Monday, July 30, 2007

Greener Living Ideas

In talking with my dear Rebecca today, I was introduced to an interesting blog. This woman, her husband and daughter are on a monumental road trip in an RV fueled by veggie oil!! She has some great ideas on more natural, green living, and links to a bunch of interesting sites...I may not be a complete convert, but it does give you food for thought and ideas to explore. Here are two interesting ones...

Golden Fuel Systems - they convert diesel engines to be fueled by veggie oil!

Tumbleweed Tiny House Company - houses the size of a closet!

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Green

I'm feeling very green.... but not in an environmental kind of way!! See why here.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Shout Out!

Thanks to the guy at our local Barnes and Noble who graciously lent us membership card so that we could get the books for the "member price" of $18.89! Thank you again!!

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Movie Mania!

Matt and I have seen a lot of movies this summer - and three of them have been in roughly a week! First, we saw Shrek the Third and Spider-Man 3 as a double feature at the drive-in.


Two weekends ago it was time for a Piratical rambustification... (the third of the "three" movies)



Then we saw In Bruges (for free!) as a preview last Wednesday... and on Friday, it was time to see Harry in IMAX!


Then, a surprise - my dad got tickets at work for the four of us to go and see an advanced screening of Hairspray!

We all went last night. It was tremendous fun - I highly recommend it! There are a lot of brilliant character roles and fun music. You'll want to dance and sing!




As for the other films? Here are my one-sentence reviews.
Additional comments are available if you are interested!

1. A funny and cute film which is a good wrap-up to the franchise, I hope!
2. I'm not well versed on the comic, but from what I hear they took major liberties with the storyline.
3. Honestly and sadly, I had trouble following the plot, or lack thereof.
4. Hopefully, they will make changes to this before it goes to theatres, since it has the skeleton of a good dramatic film with comedic elements.
5. Brilliant, especially with the 3-D - a great addition to the series.
6. I talked about this one above, but I'd go so far as to say it is the feel-good movie of the summer!

Monday, July 16, 2007

A weekend full of adventure!

We were busy, busy, busy this weekend! A lot of fun was had and a lot of energy was spent.

On Friday night, we went to see Harry... at the IMAX theatre! First, we had dinner at one of my favorite restaurants... Stir Crazy, then wandered around a bit. Luckily, we got there early, since the line for our 9:45 movie started a little after 8pm! We got on line pretty early and entertained ourselves with books and playing cards.



The climactic scenes at the end were shown in IMAX 3-D, which made it all the better - you feel like you're there with them! The movie was great, and now I am very excited about the book release! :)

On Saturday, we went into the city... finally! I've been planning this trip for Matt's birthday since the middle of May! We took the train in and stopped to grab some coffee (me) and a donut (Matt) in the terminal. He enjoyed the donut so much that we decided to get another... at Doughnut Plant! They have amazing and unusual donuts... so yummy! I shouldn't have, but how do you resist such unusual flavors and varieties?



We then thought about going to Ellis Island and the MOMA, but instead we wandered through Chinatown and Little Italy. We kept walking, and ended up passing by the Astor Place Theatre, where we purchased last-minute tickets to see a show!!

This unfortunately made my plans for dinner null - there wasn't time! We'll just have to take another trip in to eat a hard-to-find type of cuisine - and I will post about it at that time! Instead, we caught a quick bite at BAMN! It's amazing that for a grand total of five dollars I had: a bottle of water, hummus with pita and a flatbread with feta and grilled vegetables. What a bargain!



We then went to the show.... which was amazing!! Matt has seen them before, but this was my first time. I was blown away! It's so fresh and unusual - controlled improvisatory performance art, if that makes any sense at all! ;)



On Sunday, we went down to Mitsuwa Market. It's a fascinating place, and reminded me so much of my friend in Japan! (see her link on the sidebar!) Too bad it was so crowded... I was looking forward to lunch at their Japanese Food Court! Since the day was so nice, we left the craziness of Mitsuwa and drove up to the Palisades Interstate Park. It was beautiful there, and they even had a little eatery to satisfy two hungry adventurers!



We wrapped up the weekend's fun with a bit of dry ice....



All in all, it was a tremendously fun weekend. Hurray! (see all of the pictures here!)

A Change!

I finally had enough. What do you think?


Before


After

(I actually remembered to bring the camera with me to the salon to do "before"
and "after" shots, but didn't remember to take them until it was too late. O well!)

