My So Called Life

A10 gets an A+

/ Shane / Leave a comment

In addition to watching some movies, I also mentioned going out to eat while the kids were gone. In particular, we finally (finally, FINALLY) made it to A10.

We have been meaning to go to A10 for a long time. I remember peeking in the windows when they were still building the place. We were excited! And yet, it’s been open for almost a year, and we’d never actually made it.

Now, I’m a guy who’s willing to drive for food, and A10 is the kind of place that I would drive to. The menu is unique and interesting, and the food was great. The location is great, and the place exudes cool. The bar is one of those places where you want to order martinis or an Old Fashioned and wait for Dean Martin to stroll in. Even the bathroom was cool.

We had the country bacon pizza to start, and Sara followed that up with the A10 burger. I went with the green tomato sandwich, on the waiter’s recommendation. It was good. I would have prefered a few more green tomatoes (the sandwich should rightfully be called “the pork belly sandwich which happens to have some green tomatoes”), but it was tasty and filling.

But here’s where it gets cooler still.

Apparently there was some kind of computer glitch that caused a bit of a wait. It took about 40 minutes for our food to come out. It was definitely a long time, and I looked at my watch more than once, but we were there without kids and it wasn’t an unenjoyable time. The waiter apologized profusely to us and another table, but we really weren’t that put out. Perhaps we would have been, but again, no kids, and nowhere to be. After we had finished eating, the manager stopped by and casually mentioned that it was unacceptable that we had to wait for so long, and the food was on the house.

Looks like someone just earned themselves a blog post.

It was completely unexpected and I almost had to ask to hear it again, I was so surprised. We would have been happy with just taking a couple of bucks off, hell, we were happy as-is. The apology was sufficient. But that’s what a good restaurant does. They make you WANT to come back, and to tell all your friends about the place, and to order drinks that would fit in on the set of Mad Men until you think a dead guy from the Rat Pack is talking to you.

Take a minute to compare that to our experience at Founding Farmers. It’s as close to a photo-negative as you can get.

A10, man. Tell your friends. Get some of those northsiders to drive down to OUR neighborhood for a change. I’m sorry it took us so long to try it.

The Desolation of Shane Halbach

/ Shane / 1 Comment

One of the movies we watched while the kids were gone was the Desolation of Smaug. It would have been hard to be more disappointed with a movie.

I don’t know if I would say The Hobbit is my favorite book of all time, but it’s certainly the book that I’ve read the most times. I still remember the summer afternoon when, desperately digging through my mom’s old books for something interesting to read, I pulled out her old copy of The Hobbit. Finding that book simultaneously sparked a love affair with fantasy fiction that I’m still experiencing today, and changed my worldview (“Mom used to read good books??).

This was as opposed to the Lord of the Rings books, which I would never count among my favorite books. The Lord of the Rings were too long, too flowery, and just…too long. I read them, multiple times, and they were alright. The Hobbit on the other hand was short, funny, full of action and adventure, and clearly intended for a much younger audience (since it is, yanno, a children’s book and all). The Hobbit is easier to chew then the full Lord of the Rings trillogy, and to me, that was its major strength.

On the other hand, I really loved the Lord of the Rings movies. I had been waiting my entire life for someone to make a legitimately awesome fantasy movie (well, waiting ever since I had read The Hobbit). I own them all on DVD. I love them. You can imagine how excited I was when it was announced that Peter Jackson was going to make a movie of the Hobbit!

And then it became 3 movies. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I didn’t dislike the first Hobbit movie. It was enjoyable. I didn’t like the changes they introduced, but it was alright. This second installment, however, was not alright. Not alright at all.

As I said, the brevity of the book was its greatest asset. This movie is so full of unnecessarily drawn out fight scenes and added content, it would make George Lucas blush. You could remove entire hours (yes, plural) from the film and not affect the storyline whatsoever. And why not? The movies at this point have deviated so widely and thoroughly from the source material, I have to wonder why the writers even started from an existing story in the first place?

