So in case anyone hasn't paid attention at the sporadic posting this summer, I've been taking some night classes which have taken most of my 'free' time.  I only have a couple more weeks to go then I'm done for now though... so yay for that.

Anyways, for one of my projects I had to make a 'fake' business plan and I have to do a presentation for it as well, and I'm having a hard time picking which presentation template I like best... haha  So there are 3 choices.  Also I am bad at narrowing down font choices.  Please let me know what you like best.  I will be making a logo that matches the template (in theory).  Also, please let me know if the slogan/catch phrase is stupid lame, cause I think it's hilariously cheesy/lame in a good way... haha

Anyways, the business is an event planning business... It will do any kind of party or business meeting, but will also do itineraries and arrangements for day trips to specific places focused on fun/adventure/outdoors (aka, an amusement park, the zoo, hiking, white water rafting, camping, etc... group trips mostly)... so it's kinda event planning, but also kinda a specific branch of travel/tourism.  So basically, I'm not going for the cutesy flowery wedding planner look, i'm going more for.. well, funky/professional.  lol  That said, Option 2 is still cool, cause it's not overly flowery.

Option 1 - Green Dotty

(btw... I totally LOLed when I realized the office assistant dude was on the pic... oops... hah  Yeah, I'm one of those rare people that LOVES the office assistant... they're so cute!!  Usually it's the cat or dog... haha)

ThemeChoice1

Option 2 - Flowers, but not really

ThemeChoice2

Option 3 - Darker Green

ThemeChoice3

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Sorry that I kept forgetting to update about this.   I did of course see The Dark Knight.  It was GREAT.  I really liked it.  I did not exceed my expectations, mostly because they were so high, but I'd say it met them.  The audience was great.... movie audiences in London are very quiet and conservative and no one claps at the ends of movies or anything (for example).  No one did for this one either (rather, imagine a slow clap starting with two or three people, but then only those two or three people keep clapping and no one else joins in because they're losers... awkwaaard...)... but some scenes got a big reaction, which was awesome.  A couple things I liked:

*MIGHT BE SPOILERS DEPENDING ON HOW MUCH YOU WANT TO KNOW, BUT AREN'T REALLY SPOILERS*

The pencil trick
The ejecting from the Batmobile
Biggest reactions from me (and audience) for sure, at least on the pencil thing... cause that was awesome...  I also freaked out about the Batmobile thing because... I do that... Speaking of which, I saw the actual Batmobile in Toronto when I was there for Edgefest a couple weeks ago (at least, I saw the 'promotional' batmobile).  Can't believe I forgot to mention that.   I got a picture, but it's from the back, so not so good.  I was actually so surprised and awestruck (aka freaking out a la 'OMFG IT'S THE F'ING BATMOBILE!! OMG) that I forgot to get out the camera when were were driving RIGHT BESIDE IT.  I suck.

Speaking of spoilers too, unfortunately some jackass leaked a photo to the internet of Harvey Dent post-two face so I knew what he looked like before I saw it, so I wasn't surprised, but I was still grossed out.  And seriously, I was just looking up a dark knight-ish icon to use for my msn icon for the week leading to the movie so it's not like I googled 'two face' or something.  Assholes.  Anyway, the makeup rocked.   I don't envy the actors would have to put on serious make up like that.  I couldn't do it (seriously, we had a project in college that required making a mold of our face and I refused.. hah)

So yeah, the movie was great, and Heath Ledger DID rock, and I'm not just saying that because he's dead.  He was AWESOME as the Joker.  The laugh was insane, he was creepy, and his voice and mannerisms in general were great.  He was better than Christian Bale...  YEAH I SAID IT....  I actually hope Heath is nominated for an Oscar (and I'm not just saying that because he's dead).  Because honestly, if Johnny Depp can be nominated for things like Pirates of the Caribbean, and Sweeny Todd, (and Finding Neverland... I'm sorry, great movie, but honestly?) than Heath Ledger definitely deserves at LEAST a nomination for the Joker.  Johnny Depp is great, but let's be serious.

Unfortunate for Aaron Eckhart that he is being overshadowed, because I thought he was also great as Two Face.  Not Oscar great, but worthy of recognition great.  A co-worker of mine thought his transition to the 'dark side' was too quick, but she apparently doesn't understand the concept of avenging someone's death, and being, oh I dunno, PISSED OFF that your face is destrooooyed and you'd rather be dead. 

P.S.  I totally 'yay'ed! out loud and clapped when Gordon... um... wasn't.. you know.  Cause I was like, 'how could they... but he's the.. and the... whaaaat?!?'

