Ginger Beer

During my vacation in NZ I acquired a taste for Ginger Beer. It's brewed from ginger roots with a tangy taste and the ability to calm my stomach. Here in the States I've only seen Ginger Ale, which doesn't really compare. So, I was quite surprised last week when I browsed the grocery store aisles and found ginger beer. Anticipating a trip back to memory lane I bought a six-pack and went home. What a disappointment! The stuff was way to sweet and when I checked the label, I found out that it was made from ginger juice, not roots. Too bad...... I guess, I'll have to keep on looking.

The summer her so far has been great. It's been warm, but not super hot. Boston is always a great place to go and there a a couple nice towns up the coast that are always worth visiting. Salem maintains its quirky character. Which other town would give out licenses for fortune tellers and psychics? Can't wait for Halloween, I hear it's a blast.

Latest Movie reviews:
Simpsons: I thought the Simpsons was a good movie. It was like a great episode from a couple of seasons ago when it still was funny. I actually had to laugh out loud a couple of times. The movie makes fun of others, themselves and does a good job keeping the story going. The plot is somewhat stupid, but hey it's the Simpsons, it doesn't have to make sense. A solid 3.5 out of 5.

Bourne Ultimatum: I am a fan of the Bourne series and this one was as good as the others. It starts out a bit slow, but picks up speed nicely and the more the movie progresses, the more we learn about Jason Bourne. The movie wraps up the story of Bourne quite nicely, but they left themselves a little back door in case they want to do a couple more. Good action and good acting, makes this a great movie. My rating: 4 out of 5.

NEWSFLASH

Today, President Bush in his infinite wisdom decided that the American justice system should not apply to his friends and he commuted 'Scooter' Libby's jail sentence. Just another brilliant move of this administration. Maybe Paris Hilton should have flirted with Dick Cheney and she would have been spared her days behind bars. I know, every president, Republican or Democrat, pardons his friends, but that still doesn't make it right. I know Libby was the scapegoat for this whole scandal and he probably knew that he wouldn't do any time. I am also sure he'll get his pardon on the last day of Bush's presidency.
Another proud moment of American politics. More to come, I am sure.

Safety First

In the state where potholes in the streets are plentiful and the drivers and pedestrians behave like they want to cash in on a life insurance policy, I was shocked to learn this week that my Schnitzelwagen is not safe. But from the beginning, since my Illinois car insurance ran out, I finally switched my car registration to a MA license plates. As part of the registration, I had seven days to get my car through a safety inspection. No problem, I thought, I drove right to a garage to get that safety sticker. The guy took a look at my car for 10 seconds and said:'Your windshield is cracked, which is a safety hazard in this state'. Wow, I had this crack in the bottom right corner of my windshield for a couple of years now and never a problem. But, I needed the safety check, so I had the windshield replaced and passed the check. I must admit, when I get into my car now, I feel a lot safer... Actually, these safety checks aren't bad, I've seen a lot less junkers on the streets than in Illinois, for example.

Movie Reviews:
I went to this little quaint theatre in Beverly the other day. I meet with other movie enthusiasts and we watched 'Islander'. It's a movie about a lobster fisherman who lives on an island of Maine. Slow movie, but good characters and interesting stories.


I also saw 'Once', another indie movie that plays in Ireland. The story revolves around a sing-song writer that plays the streets of Dublin and meets a girl that is interested in music herself. It has a lot of great music in it and the movie is beautiful written and played by the main characters. It reminded me of other movies, like 'The Commitments' or 'Trainspotting'
Excellent movie all around. Solid 4 out of 5.

Three times a charme

I was in the mood for some light entertainment, so I decided to see a
movie. There are three movies out there right now that were perfect for
that and coincidental, each of them is the third installation of a series. Of course I am talking about Pirates 3, Shrek
3 and Ocean thirteen. I decided to go for the Ocean's franchise,
because it got the best reviews of them and I really like heist movies.
I didn't expect much, considering the previous one, Ocean's twelve,
pretty much sucked. When I came out of the theatre, I felt the movie
was better than 'twelve' but felt short to the first one 'Ocean's eleven'.
It's a fast paced movie, a cool setting in Vegas and
some neat technical gadgets. And that's pretty much it. The story was
bouncing all over the place and there was no real twist, you couldn't
see coming from 10 miles away. The acting was good, but there wasn't
much of an interesting dialog going on, mainly because of quick cuts
between scenes.
Maybe it's because I've seen so many heist movies, that
I can anticipate the story too much to really get surprised. Here is a
tip to Hollywood, make a movie were the good guy doesn't get the gold,
to keep me guessing the next time.
Overall, a solid 3 movie.

