Back to Work!

Busy morning getting back into the swing of things. So here are a few random thoughts floating through my brain. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves or to add your own observations:

- Take a wild guess as to which morning over the past ten days the Llama-ettes chose to sleep in. As the old comic strip said, "They'll do it every time."

- Yo Coloss! I don't give a damn whether the Pats cared about the game or not. We won. My rule is that any season in which the Fins take at least one game off the Pats is a good one.

- And speaking of football, Hook 'em, Horns!

- We had a genuine thunderstorm here in Northern Virginia last evening. I would swear that cold-weather thunder sounds different from the summer variety and would guess it has something to do with the effect of temperature and/or humidity on the way sound waves travel through the atmosphere.

- And speaking of weather, who in the world ever came up with the idea of outdoor grilling as a summer activity? Personally, I hate standing over the ol' Weber when it's 90 degrees out. Give me a good, crisp evening for firing up the charcoal.

- I didn't do a retrospective of 2005 because I can't really remember what happened. By the same token, I won't offer any resolutions for 2006 because I can't think that far ahead.

- JohnL is promising to bring back his SciFi Babes Poll. This is good. The LMC and I were discussing the babes of Firefly over New Year's Eve. He's a Zoe fan, but I can't get overly enthusiastic about a woman who could kick my backside up one side of the block and down the other without even breaking a sweat.

- I continue to enjoy Netflix but my postman seems to have developed a talent for losing DVD's. If I report too many more MIA's, I'm afraid Netflix is going to start charging me for them. Most recent viewing - Jimmy Stewart in The Far Country, one of a number of westerns he made with Anthony Mann. They're really worth watching if you haven't seen them before. I've been mulling doing a longer post comparing Stewart's troubled loner character with, say, Clint Eastwood's typical Angel of Vengence and John Wayne's sociable lion.

- Next movie in the qeue? Star Wars: Episode III. Yes, I'm going to watch it just so I can say I finished out the series. The consensus seems to be that it's the best of the recent batch, but that's not saying very much.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that over the break I also caught a couple episodes of Rome on HBO and, in general, I think it's pretty good - closer to I, Claudius than Gladiator, but with much more vir in the via subplotting and superior production values. However, I was disappointed that Caesar didn't get to mutter, "Et tu, Brute?" when they waxed him. The other thing about the show is that I believe the animated graffiti and art work in the opening titles are a direct rip-off of (or maybe tribute to) the closing credits to A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum.