the end of the end of the end of the end....

that seemed to be a mini theme for me this weekend.

saw episode III saturday night with M, TK-8103 and Mrs. TK-8103. i enjoyed it a great deal, altho all i could think of when there were scenes between anakin and padme was it was no better than an elementary school play with 1st graders doing the dialog.

A: i love you

P: i love you more

A: no, i love you more.

P: you are so beautiful to me. i love you.

A: no, you are so beautiful to me. i love you more.


*BLECH*

i think i've seen better written love stories in looney toons...

that aside, i really did enjoy the movie, and visually, it was very impressive. aside from the crappy i love you dialog, the only other thing that bugged me was the whole Padme being preggers thing. KS (Mrs TK-8103) pointed it out as we were walking out of the theater that when you are preggers, the FIRST thing that happens is your boobs get larger. (this was independently verified by TK-8103) and they made no compensation for that. she was carrying around a beachball in her belly, but was pretty much flat chested. then, the whole revelation (if you could call it that) where obi-wan asks if the child is anakin's was rather pointless (duh, who else was she seeing? M had an issue with that.) the birth scene was pretty bad too. a few grimaces of pain and out pops a pretty clean infant. a few more grimaces of pain, and out pops a second clean infant. if anything, the one time that padme looked semi-realistic pregnant was at the very end during her funeral procession. AFTER giving birth.

now, those points aside, i really did enjoy the movie (i figure i had better restate that) and it certainly was visually entertaining. you could see how anakin falls, how palpatine manipulates him into turning. the end with anakin and obi-wan fighting was well done, and mixing their fight with the yoda/palpatine fight was well done. i loved yoda's entrance into palpatine's office. R2 provided enuff comic relief, but not so much that it detracted from anything.

like episode II, cut out the majority of the lovey dovey crap and it really was a very good movie. and i have to agree with TK-8103, when it ended, i was wondering "isn't there more? how can it end now? it's too short! i want more!"

it was definately the best of the first 3 episodes, but i will stand by my statement that episodes I & II are a LOT better when you have the whole picture. it really is a pretty complete story about how a young boy rises and then falls. now i have to watch episodes IV thru VI to see the entire picture.

next topic: Dune

i finally finished reading The Battle of Corrin, the final book in the Butlerian Jihad trilogy. very cool and i couldn't help but wonder what caused the rift between the Atreides and the Harkonnen because that's one of the advertised bits of the story. well, when it happens (towards the very end of the book, within the last 50 pages of a 600+ page book), it just smacks you and you understand very quickly. suffice is to say, the phrase "the needs to the many outweigh the needs to the few". even if the 'few' are 2 million people. plus the way it wraps itself up, it shows how with the passage of time, how facts distort over time, as well as how what were made up stories become truths. very cool.

so now it's onto the next book. Robert Heinlein's "For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs" (amazon link). The nifty thing about this book is that it was written in 1938/39, prior to the events of 12/7/41 so the perspective of the story should be a little different. i'm looking forward to reading it.

yesterday, M, F & i went to the Hot Dog Safari at Suffolk Downs. it was an interesting experience. and one where i'm glad to say that i've gone, and i have absolutely no desire to go again. the lines are long, takes forever to get your free {insert food item here} because 1/2 the time is spent letting people cut thru the lines. i think the best part for me was while we were standing in line for our hoodsie cup size turkey hill ice cream, we were able to watch one of the horse races (the 4th one i believe, post time was sposed to be 2:08). first one i have seen since i went to saratoga on my birthday many years ago with the family (good time had by all). had a few hot dogs. kelly's hot dog, not so good. for some reason people around here seem to think very highly of kelly's. for me, i don't care for it very much. and i have given them a few chances to change my mind. every time, they have provided me with a bland and uninspired meal. their onion rings, the batter is nothing more than flour and water and then fried. their roast beef? dry and overcooked. i have yet to have a positive experience eating there. why did i think their hot dog would be any better? i think ballpark franks are better than kelly's...

kelly's and hilltop steakhouse baffle me. every time i have eaten at either place, the food is overcooked, bland and the service (esp at hilltop) is pretty lousy. yet somehow, people in the area seem to think of both in high regard. to hilltop's credit, the supermarket they have is pretty good, and the prices they have on their meats are very good, but they sure as hell have no clue how to cook a decent steak.

anyways, Boston Hot Dog Company (no discernable web presence that i could find) wasn't bad, they had the best selection of toppings (including cole slaw) of the samples we had.

