Days off are risky business.  Minor incidents, but we managed to pull through alive.

Mrs. NFB planted her lilies over the course of the weekend.  She was so excited about that that it became her main focus.  It was nice to see her all excited about some sort of hobby.  That just doesn't happen often enough.

In some weird sort of congruity, I ordered out my plants for my aquarium as well.  A couple pots of dwarf baby tears and a couple pots of micro sword.  Should create a nice low-lying carpet up front with the baby tears and a nice deep mat in the background with the tiny swords.  Stem plants may come later after the water is in the tank, or I may just stick with these if they look nice once they fill in.

We went out to eat at one of our old favorites.  A place we haven't been in ages.  I stuffed myself to the point where I wasn't hungry the next day, so that probably wasn't good.  But the food was good, and I ate it.

We also took in a movie at the theater, another unusual thing for us to do these days.  All in all, not a bad weekend.  Despite me staying up to clean the house until almost 12:30.

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The Forbidden Kingdom - It's strange for us to hit a movie on opening day.  Very strange.  She's never done it before in her life.  I have three before, and two of those were "event" status films.  A Star Wars film, and Transformers last summer.  I also went to Rocky Balboa with AFKS on opening day because he's such a huge Rocky fan, but that's another story.  Anyway, when we went to a matinee on Friday for The Forbidden Kingdom, it was unusual in and of itself.  What was also unusual is that I walked away feeling like that was a really, really good movie.  It had the feel that it was for anybody that liked fighting games, or kung-fu movies of any type.  Really beautiful shots here and there in the movie, while avoiding cliches like the tall-skinny tree fights so often seen in modern martial arts flicks, while still having the tall-skinny tree forest as a backdrop.  And the story was compelling without being heart-wrenching, for the most part.  And in a strange twist, the ending was a satisfying mix of sad and happy that Hollywood just doesn't often do these days.  It was good stuff all around.  Mrs. NFB thought that the Monkey King was just a stupid childish plot-point that didn't belong in the film.  I didn't know the Monkey King was going to be in the film, or I could have warned her.  She was unaware that it's a long-term eastern legend, and that silly is just a part of his makeup.  Outside of that, she seemed to enjoy it too.  If you like martial arts flicks, you'd probably like this one.  It's very good with only one moment of doubt that makes you think the entire movie was a waste.  That moment is quickly rectified in a very, very satisfying way, and what you're left with is a nice popcorn action flick with a touch of young romance that never gets sappy.  And incredibly action sequences.  And two hot eastern chicks fighting it out hard-core.  That scene should have lasted longer.

The Hitcher (2007) - The original Hitcher was OK from the perspective that, even though it sucked rocks, it sucked rocks in an original way.  This movie?  It sucked rocks without an ounce of originality.  And sucked harder than the original did because they didn't bother trying to add in any serious vibe of "everyone hates me" like the first one did.  I'm trying to determine if Mrs. NFB's insistence on watching all the Hitcher movies is some sort of signal that she wants me to leave her.  She knows how I felt about the first two, yet insisted we watch this one.  If there's a sequel to this one, and she gets it in her Netflix queue, you may see another Plonker series pop up here.  All kidding aside, this movie blows like few others I've ever seen.  And I've sat through most of one of those sets of movies that contains over a hundred films for less than thirty bucks.  Yes indeedy.  At least those films have horrible action sequences.  What's The Hitcher selling?  "NOW WITH MORE BABE IN UNDERWEAR SEQUENCES!"  You know what?  Not worth it.  How bad does a movie have to suck for me to not like babe in underwear sequences?  Pretty bad.  Pretty damn bad.

The Other Side - Here's the opening sequence - OH NO I'VE BEEN HIT!  BUT I LURVES YOU!  BUT I'M BACK FROM SCHOOL!  BUT LONG DISTANCE SUCKS!  BUT I LURVES YOU!  OH NO I'VE BEEN HIT!  HELL SUCKS!  BUT I LURVES YOU!  OH NO I'VE BEEN HIT!  HELL REALLY SUCKS!  BUT I LURVES YOU!  HELL SUCK SUCKY SUCK SUCK!  COME ON SON, GET THE FUCK OUT!  BUT I LURVES YOU!  WE FOUND AN OUT!  It's all very confusing until it gets explained in infinite detail later on.  Suffers from a lot of the same problems any student film suffers from.  But at least the chicks in caskets on the way to their own funerals have the common decency to wear leather with strapped pant-legs.  Good grief.  It's not horrible, but I'll never, ever want to see it again.  Not even for the robo-babe that rocks the sword and super-tight leather and spankdex.  Well, OK, I might watch just her sequences again.  Nah, probably not.

Netflix failed us hard this weekend.  At least next weekend I get to watch Kate Winslet flouncing around naked for a few minutes.  So I got that to look forward to all week.

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So, yesterday, after a long weekend of working out in the yard and cleaning and all that jazz, we got ourselves all naked, relaxed, and laid in bed. . .

And scratched each other.

It's probably one of our strangest traditions.  Or everybody does it and nobody talks about it.

Sometimes it's just nice to be able to have all those places we can't reach ourselves scratched.  (No, we can reach that ourselves perverts.  Not that we don't normally help each other out with that, we just didn't during this particular scratch session.)

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I sometimes go weeks at a time with nobody requesting anything new at work.  Which is fine, as I have several long-term projects that I can fight day in and day out anyway.  However, when I take a day off?

One day off last week saw this:

• Brak requested a link change on our internal web site.
  
• HR cutie requested two article removals and three article placements on the internal web site.
  
• Head of HR requested a link name change on the internal web site.
  
• Paper Boy sent out a mass-panic email telling customer service to send all $company_ordering_site emails and phone calls directly to $company_ordering_site_developer because he can't help them anymore.  This a few months after he took all site duties away from me because he's just so damn special he can do it all himself,  until he started getting customer calls directed at him, then suddenly it's "I've got nothing to do with that shit."  Fucking fuck fucker.
  

So, yeah.  Typical.

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My aquarium will kick off this week.  Got two day shipping on the plants, so all I have to do is line up a good pointy pair of tweezers and a curved pair of scissors and I'll be all set for planting.

I laid the tank in it's final position over the weekend, carefully measuring and leveling and making sure everything is going to be sturdy and perfectly placed.  When first getting the tank several years back, I masked off the back side and spray-painted it with Krylon Fusion dark blue, so you can't see anything behind the tank.  Helps keep that cluttered look to a minimum.  Once I got it all placed I sprayed down the Flourite again to get it soaking in fertilizers to get ready for the planting.

Then, after I ordered my plants, one of the picture frames we had hanging above it fell off the wall and smashed the ever loving crap out of the filter I just bought.  Thank $diety it wasn't hanging on the tank at the time or it likely would have broken the back panel of glass.  Instead I had it sitting on the table behind the tank because it won't be needed for a few days-weeks after planting.  It essentially broke the side plastic on the filter, and smashed the lid to oblivion.  Thankfully, it was a cheap little bastard, so replacement will only cost me about twenty.  Or maybe this is an opportunity to go with a small canister instead.  I don't know.  I'll wait until I'm close to fill date to replace it.  Hopefully by that time we'll get figured out what the hell happened with that picture frame and prevent it from happening again.

Also got my light timer ordered and on the way and my final trace elements and supplemental fertilizers.  Oh, and grow lights that should fit my hood.  Everything should be ticking along by the weekend, first planting should be Wednesday night or so.  Pictures then.

I'm almost as excited about this as Mrs. NFB was about her lilies and the giant pot she got to put on the corner of the house.

Enough for a Monday.  Laterz.