Lost

If you look at the headline and expect a review of the widely popular TV series, you are mistaken. This is about lost time, lost memories, and lost tempers.
On Tuesday, around 9PM my MacBook decided that it had enough and quit working with a massive harddrive crash. All CPR attempts failed miserably. I can boot up the computer from disk, but all utility/recovery software I've used can't even find the harddrive anymore. If I try to boot up normally, I get the grey screen of death with a blinking question mark filled folder icon and the dreaded clicking sound of metal-on-metal drive destroying action.
Not too bad you say? Apple has great service? Sure, they get me a new harddrive in no time, BUT OF COURSE I DIDN'T BACKUP ANY OF MY DATA. Which basically means, that all songs, pictures, other files that I added since last June are LOST. I am furious, at myself. I should know better than this.... AHHHHHHH.
Well, I could try to have the drive restored, but that's a couple hundred bucks. It's mostly pictures that I care about, especially the NZ ones, but I do have a good amount of those on Flikr and some CD/DVD's so I am not loosing everything.
But still.... And, I have nobody else to blame but myself. That makes the loss so much harder to swallow.
At least, we have a long weekend coming up and the weather is just perfect, sunny, warm, with a cool breeze from the ocean. I might head up north and check out Portland. A couple of hours on the shores of the Atlantic, that should calm me down.

Spidey 3

I finally got to see the third Spiderman movie. I really liked the first two so I was looking forward to seeing the latest installation of the Spiderman series. And it was a good movie. A bit long at times, but the action scenes were excellent as always. They introduced a couple of new villains with Sandman and Venom. The acting was pretty good and the CGI cool. The only thing they could have done better, in my opinion, is to develop the bad guys a bit more. They are going directly after Spidey, so there is not much time to develop an antipathy against them. Not like the Goblin and Octavious in the earlier movies. I won't give the ending away.......... but it's pretty obvious that Spiderman is going to make it.
Overall a good popcorn movie. I'll give it 3.5 stars.

Back in Peoria

I recently made it back to Peoria for a weekend. Air travel certainly was challenging that weekend, but Peoria itself was relaxing. I arrived late Friday in P-town. Charlie had given me a ride from Cincinnati to Bloomington where I picked up my flashy white PT Cruiser. At least the car came with XM radio, by far the best feature this car has to offer. No wonder American car makers have a bad reputation. The first stop of the Tour de Peoria was Panache, what else is there to do on a Friday night? On Saturday I was mostly busy running errands, but I managed to have a 'catholic' lunch with Fredi at Sushi Gawa which, I think, still has the best sushi in town. As an important part of my mission, I picked up my golf clubs that I had to leave behind in February. A nice dinner at the Hofbrau finished up the day. Good times.
With the Weather Channel predicting a major east coast storm, I was concerned about my flights back to Boston. I tried to get rebooked to an earlier flight, but the airline told me there were no seats available on earlier flights. SURE....RIGHT.... So, I spent Sunday rather anxious in Peoria and drove back to Bloomington to start my journey back to Salem. It is kinda weird, but driving through Peoria already felt strange. It's been only a couple weeks since I left and it already lost its 'home' feel. I am sure I will make it back to Peoria once in a while. It's always great to meet good friends again.

Air Travel Fun: Part 2
Sitting in an crammed airplane seat waiting for the time to pass, I couldn't help but smile at some of the funny situations that have been described by comedians for decades. Example, when we got served drinks during the flight, three people in the seats around me ordered tomato juice. What is it with flying and tomato juice? I don't think I remember anybody around me in a restaurant ever drinking that stuff. Maybe tomato juice tastes better at 30,000 feet or the higher air pressure triggers the tomato juice gen in the brain. It just seems odd.
Or the fact that the flight attendants still do their song and dance to show how to buckle up. Come on, it's the 21th century. If you don't know how to use a buckle, maybe you should choose a horse wagon as your mode of transportation. Also, I find the possibility of a water landing between Bloomington and Chicago rather unlikely, so I don't really care that my seat can be transformed into a 'floating' device. I am sure, if we crash into a little stream in Illinois, I'll be able to wade to safety. At least it's a little comics relief for flying is otherwise rather boring.