The Sausage Guy line seemed to be the longest, and at the same time, i think provided the biggest 'eh, that wasn't particularly good' moment of the day. he has a reputation down by Fenway Park, but if what we had yesterday was a typical sample of what he serves, that was pretty bad. didn't help that there were no peppers, grilled onions, mushrooms or spicy mustard to help make it more enjoyable.

our favorite hot dog of the day was Pearl. it had the best snap (love that natural casing) and best seasoning of what we tried. a little ketchup and mustard, and you had a good dog.

by this point, we were pretty full, plus we were tired of dealing with the throng of people, so we headed off.

so that was it for my weekend. this morning i arrived at my desk to a rude suprise. some asshole clinician STOLE the power supply that i use for my laptop. in the past, someone borrowed it, but when i got in, it was neatly placed on my desk, cords wrapped up. i didn't like that they had used it, but appreciated that they had returned it before i had returned.

today, that didn't happen, so i asked my boss, BK and KS (not Mrs TK-8103) if they had seen anything, or been asked about a power supply. nope. FL stopped by to ask me an unrelated question and i menioned to him that it had been removed from my desk (the way i had it on my desk requires untangling it from a multitude of wires and fishing it out, so whoever stole it put some effort into removing it).

so, a short while later, i get an email asking DH if he can fill out an incident report, so i obtain one and fill it out and turn it in. i have a few spares that i use while configuring the laptops, so it isn't like i couldn't find one, but the fact that someone had the audacity to fish out my power supply, which by the way is not particularly visible. not only did i have it tangled in wires, but it's out of view with the only visible evidence of its existance being the plug that goes into the laptop. whoever did it a) was desparate for a power supply and b)_figured that i had to have one kicking around.

well, no more. i'm locking it up at night. of course this means that it was returned. sometime after lunch when i was talking to RB or TK-8103, someone left it on my desk, and they put it where i'd find it, but at a quick glance i wouldn't have noticed because i sat down and then saw it. (i knew it was mine because i had a knot tied in the cable)

this seems to be an ongoing issue with our idiot snob clinicians. if they see something they want or need, they just take it. i wouldn't have been so upset if the person who stole/borrowed it had left a post-it on my monitor saying "i'm sorry, but i needed to borrow your power supply. i'll return it ASAP. -guilty party". at least then i would have known who had it and i wouldn't have bothered to mention it to people. but no. no note. so i had to file an incident report. i was discussing this with DH and BK a bit, and they were saying if one of them decided they needed some privacy to make some phone calls or do some "work", they had no qualms of just walking into an empty office and sitting down, and if the person whose office it was happened to come back, would get nasty looks and asked to leave if the clinician wasn't finished doing whatever they thought was so important. i'm sorry, but the offices are given to managers, and you don't just decide that you want to work out of someone's office. BK was saying that he didn't mind if they needed to make a quick phone call, but to set up shop and then be possesive about your invading their territory, that's just plain wrong. but again, it just shows how much the management here kowtows to the union.

i truly believe, that the union that our RN's belong to are doing absolutely NOTHING to show me that unions (on a whole) are a good thing. if anything, they continually reinforce the movie/television stereotype of a union that whines and demands to be treated like a primadonna. i do understand that this isn't the case for all unions, but they sure as hell are doing nothing to help the 'union' cause.

oh well. at least i got my power supply back. and i'll be sure to lock it up before going home tonight.