Books, movies and fights....

So having just arrived home from the movies I turned on the tv and am now absorbed in two different Ultimate Fighting matches. WTF? When did this happen. I blame Celeste. I don't especially enjoy violence in life, but I do enjoy tv/movie/video game violence. It's weird, no? It's kind of cathartic, but what I also really like about the fighting is how respectful 95% of the guys seem to be with each other before and after the fight. There is a lot of macho posturing and such, which is to be expected, but in almost all of the fights I've seen the fighters respect each other and don't seem to take it out of the ring. And with one notable exception every winner I've seen talks about what a great opponent their opponent was. It's like really contained, controlled, and measured violence. It's a weird dichotomy. It's also remarkable to me that people want to beat the shit out of someone else while getting the snot beating out of themselves. It's kind of like a test of personal will and endurance in adversity. You have to wonder about their motivation. Cynically I suppose it's just money and glory, but I would think that it's just about being the best that you can be in something you like too. I just wouldn't want to do it myself.

Anyway enough about fighting it's not really what I wanted to talk about in the first place...

I saw 'Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist' tonight. <3 It's such a danger going to see the movie of a book that you love. I've come to the point where I have accepted that movies are never quite the book that you read. The actors are almost never how you imagined and they virtually always screw something up. And I'm cool with that. Sometimes though, they get it right.

ok. i turned one fight off for 30 seconds because it was just starting and i was watching round 4 of the other fight. I switch back and the fight is over and it's an upset. Crazy! WTF? where is the replay?

Sorry, back to the inane rambling. Did they ever get it right with that movie. It was endearing, it was cute, it was touching and funny. It was true to the book as far as I can remember (which, lets face it isn't that far). The actors were perfect. Ahh. With 'Twilight' due out in about a month, i'm more skeptical. I'm unsure of the actors and I still need time to process that Edward is also Cedric Diggory. Kind of like when Hugo Weaving was Agent Smith and Elrond. Or for Priscilla fans Tick. I think the key to going into a movie based on a book you've read is to have low expectations and remember they're not really the same thing. It was a disaster of a movie, so was um, well I can't remember. It was a travesty anyway. In a day or two it will come to me when I've stopped thinking about it. Anyway go see Nick and Norahs Infinite Playlist.

That's all, I promise to not write anymore rediculous rambling posts in the near future.

Shopping Trip Part 2 and other stuff.

So I completely left you all hanging about the trip. Full photographic details can be found on facebook. Why did I leave you hanging you might ask? Because after three days of shopping my soul shrunk up into a little pea sized ball and I had no room left for fun anymore. No, really if you look at all the trip pictures I probably took over 90% of them on the first three actual shopping days and then gave up. I was just too tired. I've decided it's akin to a huge food binge at say, a buffet. At the start, it's really tasty and good. You enjoy yourself. Then, because it's all you can eat you feel obligated to stuff yourself into a coma. By the end of the meal you could be served your absolute favourite food/dish in the entire universe, look at it, and go: meh. Or throw up.

Seriously though it was a fun trip. It's just intense, and as materialistic as it is I do love all my new stuff. *cough* Dexter Season 2 *cough* many books. mmmm..... books.

Also before our souls were sucked out of us Tanya and I made it our mission to get on every kids ride we found. Here are my favourites:

































































Enough about that. It was back to work when I got back. It was kind of a relief to get back to work, I like my job and missed the girls. Also they ended up posting the permanent part-time job in the lab. (One of the girls got a full-time job in front end). AND they're supposed to be giving preference to training and experience. Meaning: Me! So i applied. If i get it, it means more hours (or at least guaranteed hours) and benefits. I'm not counting chickens, but am hopeful.

I shot my first official (meaning paid) wedding! It was pretty exciting and fun. A little stressful, but the bride and groom were and are awesome people so I wasn't too scared. Now the real work (the editing) begins.

Hmm. Hit the Mongolian grill (yes, again!) on Sunday with the girls from work. It's my third visit now and I still like it just as much as the first time. Although nothing will beat the rainstorm adventure of that day.

I'm sure other stuff has happened, but frankly I'm too tired to remember. The only thing of note I can think of is my stupid left earphone is on the fritz. It's super annoying to listen to music on one earphone.

