The theatre is on its way!

And yes, we are using the black sheets again for now. It's a quick and easy way to throw up "walls" and keep the room fairly dark. This time the media is on display outside the room. 

Here it is... the projector installed and ready to go! It took four adults probably about an hour to get the job done. It wasn't a pretty site. But now we can start working on the drywall and hopefully get things really running soon. 

Grand Canyon!

Well, our trip is pretty much set. We are going to leave Friday after work on March 17th and head towards Oklahoma City. We'll stay with my brother and sister-in-law overnight and probably disc golf or geocache the next morning. Then we'll take our time over the next couple of days to actually get to the canyon; stopping in Amarillo and Albuquerque doing more disc golfing and geocaching. Once we get there, we'll try to do the hike down to the river. And we've also booked a cool helicopter ride! I am very excited about that part. Finally, we'll take our time on the way back too; making similar stops before finally getting home either Saturday or Sunday, March 25th or 26th. Oh... and the best part -- we are renting a car, so I don't have to worry about Justin wrecking mine again. :)

Vacation planning

Justin and I have been talking about going to the Grand Canyon over Spring Break for a couple weeks now. I kept asking him to plan the trip, and basically what I heard was "Yeah, yeah. It's taken care of." Well our concepts of plan are pretty different. He was under the impression we could just drive out there, find a hotel we like, goof off for awhile, find some trails to hike, and then come back when we felt like we were done. I, on the other hand, was under the impression that plan meant to gather research, book events ahead of time, and understand what is available and what is not. After some discussion, it was decided to at least figure out where good hiking would be. One of Justin's first hits proved my point. Needless to say, there will be more research done before we leave.

Just plain bad

Occasionally, I will knowingly pick a lame movie to watch, because sometimes you can find that gem of a B-movie that is still enjoyable. You know, something that you like to laugh at like the forgettable fourth Alien movie, or that silly vampire and werewolves movie. Anyway, I went looking for something like that last night when we watched Timeline (2003). I'm going to have to rate it a 2. The book wasn't that great in the first place, but the concept was intriguing to me, and I believed there could have been watchable pieces to it. It turns out that I was wrong, and this movie is just plain bad.

Top Movies of 2005

Using a combined score from both my and Justin's rating. The titles should link to IMDB, and the rating should link to our comments. For more movie ratings, visit our home page, http://www.justinandangie.com. (2005 was not a great year for movies, in our opinion.)

Rank	Title	Angie Rating	Justin Rating
1	Aviator	7	9
1	Batman Begins	9	7
3	Mr. & Mrs. Smith	8	7
4	Serenity	8	6
4	Sin City	7	7
6	Million Dollar Baby	6	7
7	March of the Penguins	6	6
7	War of the Worlds (2005)	6	6
9	King Kong	6	5
10	Charlie and the Chocolate Factory	5	5

Becoming human

Finally, after waiting patiently and jumping through some hoops, I have made it through the conversion process. U.S. Central, where I have been a contractor for the last six months, has made me a decent offer to convert to a real employee, and I accepted. Of course, there are still more paperwork-hoops to go through before things are "official", but I am glad to be done with the whole contracting thing. If I ever have to do that again, I will know to ask for 150% salary to offset the loss of vacation, sick time, and sanity.