help my bro-in-law

Hey there. My bro-in-law, Jeff, works in the film industry. Most of the time he's a lead gaffer, but his real love (and frankly gift) is being a director of photography.

Anyway, in December, an independent film he is the DP for will be available for rent. It's called Fortunes. If you have Netflix, you can find it here. They're looking for some grassroots help to get people watching it, talking about it and ultimately, success for one film can hopefully mean success and more work on other films.

Jeff is an incredible photographer. He has the gift and I'm bummed that he hasn't progressed further with a career in cinematography. Struggling artists abound all over the place, eh? The only other film I can find on Netflix that he's done as DP is: 101 Ways (The Things a Girl Will Do to Keep Her Volvo). I have seen at least two other films of his as DP, but I guess they never got released. Dang.

Posted by jennj at 09:19 AM | Comments (2)

saturday cat blogging

Posted by jennj at 04:00 PM | Comments (3)

first snow!

As I was lying on the couch, watching Lost and trying to recover from the flu, I looked over at a window and saw that it's SNOWING!! I guess winter has arrived.

Posted by jennj at 03:58 PM | Comments (1)

two by two, hands of blue

Seen on Terry's blog.

Two Names I Go By: Jenn, JJ
Two Parts of My Heritage: Norweigan, German
Two Things That Scare Me: being put under anesthesia, snakes
Everyday Essentials: coffee, laughter
Two Things I Am Wearing Right Now: wedding ring, flannel pj's
Two of My Favorite Bands or Musical Artists: Warren Zevon, Dvorak
Two of My Favorite Songs: If I Had a Boat, Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da
Two books that changed my life: Snowcrash, Stranger In A Strange Land
Two Things I Want in a Relationship: intimacy, laughter
Two Physical Things that Appeal to Me: a**, eyes
Two of My Favorite Hobbies: skiing, reading
Two Things I Want Really Badly: audi tt, more vacation time
Two Things I Want to Do Before I Die: yes

What about the rest of you?

Posted by jennj at 09:27 PM | Comments (19)

saving energy?

It amused me this evening to see people trying to find the parking spot closest to the entrace of the....gym.

At about 4p.m. today, the voice of the habit I'm trying to break started speaking up. It's the voice that sabotages me going to the gym. It's the one that tries to make work more important in my life than my health and well being. I defeated it. Go me.

p.s. One of the things I'm loving at our gym (we started going a month and a half or so ago) is that they have a basketball court. I've been shooting hoops and haven't done that in years. It feels good.

Posted by jennj at 08:23 PM | Comments (8)

no way

From the free metro newspaper this morning on the announcement of Greenspan's replacement.

"Bernanke, a plain-speaking former economics professor..."

Nope. That kind of animal does not exist.

Posted by jennj at 01:55 PM | Comments (5)

so..like...

Where are all the "godless liberals"?

Cause the numbers aren't adding up to there being enough people to worry about.

Let's see, according to the CIA worldfactbook, the U.S. population religions are broken down as such: Protestant 52%, Roman Catholic 24%, Mormon 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim 1%, other 10%, none 10% (2002 est.).

So, at most, you may have 20% of the population who are "godless". And they can't all be liberals, as I do know there are some godless republicans. Is 20% a big enough number for there to be panic? I'm just curious.

Posted by jennj at 09:50 AM | Comments (26)

pain

So, apparently my right, upper, back molar is acting up again. See here for history.

This whole week has been one long cluster f*ck with regards to my health and seeing doctors.

1. Removed two lumps from my forearm. Pathology results next Tuesday. Don't worry, it's looks very benign and the doctors are sooo not worried. Although, of course, it still freaks me out.
2. Toothache: 3rd root canal, mysterious "other procedure" that was mentioned on the phone today when I threatened to just have this tooth removed or uh, remove the tooth.
3. And must continue to reduce stress (hah) in my life.

MMMmmm...fruit smoothie with straw for breakfast.....

Posted by jennj at 09:11 AM | Comments (2)

woof

Batman Begins goes on sale tomorrow. Now I can rewind and watch Christian Bale do those push-ups over and over and.....

Posted by jennj at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)

priorities out of whack

From the One Laptop per Child MIT site, as part of the answer to the question, "Why do children in developing nations need laptops?"

"...They are a wonderful way for all children to "learn learning" through independent interaction and exploration...."

Learn learning. Learn learning.

Anybody else having a problem with this? I think computers are great. You all know that. I just can't help but feel that what children need in developing nations is food, medicine and clothing more than...say WiFi.

