Quick Hits – April 2016

I was really hopeful that I would be ready to blog in force this week.  However, things are still bumpy at work with the year-end close.  My weekend was not so great, and I did not get much done at home or work.  Therefore, this week I am still struggling to catch up on things and am forced to be a little light on the blogging again.  The good news is that I have kept a list of things that I watched and read during the month.  The bad news is I am only going to do half of the mini-reviews I stated I would do each month.  I am aware I have a lot of movies on here, but most of them were watched during the flu week when I had no energy to do anything else.  The rest of the month I have been too busy to watch, read, or write about movies and books.

Warning:  Although I tried not to delve into plots too deeply, there are potential spoilers in the reviews below.  Read at your own risk.

TV Series:  Accidentally on Purpose:  Season 1 (2009)

I picked this TV series, because I noticed it had Jon Foster in it.  I really liked his character in the 2004 series Life As We Know It and I wanted to see him in something else.  The premise of Accidentally on Purpose seemed funny, so I gave it a watch.  In Accidentally on Purpose, Billie is a thirty-seven year old single woman who ends up pregnant with twenty-two year old Zack’s baby after a short fling.  Billie and Zack decide to keep the baby and try to make some sort of co-pregnancy/parenthood situation work.  The series runs the length of the pregnancy, ending with the birth of a healthy baby boy.  There is no second season, but honestly I think this show works better as a stand-alone series.  A lot of the interaction between Billie and Zack were predictable in both the humorous and the touching moments.  I found the method of comedy acting used by the performers, particularly Jenna Elfman as Billie and Lennon Parham as Abby (Billie’s sister) to be very unnatural and distracting which decreased my enjoyment of it.  I found Zack to be much more likable than Billie.  The interaction between him and his best friend Davis provided much more entertainment, even though that had more to do with stoner humor than the May-Dec relationship the show is based around.  Overall, it was an easy watch with many moments of laughter, but do not expect it to be anything particularly original or spectacular.

Movie:  Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)

This has been on my playlist for a while.  I think I saw a preview for it at some point and thought it looked good.  This film was an incredibly touching story about a high school boy Greg who is forced by his mother to hang out with Rachel, a neighbor girl who has been diagnosed with Stage 4 Leukemia.  Prior to this forced interaction, Greg has very little social life and only really hangs out with Earl.  He does not even refer to Earl as his friend, but instead calls him a coworker because they have made forty-two films together, all parodies of famous movies.  Although the meetings with Rachel begin very awkwardly with it apparent that neither appreciates the forced interaction, it evolves into a genuine friendship.  Greg even makes a special movie for Rachel to show how much she means to him and everyone around her.  The film was incredibly sad and touching and wonderful all at the same time.  It is a fantastic truth about how little we know each other and ourselves, and how the interactions with those around us can teach us so much more about ourselves than we can ever learn on our own.   I very much enjoyed the movie.

Book:  First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen by Charlie Lovett (2014)

I am a fan of Jane Austen.  I have read her books.  I have watched many movies based on them.  I have consumed various spin-offs (both book and movie) of her material with much amusement.  So when I heard of this one, I put it on my To Read list.  It turned out to be one of the most disappointing Jane Austen tributes I have ever read.  The book is split into two stories, one about Jane Austen and one about a modern Jane Austen fan.  The Jane Austen story is a fictionalized account of her first efforts of writing with the help of an elderly neighbor, another writer, Richard Mansfield.  The modern story focuses on Sophie Collingwood caught in a love triangle between two men, Winston Godfrey and Eric Hall, while trying to unravel a mystery surrounding whether Jane Austen actually wrote Pride & Prejudice or whether the unknown Richard Mansfield did.  Neither storyline is well written.  Both stories treat the heroines as dimwitted women incapable of surviving without the men in their lives.  Jane Austen is portrayed as rather unconfident in her writing abilities and constantly relies on Richard to provide her with important plot points in her novels.  Sophie is apparently so sheltered and naïve that a simple garden kiss upends her world and sex with another man turns her into an impulsive mess who runs around stealing things from Oxford libraries.  The mystery fell flat because you never realistically believe Richard Mansfield could be the true author of Pride & Prejudice.  I waffled between bored and frustrated throughout the book.  I definitely do not recommend, especially to a Jane Austen fan.

Overflow:

TV Series:  Supernatural:  Season 7 (2011) – Yes, although this was not one of their best seasons.

TV Special:  Jen Kirkman:  I’m Gonna Die Alone (And I Feel Fine) (2015) – Yes.  I like funny stories much more than punchlines, and she was relatable.

Movie:  The Intern (2015) - Yes

Movie:  Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) – Yes.  I had to watch it again after reading the book.

