Easter Weekend

Okay, blogger is doing something really weird this morning (can't upload pics!) ... hopefully it'll get sorted soon tho!

Update at 13h19: Yay, seems like I got it working again by clearing my cache :)

So we had a long long weekend. Four days off was such bliss that I'm not entirely sure how I made it into work at all this morning.

Now let me think ... Thursday was fairly quiet. Varen & I stayed home and watched a movie that I got from TheBrad, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium.

Eccentric 243-year-old Mr. Magorium (Dustin Hoffman) owns and manages a magical toyshop. The shop has many quirks, including sentient toys and a doorknob that, when rotated, changes the interior of a magic room. Magorium's store manager is the young woman Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman), who is an aspiring pianist and has plans to quit the store and start a career in music.

Unexpectedly, Mr. Magorium announces that although he is not ill, it is time for him to "leave" and gives the shop to Mahoney. She does not understand, but Eric explains to her that he seems to mean that he is going to heaven. She urges Magorium to stay and struggles with self-doubt.

It wasn't that great. I mean it's kinda fun and fantastical and Dustin Hoffman was great but, otherwise pretty dull. I don't recommend it.

Friday I was left to my own devices as Varen drove (3 hours!) out to Breyton for the day to visit his Grandmother who sadly died last night. My thoughts are with you baby.

I went shopping ... and blew a fortune over the course of the weekend! First and foremost was bed paraphernalia for the spare room so that I can convince the Mom and Daddio to come up for a visit. I found everything I needed at good old Monsieur Prissay ... except for the actual bed (the one I wanted to get has had all stock sent back to the supplier cause of a defect, damn!) or mattress.

I also had all my Photo's printed so that I could start album-ing this weekend ... with all my free time ;) Sadly the gym was closed for Good Friday so BFL went sorta out the window! Instead we headed over to GalleryGirl's for a braai once Varen had got himself safely home. Somehow managing to talk himself out of a traffic fine for a) talking on his cellphone b) speeding c) having no number plates d) having an expired temporary number plate. I just don't know where this boy's luck comes from!

Saturday was an exciting morning ... the morning I've been waiting all week for. It was time to fetch the bunny :) We have named her Bell. She is so adorable and as soon as I can upload pics there will be some to show her off. The rest of the weekend was pretty much bunny focused. We got her a hutch at the same time we bought her. And now we're hoping that in 3 weeks she'll get a little strawberry blonde sister :)

She is the most darling thing and I watched her discovering her new home (the garden while we're watching over her). As she got more confident and bounded around the grass. Eating and eating! She's had two whole carrots since we got her ... she is an eating machine!

I also made another purchase (trying to stagger them!). Got myself a Canon MX310 scanner/printer from Incredible Connection. Mostly I got it because of it's handy auto-document feed tray. After going thru all the family history stuff, I figure it's a lot easier to keep all this documentation in electronic format than taking up space printed out! Sadly I have yet to even un-box it since I don't really have anywhere (other than the dining room table!) to set it up. Will have to get Varen moving on setting up the study-landing :)

We enjoyed our non-BFL day by gorging on junk food and finished the day with some pizza from Lapa Fo and watching some dvds with Belly snuggling under my jersey :)

We watched Premonition (my choice) and Chaos (Varen's choice).

The middle-class couple Linda Hanson and Jim Hanson lives a wasted and routine relationship with their two daughters in their comfortable house in the suburbs. On a Thursday morning, the local sheriff visits Linda and tells her that her husband died in a car accident on the previous day. On the next morning, when Linda awakes, she finds Jim safe and sound at home. When she awakes on the next morning, she realizes that her days are out of order, but her family and friends believe she is insane.

I kinda liked this movie. I do like Sandra Bullock as an actress and that does help. There are inconsistencies in the movie (as with all "time-travel" type themes I've seen) but as usual one gets over it, ignores it and enjoys the movie :)

During a hostage incident, inspector Quentin Conners (Jason Statham) accidentally shoots dead both the criminal and his hostage after which, Conners is suspended.

Some time afterwards, Lorenz (Wesley Snipes) and four other heavily armed criminals take hostages in a bank. They only want to negotiate with the suspended Conners, who is immediately reinstated with full powers. Together with the young inspector Shane Dekker (Ryan Phillippe), whom he doesn't regard highly, Conners takes charge of the crime scene.

While working on the few leads and trying to stay out of each other's face, both Conners and Dekker come to believe different theories. While Conners feels certain the robbery has something to do with the bridge shooting, other than that he sees no other pattern to the chain of events and resorts to the police routine of searching human leads and questioning them. While Dekker senses a design to all the chaos, based on Chaos theory — where seemingly chaotic and unrelated happenings are believed to be linked to each other in a way that is very calculated and systematically being carried out by the one who knows the entire picture.

As the two detectives work together and begin to respect each other, they both realize that they must work together and help each other out, if they are to get to the end of the chaotic tunnel of events. And as they start their hunt for the truth, they also come to realize that they themselves are being hunted and played with, by the one who see the pattern in this Chaos.

This movie was apparently released shortly before (or after?) Inside Man and as such did not receive much attention. I quite liked it ... although by this stage I was a little movie-ed out. I really enjoyed the plot twists although if I had to pick one to watch again, it'd definitely be Inside Man :)

Sunday was fairly quiet ... more lazing in bed and photographing Bell! She is completely adorable, although Varen didn't really see the cute side when she started munching on his bonsai leaves! I spent most of the day cleaning the fish pond ... it was an exhausting job and sadly I lost one fish when it took a nighttime kamikaze jump out of the pond. Bell had fun playing in the wet lawn while I worked.

Hell, we even managed to dutifully get to the gym as well! That evening, we went to the movies ... because we hadn't seen enough! I guess that's how I relax on a long weekend when everyone else is away. With my book and at the movies :) We saw 10000 BC.

The legend. The battle. The first hero.
Set in a remote mountain tribe, a young hunter, D'Leh (Steven Strait), has found his heart's passion - the beautiful Evolet (Camilla Belle). When a band of mysterious warlords raid his village and kidnap Evolet, D'Leh is forced to lead a small group of hunters to pursue the warlords to the end of the world to save her. Driven by destiny, the unlikely band of warriors must battle sabre-tooth tigers and prehistoric predators and, at their heroic journey's end, they uncover a Lost Civilisation. Their ultimate fate lies in an empire beyond imagination, where great pyramids reach into the skies. Here they will take their stand against a powerful god who has brutally enslaved their people.
An epic tale that centres on three stages in the development of primitive man, as seen through a 21-year-old hunter, who must journey through uncharted territory to secure the future of his tribe.

I thought this was great fun :) Except for the ending ... /*spoiler ahead*/ Just when you think they're going to be original and let the girl die, she "magically" wakes up, restored to full health (who knows what happened to that arrow in her back!?!). So yes, aside from that, it was great fun. An epic I can only compare to Apocalypto (except better, cause there are woolly mammoths!)

Monday we mostly lazed. We were somehow exhausted by the long weekend. But we did managed to get out and buy a mattress (me ... supposedly for the spare room, but we've taken it for ourselves!) and a new bed (Varen for the main bedroom). So I have made some huge shopping progress during the long weekend ... it's especially nice not having so many people around Joburg too :)