Off to a premiere

Hi, everyone. It's time for an update. It's Sunday night, and a quiet weekend is just about over.

It was a weekend when the weather started nice, then got cool. On Sunday afternoon, I don't think the thermometer ventured higher than 45F (+7C). That's pretty discouraging for mid May. But the advance forecast says we may hit 70 (21C) next weekend. That would be our first 70 of the year.

Tonight, by the way, we have a frost warning.

This past week featured a lot of driving to track meets, two of them out of town. This weekend, we decided to stay close to home--no trips out of town. The highlight of the weekend, I guess, was my sudden decision to see if there was a movie in town that my wife would like.

There was. "Prince Caspian," the new "Chronicles of Narnia" movie that just opened, was at our local theater during its first weekend of release. Usually, we have to wait a month or two or three--or else drive 50 miles to Iron Mountain. This time, the movie was here, so we said OK, let's do it.

There were two shows, at 6 and 8:30, and we opted for the 8:30 show. More teenagers and hardly any little kids constantly running back and forth to the concessions stand and the bathroom. We got our soda and some popcorn and settled down in the new seats. The theater put in some wider seats with arms that can be raised so we can sit close to each other. We enjoy doing that.

The thing of it is that my wife has been known to get sleepy while watching movies at home with me, but she promised to stay alert. And she did. We both enjoyed the movie. The only problem is that neither of us had read the book, so we didn't know the story that well. For that reason, the plot was a little hard to follow at times. But we made enough sense out of it, and we were quite satisfied with the story, the acting and how it all came out.

I was quite pleased when my wife wore a top that shows off more bosom than she normally does. So that was nice, too. Maybe we'll go off to more movies. The new Indiana Jones movie comes out in another week--we're planning to take my mom to see that one in June--and then "Mamma Mia" comes out that summer. My wife is a big ABBA fan, and several ABBA CDs are stored on my IPod.

Speaking of that, I finally opted last week to order a new Ipod. My old one, which I have had for about four years, is about maxed out on space--you wouldn't think 30 gigs would fill up so fast--and I had been on the verge of getting a new one for the last six months. All this time I was trying to decide whether to get an 80 gig model or a 160 gig model for $100 more.

I finally opted for the smaller model. I don't store TV programs or movies on it--just music and podcasts, mainly for use when I'm driving here and there. So I think the 80 gigs will last me a long time. Of course, I thought the 30 gigs would last me a long time, too.

The new one is going to be silver. The old one I have is black. I might recondition it and give it to my wife, if she's interested. There are portable radios (fairly inexpensive) that you can dock it to, so she could play it near her sewing machine or wherever she's working in the house.

Despite the cool weather, I was going to mow the back yard this afternoon. But there was a problem with the mower's handle, and I think I'll have to run to the hardware store tomorrow to get a big round-headed screw.

The paper has an early deadline this week because of Memorial Day holiday, so it's a short turnaround--we'll put one edition of the paper together tomorrow and another on Friday. It should make for a busy week. Another busy week.