In case you are not familiar with the book, I would like to point out a few things (spoilers ahead). This is a kids’ book. There are no beheadings (I think there were at least 4 or 5 in the movie). There are no orcs trying to assassinate the dwarves. No fighting from river barrels. There is no love triangle between elves and dwarves. The dwarves do not fight Smaug. I repeat, they DO NOT FIGHT THE DRAGON. So that whole, inexplicably complicated and confusing 45 minute scene at the end? Totally made up. All this retconning to make the movie fit into the Lord of the Rings movie? Bogus.

There are two problems with making changes to the original story:

  1. You’re sort of implying you know how to tell a better story than J.R.R. Tolkien. Stop it. He didn’t need all these extra villians and wizards and love interests. There’s a reason this book is a classic, and a reason you wanted to make a movie out of it.
  2. The more you change, the more you have to change. Let me give you an example: you want to make the barrel scene more exciting, so you add orcs to fight. It’s not realistic that so many orcs would fail to hurt the dwarves in any way, so you have Kili get shot with an arrow. Well, you know that you’ve added a big fight scene with the dragon, and surely Kili can’t fight with an arrow wound (and what the heck, let’s make it a poison arrow!), plus you need to set up a love scene with this new elf  you added into the mix, so I guess Kili’s not going to be able to go to the mountain with everybody else. But wait a minute, now we’ve got the dwarves splitting up! So that means we’re going to have to change… It just goes on and on, and the more you change, the farther you get from the text.

I want to speak to Peter Jackson for a minute.

Peter. I love you man. Not the now you, the you from before you made LOTR. The guy who made Dead Alive, a movie that was as seminal to my development as The Hobbit was. Dead Alive is possibly the greatest zombie movie of all time, and I don’t say that lightly. Back then you were just a guy who liked Tolkien, who wanted to make the movie because you were a fan, and only a fan could do it right, man. What happened to that guy? What happened to doing it right?

As a Hobbit fan, and as a Peter Jackson fan, I am your target audience. It doesn’t *get* any more target audience than me. If I am bored out of my skull by your movie, you are not. doing. it. right.

The Hobbit is not Lord of the Rings.

You’ve lost me on this one, buddy. Next time, do the right thing. Maybe we can still be friends.

Sincerely,
A Disappointed Fan
Whose Childhood You Just Crapped On For Profit

No Kids: Addendum

/ Shane / Leave a comment

The kids were pretty emotional tonight when they got back. After we got Ollie into bed, he started sobbing as hard as I’ve ever heard him sob. “I don’t need help with anything!” he called out from his bedroom. I think the poor boy was just emotionally overwhelmed.

He’s such a sweetheart!

No kids, no kids, la la la la laaaa la

/ Shane / Leave a comment

At the beginning of the summer, we were trying to figure out how in the world we were going to cover childcare. We asked a lot of family members if they could help with the various days, but it just worked out such that all of our volunteer-covered dates were in August.

This was both good and bad. The bad part was that by the time August rolled around, I *really, really* needed a break. I have been, shall we say, not doing my best parenting lately. I mean EXTREMELY not my best parenting lately. It probably would have been nice to sprinkle a few breaks in there somewhere.

On the other hand, everything is coming together at once, and we are getting a nice, long, wonderful, relaxing time without the kids. Aside from last Wednesday, the kids were gone for NINE days.

Oooh, I can’t tell you how nice it has been. Sara and I almost never do anything without the kids. We only very occasionally get a babysitter, and even then it’s usually at night when the kids are in bed anyway. It has been a very magical time.

While they’ve been gone, we’ve played Agricola, rented a bunch of movies, woke up when we felt like it (which JUST HAPPENED to be at 6:30), knitted, gone out to eat, cleaned, and canned. A LOT:

no kids canning

Pictured: spicy tomato jam, corn salsa, pickled beans, and corn stock

We ate whatever we felt like, and had ice cream with espresso on top. Ice cream with espresso on top!

We have also been cleaning like crazy people, mostly doing all the things we never get around to. We thoroughly cleaned the kids’ bedrooms, putting away all the clothes that don’t fit them, throwing out all the broken toys, putting away things they don’t play with anymore. It might not seem very relaxing to do all these things, but I assure you it is good for my soul.

Besides, without the kids here, there’s so much more time in the day! You can do a bunch of cleaning and STILL have time to relax!