Posted by jennj at 12:19 PM | Comments (7)

blurbs from vacation

I always love it when we spend time with Lora (sis) and Jason (bro-in-llaw) by ourselves. Just the four of us, laughing our assess off. So, some of my favorite memories from our vacation:

* Playing scrabble and Lora drawing letters that spell "BAHAMAS". Honest to god, folks, she did.
* Eating at Palo, the fancy (you had to spend extra) restaurant on the Disney Wonder. Twice.
* Snorkeling with nbh and pointing out beautiful sea creatures, plants and other cool stuff to each other.
* Waking up each morning to wild animals outside our balconey while we stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We didn't have any zebra or giraffe, but we did get vultures, spoonbills, ankole cattle (how do they hold their heads up??), ostrich and some other birds whose names escape me.
* Getting to see our honeymoon Legacy Tile at Epcot (They don't install it until 4-6 weeks after you take the picture so you don't get to see it until you visit Epcot again).
* Relaxing, reading and just turning the brain off.

Not so favorite memories:

* Walking into our hotel room at the Wild Animal Lodge at DisneyWorld and assaulted by cigarette stench in our _non smoking room_. Disney moved us to another room with no troubles whatsoever. Note to smokers: please, stay in a smoking room. And if you can't get one, smoking on the balconey does not guarantee that the smoke stench won't seep into the room. It does.
* Eating too f*ing much on the cruise and at such a late hour.
* Getting stung by something while snorkeling.
* Having to come home.

Posted by jennj at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)

cats rock

Kevin sent me a link to this site of a Lego church someone made and dedicated to their cat *giggle* (sorry, can't help myself). It's a beautiful piece of Lego art. Her FAQ says she'll have to disassemble it if she creates a new project and I hope that she finds a way to prevent that from happening. I especially like the "glass" windows behind the pulpit.

And to prove that I've been working from home today and being oh so productive, I do have a picture to share with you.....

I had stepped away from my laptop for about 10 minutes...and chris called me into the office so I could see this....

Posted by jennj at 03:01 PM | Comments (4)

*yawn*

We're home. Must go to sleep. More later. It was really, really fun.

Posted by jennj at 09:48 PM | Comments (2)

not much

So, like, we leave for our 3-day/4-day DisneyWorld/Cruise vacation Thursday morning (Meeting up with sis and bro-in-law down there!). I can't freakin' wait. So, unless anything interesting strikes me (notice that it's not a pre-requisite that it strikes YOU as interesting....shoot, I'd never post), I'll see you all in a little over a week.

Posted by jennj at 09:34 PM | Comments (2)

yesterday kicked a**

My review of Serenity is in the extended entry to avoid any spoilers.

Yesterday, the weather was perfect. About 70 degrees, Not a cloud in the sky. Just lovely.

Non-blogging husband and I walked up to Barley Corn’s to join summerblues, headpigeons, talking_sock, christina and kelly to make some home brew beer. We decided on the Oktoberfest and Bambino Summer Ale. It was so much fun. They have all the ingredients there, some great equipment and they even gave us some samples (which is how we picked the summer ale). We go back in two weeks to bottle the stuff up. Nbh is in charge of the graphics for our labels. Summerblues kicks butt for suggesting this and inviting us. We’re all gonna end up doing this again. We then went to Dah-Mee and had some lunch.

***SPOILER****
***SPOILER****

There were 16 of us who went to the film and I believe only 2 people who attended had not seen the show. This was the first time I've sent out an evite and _everyone_ said yes. We went to The Curry Leaf for dinner before the show. Mmm...Indian food...

So I’ve never quite gotten the dedication that Star Trek fans have towards their show. I mean, I like Star Trek, but the characters don’t speak to me like many of the ST fans I know feel they do. I realized last night that Firefly is my Star Trek. As the film started all I could think about was that I get another chance to see a new episode (film) with my favorite characters and how lucky I was. Dork.

Overall, I liked it a LOT. I have no ability to recommend it to others, whether they’ve seen the series or not. I’m too immersed in these characters and have lost complete objectivity. I will own the film. I will probably go see it again in the theatre. I hope they make more. God, I hope they make more.

The ending seemed a little rushed. I wish there were more funny lines – I can never get enough of those. I wanted more Inara and Mal story line. Why Wash? Why did they have to kill him off?

Anyway, it was good. Lots of action and the story is one long adrenaline rush. I’m happy. It did not suck.

And finally: Joss Whedon is my master now.

Posted by jennj at 09:11 AM | Comments (11)