explained. Of course, YMMV depending on if you buy the premise of the world Kosinski built. Early on I was not buying it; but the reveals made it worth while.
Oblivion was a lot better than Tron: Legacy. It had some of the same problems though: superficial, pretty, but it definitely made up for it with the twist and turns.
3 of 5 stars.