DARK KNIGHT TALK OVER

So the next movie I'm looking forward to seeing is The Mummy, and/or Tropic Thunder.  I can't remember which one is released first (but I think The Mummy is out next week).  Though, one thing that will annoy me about The Mummy though is the fact that O'Connell (Brendan Fraser)'s son seems to look about as old as him.  Are they serious???  I realize Brendan Fraser hasn't aged in the last 10 years, but honestly... 

Also, another thing that will bug me is that, I hate when actors don't return to a film to finish up a sequel or trilogy.... Maggie Gyllenhaal aside (cause she did a good job as Rachel in TDK, and let's face it, it's not an important character, she honestly looks like Katie Holmes anyways, and Katie Holmes is retarded for staying with the Cruise disaster), I don't like seeing new people in a movie series. 

Rachel Weisz is not in the next Mummy movie... Maria Bello (the replacement as Evelyn O'Connell) will probably do an equally fine job, and I like her, but still... Rachel Weisz dropped out to spend more time with her baby apparently (who's already 2 years old now)... I don't have children so anything I say to this will sound heartless, but unless it's a scheduling conflict with another movie, then just BE IN THE F'ING MOVIE.  IT'S YOUR JOB.  There's nothing wrong with taking time off from other movies, but this is a series of which you've already been the character in two movies, and I call BS on that excuse because she's going to be in umpteen other movies coming up anyway.... Half the job of being in a movie, especially one like The Mummy series, is the audience entertainment factor.  Audiences like consistency in the matter of who plays what role.  Other articles about the movie (yes, I looked this up, I'm not going on a huge rant without something to back it up) say part of the reason she dropped out is because the script sucked.  Look, a lot of people hate their job, but they do it because they have no choice.  IT'S YOUR JOB... DO IT.  And I'm sorry... script issues?  Was she worried that being in a shitty movie would ruin her reputation?  From a woman who was in Constantine, and Eragon, AND The Fountain?  Don't make me puke.  Even Hugh Jackman couldn't save The Fountain for me.  Backing out of a movie sequel because of stupid reasions ruins your reputation worse than just being in the stupid movie.... I used to like you Rachel Weisz.  I used to even consider you in my top 10 fave actresses.... recently you dropped to say... top 20, but now.... YOU'RE OFF THE CHARTS.  And I don't mean that in a good way.

p.s. I had no idea that bothered me so much, but there you have it.  And to clarify, I don't care THAT much that Rachel Weisz is not in The Mummy... I think it's more of a significant irratation... and the principal of the matter... and I also think I envy people who actually have a choice and can turn down work and still pay the bills.  Bastards.

~ ~ ~

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NUBRELLA

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Recently I subscribed to blog updates of Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4-Hour Workweek.  I haven't yet read the book, but I do own it.  I just have to find 'time' to get to it.   So far his blog has been great, mostly because he doesn't update every day so it doesn't get annoying in the inbox, and also because so far he's had mostly interesting things to say.

I've always been quite intrigued by the concept of time; such as time travel, time passing, awareness of time of day and so on.  I HATE wasting time.  As such, I can't sleep with a ticking clock in my room because the ticking simply reminds me that time is passing and I can't sleep.  That's another story.   Anyways, imagine my glee, especially with my current frame of mind (explained further down), when I came across today's entry.  Also, some of you may remember that I was previously a stock broker, so I certainly could relate to the concept of comparing time with investments.

To make a long story short, Tim says he received the following email from a David Kutoff (CEO of MPC, and I have no idea who he is...lol), whom he met recently at a party.  I thought it was really interesting, and wanted to share.  It's a bit long, but worth it.

Bear with me, this is somewhat rough at the moment — my initial quandary was whether time, like currency, could be invested to produce a compounding effect. After a bit of thought, my conclusion is that the value of ones time could experience a significant gain, and perhaps a compounding effect over time, given an investment of [that present-state] time in knowledge, skill or other capacity, and a reinvestment of future gains (just like currency).

Money and currency — accumulated excess money — represent one part of your capacity to transact in the marketplace, and can be exchanged for help from others in the form of products or services, including “things” like consumables, depreciable and appreciable assets. Similarly every action you take, whether it be transaction-related or not, requires the expenditure of some amount of time, which is roughly fixed for all of us (say 10,000 working days between the ages of 22 and 62).

Much like currency can be exchanged for appreciable assets that can grow with a compounding effect over time if the gains are re-invested, my theory is that time can be thought about in a similar way, which may lead to more effective action.

