Fourth of July weekend recap
It's been my observation that it's often more restful to have the day after the weekend off, rather than the day before the weekend. Psychologically speaking, I think the reason is that when you have, say Friday off before the weekend, it's not a long enough break to be mentally prepared for the long weekend, and before you know it, it's Friday evening and your original weekend has already started - not much benefit. On the other hand, when you have Monday off after the weekend, it's like a bonus - you come up on Sunday evening all mentally prepared for work the next day, when you realize you can in fact sleep in after partying all weekend! Plus, fewer things tend to be planned on the day off after the weekend, so often it's more restful (assuming you're the type who's rejuvenated by time alone, like I am).
Anyway, my company decided to throw us a bone and give us both Monday and Tuesday off, so not only did I have a long weekend, I'll be finishing up a nice short week soon. I suppose it was the least they could do after the last few months of coming in on weekends... heheh.
We went rafting this weekend!
After Andrea's birthday dessert party and a day of table tennis and games on Friday and Saturday, a bunch of us headed up to Sacramento to hang out with Tomio, Alice, and Oski (btw, welcome to the blogging world, Miyais!), who graciously hosted us overnight before we hit up the middle fork of the American river. Chowed down on some excellent super nachos (who knew that Nestle made canned cheese in large cans at Costco?), watched Tomio hobble around on his newly-repaired ACL, returned to our childhoods at the playground, and fell asleep with Oski's breathing echoing throughout the living room.
Karen has a good writeup of the happenings of our boat, so I won't rehash them here. Suffice to say, we had all the dramatic stuff happen to us. I got to sit in the front of the boat, which is the most wet, but also probably the most fun because you have the most room to brace yourself, and you have an unimpeded view of the river and canyon in front of you. We rafted the same portion of the river that we went on for Andy Y's bachelor party a few years back, so some of the rapids seemed quite familiar.
Our guide was an extremely laid-back guy studying to be a special ed teacher, and despite the various injuries we had a good time telling jokes, bagging on people, and periodically getting into water fights. I suspect that after the day was over, our guide probably wearily complained about us to his buddies by saying that for a raft, we were nice folks but horrible paddlers. We just couldn't go anywhere we wanted to in the rapids! Also amusing was the fact that I braced my legs so firmly against the gunwales of the raft that I rubbed off the hair on a portion of my calf, leaving it smooth. It's still smooth a few days later. I was successful though in not falling out involuntarily (went in for a swim towards the end).
With the extra day off Tuesday, I caught Spiderman 2 with some coworkers. Overall, I liked it better than the first one. A few thoughts (click and drag to view):
- it was a serious misstep to have the Green Goblin's mask be solid in the first movie, preventing us from seeing the villain's face. Doc Ock's facial expressions and vocal intonations were very good.
- on a related note, the effects for the tentacles were very cool - they did a good job trying to evoke snake imagery.
- Spidey swinging through Manhattan still looked artificial, but less so than before
- nice reference to Dr. Curt Connors, Peter's professor in the movie, who becomes the Lizard in the comics. Seeing as how they appear to be setting up Harry to don his father's mask and become the Green Goblin, does this mean that the franchise will move "Batman"-style to Spidey vs. two villains? Let's hope not.
- apparently Tobey Maguire nearly didn't sign up for the movie due to a back injury suffered during the filming of "Seabiscuit", so the scene in the middle of the movie where he falls and walks off whining "My back, my back" was a tongue-in-cheek inside joke.
- speaking of which, I haven't watched much with Maguire, but he did an excellent job portraying a young man still trying to grow up and make the right decisions even when he seems awkward and uneasy. Very facially expressive.
- I suspect the Peter Parker of this movie has wide appeal among all the geeks out there, like me. Maybe it is possible for nice guys to finish first, beat the bad guy, and get the girl; even though you might need to go through a couple years of everything going wrong first!
- the elevator scene... priceless.
- another favorite line - towards the end, Spidey rushes in to prevent a wall from falling on MJ, right after she realizes that it's actually Peter behind the mask. Holding up the wall, he smiles tightly and says, "Hey. This is really heavy."
I really hope that long weekend is enough to tide me over until the end of August. Is 2004 really over half over?
It's been my observation that it's often more restful to have the day after the weekend off, rather than the day before the weekend. Psychologically speaking, I think the reason is that when you have, say Friday off before the weekend, it's not a long enough break to be mentally prepared for the long weekend, and before you know it, it's Friday evening and your original weekend has already started - not much benefit. On the other hand, when you have Monday off after the weekend, it's like a bonus - you come up on Sunday evening all mentally prepared for work the next day, when you realize you can in fact sleep in after partying all weekend! Plus, fewer things tend to be planned on the day off after the weekend, so often it's more restful (assuming you're the type who's rejuvenated by time alone, like I am).
Anyway, my company decided to throw us a bone and give us both Monday and Tuesday off, so not only did I have a long weekend, I'll be finishing up a nice short week soon. I suppose it was the least they could do after the last few months of coming in on weekends... heheh.
We went rafting this weekend!
After Andrea's birthday dessert party and a day of table tennis and games on Friday and Saturday, a bunch of us headed up to Sacramento to hang out with Tomio, Alice, and Oski (btw, welcome to the blogging world, Miyais!), who graciously hosted us overnight before we hit up the middle fork of the American river. Chowed down on some excellent super nachos (who knew that Nestle made canned cheese in large cans at Costco?), watched Tomio hobble around on his newly-repaired ACL, returned to our childhoods at the playground, and fell asleep with Oski's breathing echoing throughout the living room.
Karen has a good writeup of the happenings of our boat, so I won't rehash them here. Suffice to say, we had all the dramatic stuff happen to us. I got to sit in the front of the boat, which is the most wet, but also probably the most fun because you have the most room to brace yourself, and you have an unimpeded view of the river and canyon in front of you. We rafted the same portion of the river that we went on for Andy Y's bachelor party a few years back, so some of the rapids seemed quite familiar.
Our guide was an extremely laid-back guy studying to be a special ed teacher, and despite the various injuries we had a good time telling jokes, bagging on people, and periodically getting into water fights. I suspect that after the day was over, our guide probably wearily complained about us to his buddies by saying that for a raft, we were nice folks but horrible paddlers. We just couldn't go anywhere we wanted to in the rapids! Also amusing was the fact that I braced my legs so firmly against the gunwales of the raft that I rubbed off the hair on a portion of my calf, leaving it smooth. It's still smooth a few days later. I was successful though in not falling out involuntarily (went in for a swim towards the end).
With the extra day off Tuesday, I caught Spiderman 2 with some coworkers. Overall, I liked it better than the first one. A few thoughts (click and drag to view):
- it was a serious misstep to have the Green Goblin's mask be solid in the first movie, preventing us from seeing the villain's face. Doc Ock's facial expressions and vocal intonations were very good.
- on a related note, the effects for the tentacles were very cool - they did a good job trying to evoke snake imagery.
- Spidey swinging through Manhattan still looked artificial, but less so than before
- nice reference to Dr. Curt Connors, Peter's professor in the movie, who becomes the Lizard in the comics. Seeing as how they appear to be setting up Harry to don his father's mask and become the Green Goblin, does this mean that the franchise will move "Batman"-style to Spidey vs. two villains? Let's hope not.
- apparently Tobey Maguire nearly didn't sign up for the movie due to a back injury suffered during the filming of "Seabiscuit", so the scene in the middle of the movie where he falls and walks off whining "My back, my back" was a tongue-in-cheek inside joke.
- speaking of which, I haven't watched much with Maguire, but he did an excellent job portraying a young man still trying to grow up and make the right decisions even when he seems awkward and uneasy. Very facially expressive.
- I suspect the Peter Parker of this movie has wide appeal among all the geeks out there, like me. Maybe it is possible for nice guys to finish first, beat the bad guy, and get the girl; even though you might need to go through a couple years of everything going wrong first!
- the elevator scene... priceless.
- another favorite line - towards the end, Spidey rushes in to prevent a wall from falling on MJ, right after she realizes that it's actually Peter behind the mask. Holding up the wall, he smiles tightly and says, "Hey. This is really heavy."
I really hope that long weekend is enough to tide me over until the end of August. Is 2004 really over half over?
posted by Bob at
12:29 AM
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