Sara and I even went for a run together. I assure you that has never happened before (and most likely never will again!). Sara basically tried to kill me. She made me run a 5k and my legs were sore for days afterwards. That’s certainly the first time I’ve run more than 2 miles IN MY LIFE.

It has been so wonderful to have a break (and more on the way as we wind down the summer). I haven’t felt this close to Sara since we were dating.

In other words, does anybody want to husband-sit? I think she’s probably getting pretty sick of me.

In which I almost have a psychotic break

/ Shane / 2 Comments

So, I was at work the other day, when I noticed my vision was going a little blurry. Not blurry exactly…just kind of like if you looked at the sun for a long time and then looked at something else. Like there was a ghost spot over the center of my vision. I didn’t think much of it, and tried to blink it away.

Over the next 10 minutes or so, it got increasingly worse. A large, blurry crescent shape developed in my right peripheral vision. It was very odd. If I looked in that direction it would move or disappear, but if I looked straight ahead it was as if there were a giant kaleidoscope covering everything to my right. I could sort of see shapes and colors through it, but it was like looking through thick glass or something.

At this point I started to freak out a little bit. I had no idea what was going on; it was like nothing I have ever experienced. I decided that something was wrong with my eye, most likely that my cornea was becoming detached.

Now, there’s two things you have to know about me. The first is that eye things REALLY FREAK ME OUT. Sara used to chase me around touching her eyeball, just to squick me out. Even typing this now makes my eyes water like crazy. The thought of my cornea detaching (::shudder::) literally makes sick to my stomach.

Second is that I’m more of a “rub some dirt on it!” kind of a guy, and absolutely not a “going to the doctor” kind of guy. I don’t know why exactly. It’s not like I’ve had some bad experience or something. But in any case, it’s got to be like bones-sticking-out-of-the-skin for me to go to the hospital (and even then…)

I only say this to try to explain my mental state. On one hand, I was absolutely sure that the worst possible thing was happening to me. On the other hand, well we don’t need all that fuss of like calling an eye doctor or anything, do we? It’ll be fine! Can’t we just, I don’t know, make an eye patch out of paper and masking tape or something?

So as I sat, agonizing in silence, I was rubbing my eyes like crazy and trying to blink the problem away. The shimmering crescent had expanded to the point that it had completely swallowed the peripheral vision on my right side. I completely couldn’t see. I tried covering first one eye and then the other, but it seemed like the crescent was there no matter which eye I covered up.

Based on this hard science, I deduced that either:

  1. Both of my corneas were falling off,
  2. I had developed a brain tumor, or
  3. I was experiencing a psychotic break

I kept thinking, “Have I been stressed out? Is this somehow stress related?”

At this point I decided that I had better go home. By the time I got out to the car, my vision was more or less returned. Even still, I called Sara to explain what was going on just in case I blacked out or totally lost my vision while driving. I was really freaked out and didn’t know if something was really, really wrong.

Well, I guess not, because it never returned. All that night and the next day, I was fine.

I was still a bit worried about it though, so I googled it. Apparently it’s pretty common, since I was immediately able to find lots of people describing exactly what I experienced, right down to the floating kaleidoscope crescent. It was so weird to read someone (many someones) describing exactly what I had experienced as though they were inside my head. It was just so specific.

Apparently it is an “ophthalmic migraine” which is harmless if you don’t get the actual headache afterwards.

When it is large, this crescent shaped blind spot containing this brightly flashing light can be difficult to ignore, and some people fear that they are having a stroke. In reality, it is generally a harmless phenomenon, except in people who subsequently get the headache of migraine. Since migraine originates in the brain, the visual effect typically involves the same side of vision in each eye, although it may seem more prominent in one eye or the other. Some people get different variations of this phenomenon, with the central vision being involved, or with the visual effect similar to “heat rising off of a car”. Some people describe a “kaleidoscope” effect, with pieces of the vision being missing. All of these variations are consistent with ophthalmic migraine.

So yeah, no big deal I guess? Having the vision center in your brain randomly malfunction doesn’t really seem like a “no big deal” kind of thing, but I guess it certainly sounds better than a brain tumor or my corneas falling off!