Saturday morning odds and ends

LW: First, I've been remiss in saying what an AWESOME wife I have. I really do sincerely appreciate everything she does for me and the boys, to include making us AWESOME dinners. Two nights ago she made us that southwest chicken stoup again. Man I love that stuff! Last night she made some really good baked dijon salmon from a WW recipe.

Blog Wanderings: I ended up on one of those blog-wanderings this morning where clicking on one link took me to another link to me to another link. A couple of items of note:

- My Wonderful Life had this post on Dec. 7th. The first picture on that post is one I had seen before, but it all has new meaning to me now. That is the drydock where the MSP now resides. It's pretty weird looking at it and seeing a WWII battleship and two destroyers in it, and in shambles after the attack. I think RM1(SS) commented on this in my earlier post about the drydock, but it didn't really sink in until I saw the picture on MWL's blog.

- Have You Met Ted? I don't even remember what sequence of blog links led me here, but I found this blog on all things HIMYM. From there, I discovered a link to...

- Barney's Blog. This is pretty funny. If you're a HIMYM fan, you can just hear Barney saying these things he's written into his blog. If you're not a HIMYM fan... WHY THE HECK NOT?!?!

- Oh, I also found some pretty funny HIMYM t-shirts on this website.

Shipping Things to Hawaii: I do not wish to call out or chastise any particular member of my extended family (because it's been more than one person who's done it), but in the future, please consider asking me to pick up whatever you would like to buy as a gift for one of us here on the island. As the Christmas gift packages start to roll in, I am suffering from a case of "sticker shock" seeing the amount of money some of our family members have paid in shipping. It would have saved a lot of money to just buy it here on the island.

Movie Reviews: LW and I watched a couple of movies from Blockbuster this past week.

Last night we watched The Guardian (Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher movie about U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmers). I had mixed feelings about it. I did enjoy watching it, but there were some elements that got on my nerves though.
- Alternative Title 1: Officer and a Gentleman II. Lou Gossett Jr. and Richard Gere weren't available to shoot this requel (note, it's not a sequel, it's a requel because it's just telling the same story over again in a slightly different setting, but with all the same plot elements), so they got Kevin Costner to take Gossett's place and Ashton Kutcher to take Gere's place.
- Alternative Title 2: Top Gun II. They took Richard Gere's character from O&aG and gave him the arrogance and "did you figure it out yet?" attitude of Tom Cruise from Top Gun.
- Blue on Blue: I did not like the way they portrayed the Navy. A couple of the coasties went into a "squid bar" where a bunch of Navy guys in wash khakis and utilities were hanging out, drinking beer, and shooting pool. They got a very, "we don't serve your kind here" response and got into a bar fight with some of the Navy guys, while some fat Navy captain sat at his table and watched. Are there REALLY places like that out there? I just don't see anything like that happening in today's Navy or Coast Guard.

The other movie we watched earlier in the week was Casanova. It was pretty funny and enjoyable to watch. From reading other reviews, I see complaints that it's not historically accurate... but what movies ARE historically accurate??? It's meant for entertainment. I really felt like I was watching a Shakespearean comedy. The plot was a very traditional theatrical comedy.