On a happier note:

Shopping Trip Part 1

*Yawn* I wasn't sleeping all that well before the trip and I'm still not sleeping all that well. Although being the earliest riser means I get up and go swimming and for two mornings in a row have had an entire pool to myself.
















They had rules everywhere in the pool room. One including something about not bringing glass into the pool area unless it was a shatterproof light sheild. And here I left my shield at home. I didn't expect to need riot gear poolside.
















Anyway I'm getting ahead of myself. We got on the road pretty easily. The van is really nice and comfy.


Tanya doesn't always like having her picture taken, but I do.













Day one was a very long travel day. We arrived in Danvers, MA around 1am Halifax time. We had a brief stop at the Super WalMart in Augusta where I bought my years supply of business cards.

Shopping day one was pretty good. We discovered that Massachuests is like the least friendly place we have visited. Some people were nice. Most were not.

















These were taken on the morning of shopping day one.














There are lots of interesting things to see if you're bored of shopping.




















These green cans of Kraut are awesome. I really want to buy a bunch and shoot them, but only if I can find someone willing to eat them afterwards. And that someone is not me.




















One of the highlights of Danvers was Vinnie T's a huge favourite amoung all of us, and the initial reason we looked into going to Danvers in the first place. The one we used to go to in Portland closed and the restaurant in Danvers was the closest. It did sport this interesting sign though:

One for the road

I suppose insomnia pays off if I have time to write a blog spot before I head off into parts unknown. Well not so much unknown, but we are hitting a new shopping town on this trip. It's time again for our yearly shopping expedition to the states. My 2nd run, and I think the 7th for the rest of the ladies. A week of hotels, restaurants and shopping awaits. And hopefully a good number of bookstores to keep my crankiness and antisocial tendencies in check.

So I was at the bus stop the other day, standing way off to the side having a smoke (terrible habit!) away from everyone else and this older lady comes down next to me to light hers saying the girl up there had just asked her "You're not going to light that here are you?". So she moved. She said she didn't have a problem moving away, but felt the girl had been rude about it. Now i don't blame the girl for asking the lady to move because smoke is pretty gross, but i don't really think she had to be rude about it. Anyway that's not really the point of this story, it's just how the story starts. So I chat with the lady for a minute and then move on to the stop when i finish and think I see my bus coming. She tells me to have a nice day, and that it was nice to meet a nice person. This is funny because I'm not exactly known for being chatty and friendly at bus stops. Or anywhere else for that matter.

As it turns out, it wasn't my bus, but the lady had headed up to the stop beside me because she was waiting for the same bus. At this point I'm mostly hoping she doesn't try and sit with me when the bus does show up. She has a few bags with her and points out a pot of flowers in an NSLC bag. I say they're pretty and she tells me she got them at Wal-Mart. The conversation went something like this:

"Aren't these nice flowers, i just got them over at Wal-Mart"
Me: "Yeah, they're nice"
"I was walking outside Wal-mart and I saw them all outside so I picked them up and looked around, but I couldn't see anywhere to pay."
Me: "I think you have to bring them inside to pay."
"Yeah, well i didn't see anyone to pay so I just walked away with them."
Me ".........oh"
"They weren't in the bag at first, but I put them in here when I came over to the bus stop."
Me "Oh yeah?"
"I'm glad no one saw me taking the flowers. It would have been really embarrassing to have been chased down."
Me "Yes, i would have. Oh look! There's the bus, have a nice day".

You never know what you're going to encounter on the bus.

That's all for now, trip updates to come!

Coles Notes

So, it's no secret that I'm a crap poster. It's been ages and the only thing I have posted about is the VHS shelves I made. So without further adieu here is a quick recap of May til now.

May: I finished school! Woot!
Tanya got married! Woot! the wedding was awesome and I was glad to be done with wedding preparations, although it did create a void in my free time after the wedding, because alot of my free time (not that there was alot) was taken up by wedding stuff and school.





























June:

I graduated!















Went out for Sushi with Mark and Julie:









































I'm sure I did other things in June, I just don't know what they were.

