Run! It's a moose!

The Austin Craft Riot show was nice. Load-in was easy, we had a lot of feet on the ground, and there was air conditioning! Sales were OK, nothing spectacular. I hope we do this again next year as it's nice to have an indoor show in August. They do need to redo the layout slightly to give us folks selling from tables some more room and a couple of escape corridors. I spoke to a couple of the committee members and they'll bring it up at the post-show meeting.
 
My neighbor was someone I vaguely remembered from my days running art shows at the Dallas Fantasy Fair/Fests. (We had a lot of fun making whispered comments, especially about the new trend in trashy clothing: Daisy Dukes--short-shorts--and cowboy boots.) And since she makes Tarot decks we did a trade for one of my necklaces and I scored a birthday present for a friend.

Got a lot of little things taken care of with the car and made an appointment to leave it with my mechanic while I'm at Dragon*Con to get the motor mounts replaced. Lucky I have that check for the pins, right?

When I was getting a ride to pick up my car at the shop we saw a police car pulled over but no other car. As we got closer the officer was talking to a guy. I turned and said "I bet he's walking around in his underwear and he's completely baked." Sure enough, as we got closer,. all he was wearing was a saggy sad pair of boxer-briefs and some Vans. And a really dazed expression. I now have another friend who thinks I'm a witch!

Only a couple more weeks until Knee Surgery #2. It can't come too soon. I can no longer extend my left leg all the way out, and now my lower back is giving me hell since I'm lurching again. Going through the airport for Dragon*Con is going to be So Much Fun.

I finally saw The Dark Knight Rises. It was interesting, when I could understand what the Hell Hardy was saying through the damned mask. It made me want two things: the Jonathan Gordon Levitt  Batman movie right now!, and to reread the Confessor arc in Astro City.

I also saw the Bourne Legacy.( Bourne spoilers ahoy! )

Got up kind of late and made my way to the workshop by about 1pm. Stayed until 7, cleaning and grinding metal, and laying on base coats of enamel so I can be all creative tomorrow. I'm filthy.

Anyone who thinks that making jewelry is this dainty, "nice" hobby had better not get downwind of me after a long day in the workshop. Phew.

Got the stitches out of my knee yesterday, and was told that the meniscus tear was really, really bad. As in a complete split bad. My knees have always been crappy, but a combination of lots of sports that work knees hard (fencing, martial arts, baseball) and my weight gain have done a number on the right one. I have the knee of a 70-year-old. Joy. So, unless I want the thrill of a total knee replacement in the next 5-10 years, I have to lose the weight.

The World's Best Niece and the OMG!Boyfriend saw Source Code last night:

( spoilers hidden... )
tl;dr, go see it. worth the money.

I just spent an hour with the widow of a jeweler here in town, who is selling off his old equipment. Some of the stuff he had! I gave her a list of what I really wanted, and told her I hoped I could afford it. Her reply, "I'm sure you can..."

It's a bench. And a lapidary set up. And hand tools. *drools*

She's getting it all appraised next week, so hopefully I'll be hearing from her soon-ish after that.

*thoughtful* You know, if I'm able to cut and polish my own stones, I may never leave the workshop....

I saw District 9 on Sunday. A very good movie, one I'm still thinking about. Decent use of the shaky!cam, quite a bit of blood and gore (gratuitous use of Explode Person), and a lot to be thinky about. Two appendages up!

Going to see Inglorious Basterds tonight with the World's Best Niece. Then I have to bake a cake. :-)

If I were cooler, I'd have my ticket to the midnight showing of Watchmen clutched in my hot little hand, and warning my boss that I'd be in late tomorrow.

But I have to drive to Dallas tomorrow afternoon (a boring drive at the best of times; purely annoying all other times), and help set up/run the booth at The Bataan Celtic Deathmarch NTIF and probably not collapse until 10 or 11 pm, and I would have done it without a thought when I was in college because man, seeing Watchmen up on the big screen first would have been totally worth it. *

But. Not in college. These days, when I'm an hour short of sleep, I'm cranky; I'd be worthless tomorrow. Probably run my car off the road and take out some road-texting hipster coming down early for SXSW. Not worth it, these days, just to say, "Nyah nyah, I saw it first!".

So I'll see it Monday, in a theater where you can eat dinner and not worry about little kids and talking patrons. It will be fun and amazing, but I'll still miss being able to say, "Nyah nyah, I saw it first!".


* God, I want to see this movie. I read the comic when it came out (when I was in college, heh) and was totally blown away by it. If only a fraction of that awesomeness makes it to the screen I'll be happy.

When you see this, post a Supernatural quote in your LJ.
Sam: Dean, there's ten times as much lore about angels as there is about anything else we've ever hunted.
Dean: You know what, there's a ton of lore on unicorns too. In fact, I hear that they ride on silver moonbeams, and that they shoot rainbows out of their ass!
Sam: Wait, there's no such thing as unicorns?