Movie:  Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) - Yes

Movie:  One Day (2011) – No.  I wanted to like this so much, but it just felt flat.  The characters had no chemistry together at all.

Movie:  Boys Don’t Cry (1999) – Yes.  It starts a little slow, but if you can push past the beginning it is worth it.

Movie:  Despicable Me 2 (2013) – Yes.  I love this movie for family fun.

Book:  Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding (1996) – Maybe.  I think the movie is better, but maybe that is because I saw it first.  Also, I read the whole thing with Renee Zellweger’s narrating it in my head despite not having seen the movie in years.

That wraps up this month’s entertainment blog.  Hopefully next month, I will watch fewer movies but provide more reviews.  Does anybody have any good recommendations for what I should watch and/or read in May?

See you next week!

Wimpy Blog Again

You guessed it.  I do not have a blog prepared for you again this week.  I do feel a lot better than last week.  I have a little lingering cough, but all the other symptoms are gone.  Because I was out of commission most of last week though, I am overloaded with work this week.  I have been working late every night, trying to catch up on things for year-end.  I anticipate the rest of this week and into the weekend to be really busy as I try to catch up to where I am supposed to be.  Hopefully, next week all the craziness will be over and I will be back on track to post my Quick Hits for April.

Keep well everyone!  See you next week!

Down For The Count

I have the flu!  That is pretty much all you are going to get from me for a blog.  I got sick on Sunday, and I am only starting to feel better today.  It is year-end at work, so I have been struggling to do journal entries and reconciliations despite being barely able to move.  Thus, I have not put together any kind of blog for this week.  I am taking a few minutes between signing off my work laptop and going to bed for the night to write these couple sentences.

Keep well everyone!  See you next week!

Made Some Progress! – Front Room April 2016

For this month’s blog, I have decided to continue with the practice of providing an overall report on room progress rather than breaking it down into the four work areas.  Afterward, I will provide some goals for April.  At the bottom, I did include the March 1, 2016 (left) vs. April 1, 2016 (right) pictures of the four areas for reference.  I feel really good about the progress I made this month.  My progress definitely falls more in the realm of cleaning up than planning the future redesign, but still I was working on things that needed to be done.  Plus, you can actually see noticeable improvement in the pictures.

As I just said, most of my energy was spent in the cleaning up portion of the project.  I unpacked three boxes from the living room section.  Two of these boxes were full of books, which were sorted into the basement (my husband’s books), the garbage (very old CPA review books), a little white shelf that I brought up from the basement (textbooks I need to consider whether to keep or not), and a smaller box (novels that I am definitely keeping).  The remaining box had a couple of my stepson’s toys and a whole lot of Styrofoam peanuts.  The toys are currently sitting against the wall in the living room and the peanuts have been thrown away.  I also took one of the boxes that were under the window to goodwill.  It had been packed up in a prior month and never actually taken to the donation center.

Over in the desk area, I did some work on the two piles of paper I created last month.  There is an odd mix of junk mail, catalogs, old schoolwork for me, old schoolwork for my stepson, etc.  I literally have to go through each piece and make a decision to keep, throw, or review more carefully.  As I go through the pile, I file, toss, or put each paper on my desk as appropriate.  I also made another dent in the folder on my desk that contains keepsakes.  I created the pages in my scrapbook for one more year, so now I am only two years behind.  In the center of the area, I moved the Kitchen Aid mixer, the Breville juicer, and an old thermostat into the kitchen.  These still need to be unpacked, cleaned, and found a permanent home, but at least now they are residing in the right room.  I pushed the sewing machine, craft boxes, and other scattered boxes against the wall to neaten the room a bit.  I also broke down the kitties favorite boxes along with the ones that I emptied out this month.  Some of these have gone out to recycling, but there are a few still on the floor ready to go.

The only progress I made on the redesign part of the project is one furniture store visit.  I took a trip to the nearest Ikea, but I do not think it is the right type of furniture for this project.  There were some shelving options and a couple of chairs that I might keep in mind as I am finishing it up, but most of the furniture is just too minimal and cheap looking for what I want to do with the front room.  I want it to look relaxing, comfortable, and inviting, but not like a college dorm room where the only criterion was cheap.

There is my update for March.  Overall, I think I had a really good month.  Looking forward to April, I do not have high hopes that I will make much progress.  It is my fiscal year-end close at work, and I am likely to be overworked and exhausted pretty much the whole month.  Therefore, I am only tasking myself to go through some of the remaining boxes in the room.  If I feel like shopping on any weekend, I will make my trip out to Crate & Barrel to see what they have to offer.  I have high hopes though that May will be the month I really can kick it up a notch and start making actual purchasing decisions.

See you next week!