Oh yeah, Josh and Tanya came back from their honeymoon and Josh left for Egypt.














This should probably be a picture of Tanya and Josh, but I can't find that one.

Jonas left for his big Asian adventure later that day. So now I'm especially glad mark and julie live in the province so i can still get a regular sushi fix!














I housesat for a week at kims. That was fun, her cats are nice and I got to watch alot of Korean dramas uninterrupted!

July was busy! And fun!














I got to go to the beach with Samira and Shelley for the day, it was awesome. I haven't been to the beach for years. Samira was totally petrified of the sand it was pretty cute.

I turned 30 and it was fun!


























This is from the first birthday celebration!





























Josh sent me this kick ass belly dancing gear from Egypt for my birthday. Not to be selfish and materialistic, but I got a lot of really awesome presents, and have awesome friends. (Not just because they give me really awesome stuff. But it helps ;) )

Other things happened in July, but I don't remember them.

August:














I finally took advantage of the pool. Celeste and I raided moms on our day off and had fun with the underwater disposable camera. Thats me above. Ever graceful.

I also made a brief cameo at Chapters for the Breaking Dawn release party.


























I just realized I look like a frigging hobbit next to this bookshelf. I am so short.















Stephie and I all dolled up for the Midnight Masquerade theme.

And at the end of August the Sushi Misadventures with Mark and Julie.















As it turns out there is not a single sushi restaurant open in Halifax on Sunday for lunch. It was all for the best though. Serendipity struck and we came accross the Mongolie Grill. Awesome. Not a week later I made my parents and sister go with me for dinner. On my 2nd try I got my bowl price down to 13.99!

As we were finishing lunch a giant thunderstorm struck and we got stuck in the rain.
It was all good though because we hit paperchase for backgammon and crappy coffee.









































After an epic battle Mark and I are tied at two games apiece.















To wrap up August I ventured into sports photography. Actually I think this occured before I went out with Mark and Julie. I'm supressing the memories of sports photography. Here is a picture of my obviously faking a smile during a break between medal ceremonies.















And that about brings us up. Sarahs baby was christened yesterday, but I don't have any pictures yet. Maybe I'll add some at a later date. It was cool, although I always thought Christenings happened as their own event. This one was part of the church service. Which seemed rather long. Also God charges cover. I mean you can't NOT put money on the offering plate. Right?

Hmm.. What else. Hit the Alehouse with Shelley last week to see her friend Robs band play. They were good. Saw Bangkok Dangerous and hated it. Saw Death Race and loved it. Work is the same. Trying to get clients, but i'm not especially skilled at it. yet. Heading to the states for the yearly shopping extravaganza soon. Will try to post more often than every three months from now on.

Repurposed

So I have tons of old taped shows kicking around on VHS and I have been debating on what to do with them for ages. I never watch them, and I can't really imagine a charity taking them and they're not recyclable. I did a lot of research online and the best recycling option I found was a company in the states that accepts the tapes and shreds them for other stuff I think. To do that you have to box up all your tapes and mail them to them. AND you have to pay them a fee. As much as I'd like to be able to recycle them I don't have a ton of cash kick around to pay a large sum of money to have the things destroy and somehow recycled. Anyway, I've been thinking about ways to make stuff out of the tapes for awhile now and today decided to just go for it and make some shelves.

The plan? I didn't really have one. I did however venture out to Walmart for some supplies. The supplies? A drill (Now I have a drill!), some duct tape, crazy glue and braces (those L shaped bracket thingys). Before I started I decided that it would have to be a narrow set of shelves to hold small things and pocket books because doubling up on the tapes seemed like it would be too unstable. And if even I can figure out it was going to be really unstable than it seems like it would have been a REALLY bad idea. At least without lots of extra bracing and support. And I really wanted to use as little extra material as possible.





That's all the gear and a mocked up prototype is in the centre.

So the basic idea i had was to use the brackets to put the tapes together. In theory this is a good idea and how shelves are made. In practice it didn't go so well. So hard plastic doesn't accept screws too well. It cracks.