I love my show. :-)

Saw Burn Before Reading tonight, with the World's Best Niece and some of her friends for her 21st birthday. At the Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, where I not only got fried pickles but the $5 Milkshake. At least I got the veggie burger, right?

Burn Before Reading was not the Cohen brothers' best, (hello, Fargo? No Country for Old Men?), but not their worst (Ladykillers, Intolerable Cruelty) either. I got the impression it was kind of hurried. It felt unfinished, somehow.  But everyone turned in amazing performances, especially Brad Pitt. Really!
 
I saw previews for W and Frost; both looked interesting, even though I'm not a fan of Oliver Stone at all. Milk looks amazing, even though I spent most of the preview explaining the history to WBN & friends. I almost didn't recognize Sean Penn.

Anybody in the market for a 4th Generation 20GB iPod? I'm going to sell my old one and thought I'd give my flist a try first.

I saw The Incredible Hulk (with

dremiel) today.

Go see it! If you liked Iron Man, you will like this too. They whip past the origin in a really nice flashback in the opening credits, leaving us with Bruce Banner on the run. Man, Edward Norton is amazing in this. I cannot get over the fact that he can simultaneously be an Everyman and yet smoking hot. Liv Tyler is a wonderful Betty Ross--not a doormat (the previous Hulk movie) or a harridan, as they have been depicting her in the Ultimates comics. The in-jokes fly thick and fast, and there are a lot of shout-outs to the Old-Skool comics...that being said, even if you aren't a Hulk fan (and I'm not, particularly), you will still find it entertaining and enjoyable. The world-building that they started with Iron Man continues here--lots of references to SHIELD, Nick Fury, Dr. Samson, the Super-Soldier program--and I, for one, really like it. They are building a cohesive universe, and if they keep it up with Thor and Captain America, I will be a very happy little fangirl. The fact that Zack Penn is screenwriter for all of them bodes well.

We sat all the way through the credits, and saw no spiffy extra scene (though one close to the end might count...). However, I was told  by someone in Dallas that they got a teaser for Captain America at the end of their showing, so stay past the credits, preferably with your camera phone! I expect that footage to be up on Youtube very soon. (looks expectantly at the Internets)

We saw a preview for something I really want to see right now: Righteous Kill. Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Brian Dennehy, Donnie Wahlberg, Carla Gugino....man. dremiel and I decided that We. Are. There. (We're also There for the new X-Files movie, but that goes without saying.)

State of the Hand: Am now typing without the brace, partially because I'm getting a frakkin' rash on my forearm from sweating in the damn thing. Ahhh, summer in Texas, how I hate you. Grip strength still very low. Starting to bend the wrist just a leetle bit. Still no pain in the incision (the area seems a little numb, which worries me a tad), and I'm working the hand more, to get it used to getting back to work. I have a show in August (ArmadilloCon), and I need to start building stock for Christmas. 

Off-hand glass-blowing class starts tomorrow. Whee!

 

 

Have now seen two movies in the past week!

No Country For Old Men--this is the Cohen brothers in top, non-comedy form. This is not a kids movie, and frankly I don't think anyone under 17 or so should see it. It's extremely well done, and had me checking to make sure my Midland/Odessa area accent hadn't come back for days afterward. Very simple premise: Man finds money, others try to take it back--but handled by two masters. If this doesn't win multiple Oscars, I will be very disappointed.

The Mist--After seeing it, I can see why I got reviews from friends that said they loved it and friends who said they hated it. Very faithful to the novella (we are talking Frank Darabont here, who brought us The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption)--up until the end. Excellent, spot-on casting, and the damn movie had my legs tied up in that horrible "fight or flight" response that I had during Jurassic Park and Aliens. 

Looking forward to The Golden Compass and after seeing the preview for Cloverfield I admit I am intrigued. No desire to see The Poughkeepsie Tapes; as I said to my friend Trag during the preview, it looks like Blair Witch Project crossed with torture porn. Ew.

Then, tonight, less than a mile from my apartment, the car started overheating, with steam coming out from under the hood. I pulled into a spot at the complex just as the idiot meter hit the red; I couldn't see any obvious broken hoses or seals when I popped the hood. There was coolant everywhere in the engine compartment--it leaked out under pressure, that's for sure. On my brother's advice, I'm going to fill up the radiator in the morning and leave the cap off while I coax it to the garage. I really, really hope it's just a hose or a seal or something, but I never seem to get that lucky.

And I just paid the car off, of course. I guess I'm lucky it didn't burn up, as happened to a coworker last week (he and his son are fine, just scared!). 

ETA: It's a hose, and they also are replacing the thermostat. Getting the broken(!) hood latch fixed too. If there wasn't a major freeway between my home and work I'd just bike in--it's only 4 miles. (grumble)