To put this in terms of your thinking from your book, lets say you work 40 hours per week simply performing tasks requested by your employer, none of which produce any additional future potential for generating income for yourself.

This is the equivalent of spending your money on consumables or living expenses. It’s single use, and gives you no real future gain, aside from whatever currency you might earn in the moment. Now, you decide to outsource 50% of your tasks to India, producing the same outcomes with 50% of your time. You just doubled the value of your time compared to before (less the additional expense for the help). Now, with that free time, you get more rigorous about working out, studying, and building your networks. You increase your energy, skill, and capacity working with others and manage to produce yet the same results that were taking 50% of your time with only 30%. If you keep reinvesting some of your time in additional gains in your capacity to act, you can theoretically have a compounding effect with the value of your time (rather than time itself). Just like investing currency, the earlier you start this process, and continue to invest in your capacity, the more time your capacity has to compound, and the greater outcomes you can produce during your lifetime.

This seems extremely relevant to me now, especially since I have returned to school part time (night classes), and am eager to return to school next year for a full time program.  Every day at my current job, and the jobs I've been working the past little while, I have felt like they are NOT producing "any additional future potential for generating income for" myself.  Basically I'm going nowhere, and the jobs are not benefiting me in any way with increasing experience, skills, knowledge and so on.  I've been thinking about this a lot recently, enough that I've been looking for another job (also because I'm barely able to pay the bills, and that kinda freaks me out).  I have always thought that having a job to pay the bills is not enough.  I want a job/career that is useful, interesting, and quite frankly, I want one that allows me to be independent, and do the things I want to do.  Yes, I realize that's a lot to ask.  And yes, I am a college graduate already, but it's obvious I am no longer working in a related field.

If I CAN go to school next year though, I will finally be investing in my future again, something that has been missing for a long time.   If I "spend the time" to get further my education I'll be gaining skills and knowledge; I'll be increasing potential for future income and happiness (hopefully).  The only problem is finding the money and income to get to school in the first place.  Right now that is my only hurdle; and I hate it.

~ ~ ~

Group of alarm clocks

“Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have - so spend it wisely”
~ Kay Lyons

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So The B/F and I are quite excited for this summer's movie prospects.  So far we've been disappointed in just one (Deception... blah), but tonight I was floored by how good Iron Man was.  Yeah, that's right.  Iron Man rocked.  And you should see it.  Even if you're sick of 'comic book super hero' movies, this one is still definitely worth the inflated price of movie tickets (actually, I got to see it for free but that's another story).  I wasn't even looking forward to

Iron_man_movie_tonystark_first_look

It was nice to see Gweneth Paltrow in a movie that didn't suck though.  And I'm sorry, but I gotta say, Robert Downey Jr. in this movie... kinda freaken hot actually (see evidence at right).  Yeah... Didn't think I'd ever say that either, but it's true.  Maybe that's why I am feeling 'squee'ish?  "tee hee!"

So anyway, we kicked off 'summer blockbuster season' quite well I think.  Tomorrow we shall continue in comic book fashion by attending 'Free Comic Book Day'.  I doubt I'll be able to snag an Iron Man comic, just due to the timing of the movie and all (can't say it's worth waking up at 7am on a Saturday for, after seeing the late show, yes it really is 1:30am), but it should still be fun, and I'm surprisingly more excited about it than I thought I would be.  Actually, I have a comic book T-shirt that I may have to dig out of the dresser and wear.  Yeah, I'm a geek.  If anyone has any good comics to recommend, do let me know!  :)

Here are the rest of the movies on our 'to do' list this summer (in order of release date):
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Kung Fu Panda
WALL•E
The Dark Knight
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Tropic Thunder

Those are ones we will definitely be seeing in theatre.

The rest of these are just maybe's, and ones that we'd likely see at the 'cheap' theatre:
You Don't Mess With the Zohan
The Happening
Get Smart
The Love Guru
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (I'm hoping the b/f sees this with his brother, so I'm not dragged into it)
The Incredible Hulk (reluctantly adding this to the list after seeing a decent preview prior to Iron Man, and discovering that Tony Stark makes a cameo)

Considering we don't go on vacations very often, due to various circumstances, it's nice to know we'll have something to do this summer to keep busy.  Oh, and I'm sure we'll fit in other 'summery' activities like bike riding and such, and the three night class I'm taking this summer.. ugh.

Sigh... I love seeing good movies though.  They make me happy.  Yet sad, because I don't work in the industry.  But happy!.... and sad... We laughed, we cried... we stayed til the end of the credits.

