Saturday, June 27, 2009

Making progress

So it's been a while but a lot has been going on... As of yesterday we informed our landlord that we'll be moving out by July 31. Our apartment hasn't been so bad but we've found as soon as our good neighbors move out we have become surrounded by people who lack common sense and courtesy. Needless to say the new place was put on the back burner for sometime until we realized we'd be moving in less than one month. Here's some pictures of what has been done lately.

Here's our wonderful kitchen floor which Carolyn put together in no time. The large boxes are the cabinets just waiting to see the light of day. Ali is very excited to have a normal sized kitchen that two people can fit in. As for myself I'm simply stoked for a dishwasher.

Just one of our many lovely cabinets... On the top right corner of the cabinet are the samples of the counter tops that we're pretty sure we'll choose.


Here we have our soon to be family room, we're excited to receive the carpet for this room on July 8. This room may look small but it's much larger than our current family room.


Last Wednesday we finished painting our bedroom which became more time consuming than we first expected... but we're happy with how it looks. Ignore the all the clutter in the middle because it'll be gone soon enough.

The bathroom is still a work in progress

As you can see our laundry room also doubles as a tanning bed!!!

We still have a lot to finish before the end of the month, but we feel everything will work out.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Two 3D Thumbs Way Up for... well... UP!!!

So I consider myself to be a huge movie fan... my wife would say that's an understatement. Even though we watch our share of movies we never make it out to the theater, but lucky for us we stumbled upon a free movie ticket to see the new Pixar movie UP! Ali and I made a date night and enjoyed a rushed dinner at Iggy's before experiencing UP in 3D. Now I was very skeptical of how good this experience would be... after all, in my mind 3D does have a history of being a cheesy novelty that'll leave you with a headache. After we paid for our tickets I was surprised to have been given a plastic pair of glasses instead of crummy paper ones with red and blue lenses that were designed for a small child. We were both nervous we that we made the wrong decision and were going to experience motion sickness or something equally unpleasant. Once the trailers and film started I soon realized that I was completely wrong. The picture was sharp and clean, the film didn't create scenes or special shots to take advantage of the 3D aspect... Disney and Pixar did the correct thing in making this film simply have the impressive visuals stand out to immerse the audience. In short, this was perhaps my favorite Pixar film to this day.




The film has only a handful of characters which differs from past Pixar films, While it may seem to have a limiting premise and characters, it's done so well that it's easily on par with the Pixar films that came before it.

Like films such as Finding Nemo & Ratatouille there's also a good balance between humor and necessary character drama. These guys definitely believe it telling a good story.

This delightful adventure story follows Carl Fredricksen, an elderly man who's still in mourning for his beloved wife. And he's about to lose his home to a greedy developer who wants to put up a high-rise in its place. Rather than allowing that to happen, though, Carl decides it's time to realize his lifelong dream by taking a trip to the South American wilderness with the help of thousands for balloons strapped to his house. As much as I would love to continue explaining everything I enjoyed about this movie, there are simply too many surprises that I would hate to ruin for those who haven't seen UP yet.

To simply put it, I loved this film. It has action, comedy a bit of drama and an unbelievable amount of heart. Ali and myself found ourselves becoming teary eyed for these wonderful living characters.

If you enjoyed previous Pixar films than I can say with confidence that you wont be dissapointed! These guys continue their streak of creating incredible films in a market filled with sequals and formulaic stories.