Undeterred I didn't think a few cracks were too bad. But, not thinking ahead it turned into this:




















You can't drill stuff in side ways. And I have an extra tape propped against my foot trying to support the top while i attempted to screw in the bottom. That lead to this:

















At this point I kind of gave up on the bracket idea and grabbed the tube of crazy glue. About 15 minutes later I had this:




















And finally:




















I'm pretty darn happy with the results. After the 2nd layer I moved the whole operation to it's final place. I'm not sure how stable the whole arrangement is actually going to be. Krazy Glue is not infallible. But I plan on adding a second shelf alongside this one tomorrow. I considered leaving the other shelf of tapes in their cases (because then I could still watch them), but vetoed the idea for now. For a few reasons: 1. I haven't watched a single one of those tapes in at least five years. 2. I think the black and white tapes look good and 3. I'm pretty sure pulling a tape out of the case to watch it will cause major damage to the already minimal structural integrity.

Website!

Quite frankly I'm too tired to write much so I'll just copy my facebook note:

It is very late, and I'm ready for bed. I am however excited to invite you all to visit the 1.1 version of my website. I'm pretty happy with it and look forward to building the full scale version in Dreamweaver by myself.

So, without furthur ado please visit:

www.kristieprice.com

Questions, comments, concerns and queries are welcome.

Kite flying the second.

After a few hitches and consultations with the instructions we were off.

What's this?




















There's something in here!



















In the belly of the beast...















Not having flown a kite in a large number of years, neither of us was immediately successful in launching the thing.

Here I am obviously having an epic battle with the kite and losing. I frequently lose battles with childs toys.













However, it didn't take that long to get the hang of it (sort of). It should be noted that choosing a dead end street hemmed in by power lines on the left and trees on the right was not an ideal location.




















This mostly meant that our skill level had to be set higher than expected. I have to say, I definitely am a marginally better kite flyer. Whether this was sheer luck , timing or skill is for others to judge.

Kite!














The masters at work:





















I fly good kites.













The kite was named, but I can't remember what. It may have been Drifty. Perhaps Crashy.

Kite flying and other adventures.

Assume things are the same with school and work. I do both a lot and they don't leave time for much else. Although in school we are learning dreamweaver now. It's pretty interesting, but i think going to be time consuming and potentially tedious to actually produce my own website. On the other hand, it's much cooler to make your own site than to use a template. That said, kristieprice.com is up and running, but with a template until the full site is posted. There isn't much there but the pictures are pretty.

Monday tanya and I took Josh to the airport. He's off to Egypt for 6 months and will hopefully get his vacation in 5 weeks for the wedding. I know I'm going to miss him, so it will be nice when he comes home. Especially for Tanya.

Here is a shot of Joshs gear. I had to wait by the car while Tanya and Josh parked. I think it may have looked strange for a short, round, red headed girl with a Pucca bag on to stand next to it.


And one last pic of the soon to be wed Tanya and Josh before he takes off for places far away...















Yesterday I was hanging out with Jonas and we had only the vaguest of plans (this is normal) and so we grabbed a couple 35mm cameras and our point and shoots and headed out. Not having a destination in mind we decided getting on the highway and stopping when we felt like it was a good idea. We threw my nifty new kite in "just in case". We're driving along and it's all good. Well, mostly good. His car has this really disconcerting wobble at high speeds that I did not particularly enjoy, but that's part of the fun too. After a bit we saw a sign for Fall River and decided that might be fun. We parked illegally at the Inn on the Lake and lasted about 15 mintues. While pretty, neither of us is particularly interested in a lot of nature photography. Also it was super windy. Windy, huh?














What a crappy lake picture. Don't tell people I took this.















So get get back in the car and just start driving again and we see some interesting things which we might stop back at when we eventually turn around. Then we see a sign that really should be of no interest to anyone, but we're looking for a big open area at this point to try kite flying from. New subdivision! What could be more exciting than a complete lack of houses? It turns out the subdivision was half built and the promised park at the end wasn't. We did however hit a very nice dead end and decide that was as good a place as any to fly a kite from. It was a bit like a runway, we were hemmed in on the left by electrical wires and on the right by trees. Surely that couldn't have been a problem....

ok, class is starting in a minute.. I will continue our tale later..

k-