~ ~ ~

TragedyComedyCats.jpg

Let's be honest, this isn't the worst thing you've caught me doing.
Tony Stark / Iron Man

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I should be writing these down as I see them, rather than waiting and trying to remember.  We watched a lot of movies lately it seems, though I guess I haven't updated about the movies in a month.  This brings my total to 17 movies that I've watched, that I had not seen previously (with a goal of 101).

My Neighbour Totoro (cute one by Hayao Miyazaki, kind of felt like it had no plot but it was still really cute)
The Forbidden Kingdom (too much like Karate Kid for me, with the cheesy 'train useless boy to be fighter' theme... the main character kind of annoyed me, but the action scenes were up to expectations... as in.. awesome, because it was Jet Li and Jackie Chan! HELLO)
Hollywoodland (more boring than I'd hoped. I still liked my Adrien Brody, but the movie... 'meh' I think...)
American Gangster (honestly, I really liked this one.  I like mob/cop/gangster movies anyways, but still this one was pretty good.  We watched the extended version even, and it didn't drag, so that's a plus)
Bee Movie (cute... not spectacular cute, but still somewhat amusing.. we rented it, I probably won't bother buying it.. other than the Shrek movies, the Dreamworks animations always leave a little something missing for me... I'm hoping Kung Fu Panda is awesome at least)
Enchanted (freaken CUTE AS HELL.  This movie was awesome.  We rented, and I want to buy it.. there in lies the difference between this and Bee Movie in my opinion)

I think that's it.  Chris helped me remember which ones we saw.. lol   So I've updated the 101 in 1001 list.  I haven't accomplished as much as I'd like, but I've also done things I hadn't expected.  Like try a new recipe.  I've been meaning to post the one we made (with pictures), but I keep forgetting.  It was soooo awesome though.  Anyways, my counter tells me I have 909 days left.  Better get cracking.

~ ~ ~

Movie-tickets-popcorn

“Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music”
~ Frank Capra

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Failure is inevitable... Show us some failure.
Submitted by Connie.

128347587844687500fail

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Sigh... So in case no one had noticed, I don't usually know what day it is.  Despite the fact that I'm usually very aware of the time, and deadlines, and so forth, unless something important is going on, I usually don't remember the date anymore.  So I'm going to toss in the last 3 songs of the soundtrack CD here because I keep forgetting when it's the 11th, or 1st, or 21st, or 31st.  The rest, I'll admit, aren't that good anyways (by comparison at least).  All in all, I hope you enjoyed the CD.  Some gems on there for sure.  lol

14 A Song for Mama [From Soul Food]

Boyz II Men

15 Don't Be Afraid [From Juice]

Aaron Hall

16 Gangsta's Paradise [From _Dangero

Coolio/L.V.

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"The sky broke like an egg into full sunset and the water caught fire." -- Pamela Hansford Johnson
Show us a self-taken picture of the sunset.
Submitted by Connie.

I'll show you a self-taken picture of myself and the sunset.  So there.

DaphChris06-Faces04b

When I first started 'taking pictures' I still lived out in the country at my parents house.  It had wonderful views of sunsets, so they were very photogenic and good 'learning' experiences.  However, I won't post any of those ones.

Cemetery01

Instead, this one too the left I took last year.  It probably isn't quite the 'sunset' they meant, but I still like it.

82-Road Insanity 08-WayHome

And the one to the right is one from my winter trip a couple years ago, where 90% of the photos I took were taken while I was driving (including this one).

I honestly had no idea this was the sun, until I'd passed over a hill.  I thought it was just some random red light in someone's yard.. heh

Anyway I figured I'd post some 'unconventional' sunset photos, to mix it up a bit.

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Sheesh, the last two days kinda snuck up on me, smacked me upside the head, and took off before I had a chance to turn around and look at them.

On that note, I now have two more soundtrack songs for you all.  Two of the 'best' from the CD, dare I say.

First up.... probably one of the top ten wedding songs of the 80s.  lol

12 Endless Love

Diana Ross/Lionel Richie

And next, one of the top ten wedding songs of the 80s.... jk.. but probably the one that brought the launch of leg warmers as something 'cool'.  I'm kinda glad I was too young in the 80s to know any better, and can blame my mother for an fashion mishaps (or poofy hair mishaps).

13 Maniac [From Flashdance]

Michael Sembello

And I gotta say, what is UP with all these old trends coming back.  I mean, I've seen people wearing leg warmers again, not to mention all the childhood toys on the rebound.  I swear, this decade will go down as one of the most unoriginal in modern history.

~ ~ ~

1980_legwarmers

SIKE!

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