Awesome Thank You cards.

Some time ago, I did a favor for a friend and she grew concerned that we were not “even.”  This would be the same friend that made me the fabulous birthday card last year.
“Oh, I’m sure you will eventually do something for me to even things up,” I said, not at all concerned.  But within a week I had a nice stack of Thank You cards she made for me and which I have been sending to people since.  They always assume I made the cards, but card-making is not really a skill I put in play often.  When asked, I set them straight. 
And then I ran out of the cards.  So I mentioned to her that I would have to put myself in her debt again so I could get more cards.  And within a week I had a stack of Thank You cards that blew away the previous ones.  I love them so much!
She bought a bunch of doll clothes patterns and realized she would never actually sew any doll clothing.  So here they are repurposed for me.

 

  
This one is my favorite as I hate the word “panties” but love that doll panties have made their way to a thank you card.
 

Three sentence movie reviews: Thor: The Dark World

Unlike the first movie (which I found kind of boring the first time through and strangely profoundly moving the second viewing) this movie was very well-balanced, giving good time to the earth people, the Asgardians, Thor’s friends, Thor’s romance, and even a bit of gratuitous washing up involving a naked torso.  But best of all, (well, second best, because Chris Hemsworth has got something going on) was Loki, who is perhaps my favorite Marvel villain, mostly because he’s just so fun.  I thought the fight scene at the end was full of creative action-movie-fight scene-type-things and hopefully you will stay for the bit during the credits AND the bit at the bitter end of the credits.

Cost:  $7.00
Where watched:  St. John’s Cinema with Matt.

Three sentence movie reviews: Gravity

A very good exercise in remembering to breathe when things are tense, because this whole darn movie is tense so there is a lot of breathing practice.  Excellent acting–it’s not often we get a film where just one woman occupies the screen for the majority of the movie.  This was one of those movies that is just very well done.

Cost:  $8.50
Where watched:  Regal Tigard 11 with mom.

What’s the plan for the tree?

I’m walking out the door for a day of playing Settlers of Catan (I know you are jealous) and I see that my neighbor has people doing work on his parking strip.  They’ve pulled out all the bamboo and have hacked off several branches from the Flowering Plum.  I figure they are just doing a rough cut for a rather aggressive pruning job and go on my way.

But when I look out the window the next morning, I find that the work appears to be complete, for there is mulch spread all over the parking strip, yet the tree has been hacked to bits, and still left standing.

What the hell is going on?  I hate flowering plums.  We have one in front of our house too. They were planted along the street when the Max line went in and you can see two on the other side of the street in this picture.   I think they are ugly trees, save for the four days in the spring when they are blooming.  I’ve wanted to replace ours with something more pleasing to the eye since the day we moved in. But I haven’t because it would ruin the uniformity.

However, I would never just chop it back like this and leave it.  It’s ugly.  Either take the tree all the way out, or trim it properly. 

Three sentence movie reviews: The World’s End.

I enjoy a few things about Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edgar Wright films: they tend to combine genres in new and exciting ways; they are incredibly silly while also being a bit moving; and mostly I enjoy them because they are funny all the way through.  I saw the preview for this movie upwards of five times, so I was very familiar with those funny bits, and yet there were still more funny bits sustaining the entire length of the film.*

Cost:  $4.00 (though I spent another $5.00 for Kombucha on tap)
Where watched:  The Academy Theater (first time!) with Matt.

*One would expect this in a comedy, but it’s rather rare, actually.  Most follow the pattern of a bit of funny sprinkled here and there held together with vast swaths of not-funny.  It’s the worst when they’ve exhausted all the funny parts in the previews.

Copy editor needed. STAT!

Hey Oregonian.  Maybe you could put some money towards better proofreading?

24/7 is something entirely different than the improper fraction of 24/7, which I can’t recreate in this blog, but which is in the text above.  24/7 means “all the time” namely 24 hours a day, 7 days per week.  24/7 means 3 and 3/7 of something.

(And yes, this blog could use a copy editor too.  But this blog is not a major news organization.)

Bigger stand-alone Opinion page. And yet.

The separate Opinion section in the Sunday Oregonian disappeared some time ago.  It morphed into part of the Metro page.  With the brave new world of lesser service masquerading as still the same level of newspaper, one of the things the Oregonian is counting in the “improvement!” column is the return of a separate Opinion section.  I was pretty happy too.  Although now that I read it, I have this problem.

There are more editorials, but nearly all of them continue on a different page.  This is massively annoying.  I expect it in the normal paper, it was always par for the course.  However, it used to be that the Opinion page had each Opinion piece on one page.  I read the paper one page at a time.  It’s the reality of where I read the paper (on the train and while eating my lunch at work) and even more than the regular news, I resent having to retain in my head where the argument was going until I get to the back page of the paper.

Surely you can work your magic and get all the words on the same page.