June 09, 2007
Rainy Saturday Highlights
Airfare - It's been an overcast rainy Saturday, the kind that keeps you indoors and away from yard and lawn maintenance. Since I was stuck inside, I did some online checking for airfare for our girls to travel this summer. The girls are excited that they'll visit Chicago and the Michigan Benton Harbor area between July 25th and August 7th. Total bill for the two round trip tickets: $373. Not bad!
Movie - We decided to take the kids to Chunky's for lunch and a movie. We saw Surf's Up (official site, Wikipedia entry, Rotten Tomatoes review) . Nice story and I loved the graphics on it. It took me a while to place the voice of the main character as Shia LaBeouf, aka Louis Stevens from Disney Channel's Even Stevens.
Gymnastics - I had a brief nap on the couch and then took Timothy with me as we went to see Claire's gymnastics meet. They perform in four categories and Claire was excited to get a blue ribbon in each one. And of course, there's a trophy for all the participants.
Wii - Meanwhile in the Nintendo domain, after putting in over 30 hours into the game, Abby is near the end of Super Paper Mario. (official site, game excerpt video) Sensitive girl that she is, Abby held off finishing the game while I was watching Claire's gymnastics meet so that I could watch her as she does her final battle against the evil Count Bleck. *smirk* I don't know why, but my favorite character in the game is Nastasia, seen at right. She's Count Bleck's loyal secretary. I think it's because she is often adjusting her trendy glasses and adding words such as "Yeah...", "Sorry", and "'K?" at the beginnings and ends of her sentences. It makes her sound like the characters from Clueless. Yet, she is evil and powerful with her hypnotic abilities to turn people towards loyalty to Bleck.
Television - Michelle and I have decided for now not to make the expense of a hi-def TiVo and digital hi-def service from Comcast. The current TiVo connection is already a 480p component connection and the video noticeably improves if you tell the TiVo to use its 'Best' quality for recording. The digital video artifacts are much less noticeable on the larger screen if you do that. While it's not the high quality of an HD television broadcast, it'll be "good enough" for now. Michelle was mainly looking for the larger screen with the DVD aspect ratio. Besides, I'm nearsighted. *grin* And in less than a month, I'll be "old", at least from the kids' perspective.