Having one Hellboy of a weekend

Today I've been a little lazy. I spent most of the day in my PJ's either sending up the Z's or snuggled up with the one I love getting an education in using the force...yes I've been sucked in to the phenomenon that is Star Wars. My OH took me to see the new Clone Wars film the other week and thoroughly confused me because I'd only ever seen episode 4 (what was originally the first film in the trilogy before Mr Lucas made the prequels). We spent the whole journey home plus another 20 mins on the drive with him trying to explain to me who it was I'd seen in the film. I thought it was Luke Skywalker but apparently it was his dad and now he's bad. I was more confused having watched the film and had it explained to me than before I'd watched it! Consequently I made him play the films in chronological order of the storyline. So prequels and then the trilogy. We've just finished watching the 4th one which makes so much more sense now I've watched the prequels and I've banned my OH from telling me how any of the characters are related!

In fact I think I might have become a little bit addicted to them. But shhh don't tell my OH ;)

With our tastebuds wetted from our half marathon of the Wars we went out to meet OH's mates and went and saw Hellboy 2 at the cinema preceded by a very tasty KFC. I can't say I enjoyed it as much as I did the first film. I think it was one of those sequels that didn't really need to be written. A bit like The Mummy 3. That was a complete waste of film reel. For starts they'd replaced Rachel Weiss in the role of Evie (big mistake. If they couldn't get her then they shouldn't have bothered to make the film. Her and Brendan had on screen chemistry). Hellboy didn't really need a number 2. The first one pretty much told the story. Devil boy fights evil and saves the one he loves. It sort of came to a conclusion.

Hmmmm I wonder what other sequels should never have been made?

 

Air on a G.......force!

Today I've been out on Bournemouth seafront with several other thousand people. Yes I've been watching the Bournemouth Air Festival watching the brave boys (and possibly some girls) from the forces twisting and turning about the sky in their various flying contraptions. From the ancient and I can't believe it's still remaining airborne to the new age voice controlled eardrum piercers.

Of course most people were there to watch the Red Arrows display team... that was apparent by the mass exodus of bodies off the beach once they'd finished (and thanks to the parents in front of me who decided to let their little cherub then do circuits of their encampment. I particularly enjoyed this toddler height display of how sand obeys the laws of gravity when you let it go out of your podgy hands!). The arrows display was quite amazing to watch however (I think I'm easily pleased by a bit of coloured smoke) and I've included some pictures below of their exploits in the air.

There were several things that I discovered whilst I was out today:

1. Even if it's cloudy if you look up into the air for long enough with a camera pressed to your squinting eye a) you'll get eye strain from focusing too hard on trying to spot a plane and b) your face and chest will turn the colour of a beetroot. I refer my readers to the very good advice Baz Lurhman once gave!
2. If there is a child located less than 100m away from you (of any age and this includes men as we know they're still boys at heart) then you can guarantee that you will be caught in a sandstorm
3. Even if you wanted to see the wing walkers you won't be able to because they will either be obscured by the person in front of you whilst you try and take a photo, appear as if an ant clinging on for dear life to their chosen aircraft or simply be shrouded in smoke that said aircraft is billowing out!
4. When you get on the bus to go home. The driver will make it his mission to go around every roundabout and corner at breakneck speed and leave breaking decisions to the last minute while you play sardines behind his seat.

 

If you fancy joining in with all these fun and frolics then you still have a chance. The airshow is on Saturday and Sunday and the Red Arrows will be there both days. Google for details. Oh and the show is completely free (well save parking and what not).

 

Click to enlarge!

Internet Addiction

It's surprising the hold that the Internet and computers have on society. I was a child born into the age of the computer and as such remember very little about life without one. My parents both have degrees in computing and as I've grown up I've been surrounded by all sorts of technological gadgetry.

When I moved away to university I almost went into culture shock. My student halls had yet to be linked up to wi-fi or any kind of network let alone the Internet. I was forced to go to the library every time I wanted to check my email, bank online or simply faff around on myspace. It also resulted in me getting a hell of a lot more fresh air than I did once they installed wi-fi in my halls (I was forced to go and play outside rather than sitting playing video games).

Consequently when I moved into my first student house I made it my mission to have working Internet before I would even consider setting foot in the house. Boy was that a traumatic experience and moving house the next year didn't help as I had to start all over again setting it up (who thought moving 3 doors down could be so complicated for a telephone company to work out?!). What made things worse was the fact that I had a newly found boyfriend who I'd met via a forum ( yes thanks to the Internet you can now trawl through an even bigger net of fish rather than your local rag's lonely hearts column. Of course you still can't guarantee that they won't turn out to be a 50 year old pervert who likes watching episodes of Bargain Hunt whilst dressed as a penguin. Thankfully none of those describes the love of my life.) and all of my communications with him were largely done via the Internet. Therefore I had a vested interest in getting it going again ASAP.

So great was my want and need of the Internet I would stop at nothing to get my net connection working. I've even stooped to contorting myself into interesting positions and cladding my aerials in tin foil to get a better reception.

 

God help me and other geeks and net junkies if the big www. ever shuts down.

Have they heard about climate change?

It's day 2 in my 40 day blogathon and I found myself contemplating earlier today whilst I went about my daily trawl of the job pages (unemployment sucks!) what should I blog about today? Luckily a post lunch jaunt onto facebook sorted that out.

I've recently been on holiday to fabulous Las Vegas and such is my inability to be smug about where I'd been sunning myself the last few weeks I'd posted up a selection ( 600+ is a little much to handle, no?) of pics from my trip. One of my nearest and dearest had spotted this particular photo below and decided to leave me a little note. How lovely you say and yes it was. Their comment read:

"have they heard about climate change?" my response was of course witty but it got me thinking.

I've seen numerous news reports about the 8 year drought that Vegas has been suffering (although quite how you're meant to have a drought in a desert I'm not sure). I went on trips over and to the Hoover Dam and saw the chalk lines that marked where the water should be. A quick Google search tells me the water line is apparently 102ft (31m) lower than it should be. Rather amusing was the comment made by  Patricia Mulroy who is the General Manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. She said that "[Las Vegas] is realising... that they need to adapt to the desert" Common sense says that if you build your house on a great big sandy barren piece of land then the chances of you being able to grown pine trees and lots of lovely greenery on it and tap it for it's water supplies are slim love!

Homes and businesses all over Vegas are being made to dig up their grass and put down astro turf or make 'desert gardens' (a jazzed up way of saying turn it into a nature garden by letting the local weeds populate it), builders have stopped putting swimming pools into new properties and only the big hotels have been able to keep their fountains. Fountains which to Vegas' usual standard are breathtakingly huge. I bet you could get a fare few baths and showers out of the amount of water the Bellagio's fountains use.

As if Nevada's population didn't feel harassed enough into ensuring their water usage is kept to a respectable level they now have water police patrolling the street investigating every dribble, drip and puddle which looks suspicious. If I was a water policewoman I'd be speaking to those people who own stores that blow out water mist at you. Utterly pointless. The wind is never blowing in the right direction and they never cool you down (not to mention I'm too short for them to reach me).

Whilst they're all having a flap about how much water they're using haven't they stopped to take any consideration of the other resources that they're wasting? Everyone grumbles about the price of fuel (if the Americans think they have it bad they should take a trip to the U.K. to compare prices) but how much are we doing to conserve fuel. I bet 99% of people who have cars use them to make silly errands down the road for a loaf a bread when they could quite easily walk. And as my nearest and dearest pointed upon gazing at the photo of the gigantic video billboard that adorned the entrance to my hotel what about the huge amount of electricity we consume without thinking (you're using it right now to read this post). Will the electricity police be next? Following us around making sure we turn appliances off and don't leave lights on? If that's the case then I'd like to nominate my father to be chief inspector. He's remarkably good at turning lights off unfortunately he usually does it while people are still in the room and need their use!

Whilst Vegas is an amazing site to behold and experience it does serve as one huge example of how  the opulence of something could bring its downfall. If Nevada doesn't recover from its drought then Vegas will fast become a ghost town.

A new era in blogging

Today marks a new era in my blogging.

I've had this blog since 2005 but I've hardly ever used it. I blame numerous distractions (a very attractive man for one!) and the fact that I never got into a routine. I've kept numerous private diaries and found it very therapeutic sharing my thoughts and feelings and I've come to the realisation recently  for several reasons (that I'll maybe share another time) that it does me a whole lot of good to do to get things of my shoulders that are troubling me. I'm hoping though that this this blog will be more than just me moaning.

To help me get into the groove of writing and enjoying this blog I gave it a major spruce up. It's got a whole new template that I'd love to say I made all my myself but I actually had a little help from the standard templates. I used it as the starting block and tweaked the colours created a background image and header in Photoshop and also fiddled with some of the other fixtures and fittings. I'm very pleased on the whole with the way that it looks and I hope everyone else is too.

I've also changed the name of the blog. The old one was so naff I'm ashamed to admit what it was. I've gone for a more punchier title which probably reflects my personality a whole lot better than the last one did. I'm a glass half empty kind of gal and "life is a lemon" just sums up my outlook sometimes. Despite that though I could probably say that though I mostly think my life sucks a lot of the time I try my best to make lemonade with it!

So I've got everything prepped now and I'm ready to blog to my heart's content. I've rather adventurously decided that for this to work I'm going to have to post on a whole lot more regularly. What is it they say 40 days to make a habit? Well sure why not then. I'm going to try to blog for 40 days straight in the hopes that I'll catch the blogging bug!

Hmmm does this count as blog post number 1?

Yes I know that it was already open but this is it's offical re-opening! This is the start of a new blogging era.