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.

Air Travel Fun

"Welcome aboard AA flight 818 from Chicago to Boston. This is your captain speaking. For those of you, that haven't followed the weather situation in Boston..... It is bad. And that's a technical term. We expect a smooth flight for the first hour or so and as we come closer to Boston it is going to be bumpy. The landing condition in Boston are just on the threshold of being safe, so there is a change that we might have to fly to a different airport and wait until conditions improve. If that dosen't fit your level of comfort or travel plans, you have 7 minutes to deplane and make other arrangements" ... The cabin is eerily quit after that announcement.Another minute or so goes by and the lady next to me decided that she wasn't comfortable with this and left the airplane with a slight panic in her eyes.
I 'knew' everything would be ok. Why? Because this was the trip where every connection worked, despite snowstorms in Chicago and Noresterns in Boston. This trip was the one, that is going to use up all my luck in air travel for the next decade or so. To make a long story short, the pilot was right, but he did manage a great landing and we arrived in Boston almost on time. I realized how great the pilots skills were, when I tried to get to my car and I was almost blown from the parking deck and drenched within the first couple of yards of walking. Great flying.

When I started this Midwest trip last Wednesday I would have never guessed it would work that well. The idea was to fly to Cincinnaty for a two day business meeting, hitch a ride with Charlie back to Bloomington, stay the weekend in Peoria, and fly back on Sunday to Boston. Wednesday comes around and a snowstorm in the morning hits Chicago. I am checking delays and flight cancellations and out of the 7 flights from Boston to Chicago 5 are already cancelled, mine is still 'On time'. I get to the airport and WOW!, my flight is still on and we take of with only a 45minute delay. Arriving in Chicago the airport is a total zoo, people running around trying to catch up with gate changes, yelling in their cell phone for either a different flight or a hotel room or arguing with the airline employee. The flight information shows that half of the flight are either cancelled or hopelessly delayed, BUT my flight to Cincinnati is 'On time'. I arrive late and fetch a hotel shuttle bus. My fellow travelers exchanging horror stories of delays and cancelations. I am getting smaller in my seat and try not to gloat.
Everything else goes according to plan until today where every weather station in the country talks about this major storm on the East Coast. Heavy winds and rain, flooding, tornados, but again my flights are not affected. I suspect, the next time I attempt to travel by air, Murphy's law will bring balance to the force.
I will follow up with some details about my trip later. It's been a long day.

Gloucester

Saturday I realized that it is already April. I think, the Google joke about the their new free internet tipped me off. Funny. But it also meant that tax day is coming awfully close, so I decided to take the bull by the horn and do my taxes. I still managed a short trip to Gloucester, which is just up the coast a wee bit. I took the coastal route which weaves nicely along the ocean and through old forest area. Lots of older style huge villas that look like old money and private schools along the road. I walked through Gloucester's historic district which has small shops, restaurants and cafes. For a late lunch I settled on a nice tuna steak with pineapple gazpacho and a Copper Ale from a microbrewery in Vermont. Most of the shops in that area where either selling 'antic' Schnickschnack or other retail I wasn't particular interested in. However, they had a record store that sells old vinyl records. Pretty cool, just browsing through these old records and checking what was hip in the 60's, 70's, or 80's. On my way back I got reminded that I am back in 21st century traffic. First, a lady couldn't make up her mind on a 4-way stop and furiously gave me the famous hand signal when I moved in front of her. And just before I was home, somebody almost took the front of my car off, because apparently I wasn't aware that. when he bought his shiny truck, it came with an automatic right-of-way on all left turns. Silly me.