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Adventures in Filmwatching

Last night, Matt and I went to a screening of a movie which is now in post-production. This means we were a test audience - supposedly the first test audience of this film. It was interesting - not something I would think to go and see myself, but still interesting, especially when we were asked to stay for a small focus-group for the twenty-plus studio execs who were there! We gave our opinions, and perhaps elements of the film will change because of that before it hits theatres.

I won't go into depth here - I don't want to spoil it for those who may want to see it down the line - but if you are at all interested in hearing more about it, feel free to ask. I didn't sign any kind of waver saying I couldn't talk about the film. ;)

How we got this privilege? Luck, really. We were the right aged people at the right time... which is cool. I hope somehow we get to do it again!

Quote to share...

Two days ago, I took my mom to a market that I've been frequenting this year. It's close to where I work and has excellent prices on produce and the like. She was very excited to go and it met her expectations... so much so that she said the following:

"I love it so much I want to sleep here and do it again tomorrow!"

New and Free

Again with the free. :) But this is good for everyone!

The next time you want to call 411, but don't want to pay for the service, try this. I've used it and it works great!

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Free and cheap... two of my favorite things!

1. FREE - Happy Seven-Eleven! Being that it is July 11th (7-11) you can get yourself a free 7.11 ounce Slurpee! Woo hoo!

2. CHEAP - Today is the last day of it, but if you can still get them, go to Staples for their penny sales - pencil boxes, folders, pencil sharpeners and pencils are all ONE CENT each! I hit up the clearance section as well and got myself some bulletin board border and two cute teacher notepads for 50 Cents each! Nice!

I am a bargain hunter, perhaps sometimes to extremes.
But you have to admit that these are two pretty rockin' bargains. :)

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

More pictures

This past weekend, Matt and I took a picnic to Skylands to enjoy the fresh air and see the flowers. As always, it was beautiful. I love it there, and it's so close to his house!

Picturesque weekend adventures!

For two Sundays in a row, we've gone to St. John's in the Wilderness Church. After the first visit, we went on a picnic to Ringwood Manor, and TurtleDuck came along for the fun. See the pictures here!

Picture highlights from a few events

I uploaded an album with some pictures from a few recent rambustifications.... Enjoy!


Father's day....



A day trip to Pequest Fish Hatchery and Jenny Jump State Park...



Dad's Birthday at Mt. Fuji*

*Notice my RED hair? I decided to do a temporary change... it was interesting to be a redhead!

Monday, July 09, 2007

Insurance Insanity and Resolution

I took my dear 'ol Sheep-in-a-jeep in for repairs today. I haven't mentioned too much about the accident of late, but here's an update.

As I told you, they decided to go through insurance. I thought that was a bit silly to go through the rigmarole, but it's not my decision to make. So, I called and made a claim with their insurance carrier. The local agent then called me back and warned me that there was a "potential coverage issue" (read: this person is either behind on their payments or uninsured) but he promised to look into it and get back to me after July 4th. I stewed about it for a few days, and then got a shock on Thursday morning... the problem was cleared up and my claim would go through! They said that I would get the repairs and a rental. Woo hoo!!

So, a very thankful Miss President went to a body shop this morning, as directed, and dropped off my baby. They then took me two doors down to a rental agency and arranged for my temporary transportation. A short time later, I got the estimate on my car... $965.20... and was told that I won't get it back until at least Wednesday.

I'm certainly thankful that this seems to be going smoothly, after a rough start. And although I don't get spoiled with the same type of rental as I did the last time I had an accident, a Jeep "cousin" will certainly do the trick...



Last time: Jaguar X-Type
Today: 2007 Jeep Compass

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Random Musical Craziness




This practically made me fall out of my chair. :) I think some musicians had a little bit of extra time on their hands, don't you? hehe!

Note to Peter: as the resident cellist, what is your take on it?

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Blah.... and GRR!

I have a ton of things to post about and have been a slacker of late. Hopefully I will get to it soon.

But the news of tonight:
On Saturday, Matt and I hit up some garage sales. It was a productive afternoon, and there were many bargains to be made. But as we were at one, we hear a crunch and turn to see a buy backing into my Jeep! He dented her and scratched her up a bit, and would have just driven away if we hadn't seen it happen. So now my poor little baby is going to have to go and visit a body shop and get fixed up. The woman (passenger) who is the insured wants us to go through her insurance, even though it will be much cheaper (ballpark of $1000) if she just paid cash for the repairs (which we had agreed to do). I don't care as long as it gets fixed... she is the one who will have to deal with her insurance rates going up because of this.
...at least I had my camera in the car and was able to document everything immediately, including the other car... and their license plate.

grumble grumble grumble.