Hobbit

The Hobbit was good. I had low expectations after seeing many of the previews, but I liked it. A little long, yes, but they are gonna squeeze every last dime out of the franchise.

Had lunch at  Rincon Criollo on Saturday. Authentic. Heartburn. Can't wait to go back. Checked out a few local shops. That neighborhood has really made a nice comeback.

Pic of me below from last week's Plain Dealer. Someone at work pointed it out. Surprised me, because I was walking through the board of ed. office when someone said "hey I saw you in the paper the other day". "Me?" "huh?". Had no idea, especially since I haven't been to the casino in almost 2 months. So she goes and finds the article (I've since become a celeb over there lol) and yup, there I am, only that pic was from around the time the place opened back in May. I remember them making an announcement that if you didn't want to be photographed, you might want to take a break. No one really left. So anyway, they must have went to their stock pics and pulled this one out.

Browns lose. Steelers also lose, so that's cool too. Weeden looked awful yesterday.

Another tragic school shooting on Friday. Nearly as awful were the news crews shoving microphones into the faces of 6 year olds as they exited the school where their friends were massacred. Then come the calls for gun bans. As if the first AWB actually took any guns off the street or prevented shooting sprees. Meanwhile, someone in China stabbed 20 kids at a school. I'll be first in line to hand over my guns if I can be guaranteed that I will not be the victim of violence for the rest of my life.

Upcoming weekend

First off, another great week at work! Our wireless network is nearly installed at the HS, which will be very cool once it's up and running. We'll be rolling it out to staff and students after winter break.

The Hobbit tonight! Heading to a 10:30 show (2-D. Screw 3-D) with some friends, hoping it's good. Looking at the previews, it seems there is much more CGI this time around. The scenes didn't seem quite as majestic as LOTR, and other scenes looked a bit too much like the original LOTR. I really think Guillermo Del Toro would have added some great nuances to the darker, scarier stuff of the movie. Would have had a more psychedelic feel to it for sure. Looks a bit vanilla from what I've seen in the previews. Oh well, there's no way that I'm NOT seeing it on the big screen. Several times, likely. Here's a review.

Saturday, a wee bit of Christmas shopping and some errands, then the day is free. 

Sunday...FOOTBALL!! Hoping for 4 in a row from the Browns.

Go Browns!

The Browns are only 5-8 right now, but have improved immensely this year. As long as the new management doesn't completely dismantle the team during the off season, "next year" could be an exciting one. We're on a 3-game win streak and if RG3 doesn't play next week, we can beat the Redskins. I went down to the game with Ray yesterday. Got a little wet in the 4th qtr but wasn't bad overall. Some snow would have been cool. LOVE the snow games, as much as I hate snow.

We started at the Tilted Kilt where I got an AWFUL breakfast. Of course the place isn't known for its food, but wow, this was bad. The order took a while, and my over medium eggs were really runny, the home fries were greasy, and the toast was saturated with butter. The only good things were the sausage and bacon, which were decent but not fresh-cooked. Oh well.

So, first play of the game, KC runs 80 yds for a TD. Everyone was thinking "great, it's gonna be one of THOSE days", but it wasn't to be. Those were the only points KC scored. We stopped Hillis cold all day and sacked Brady Quinn 5-6 times. Nice. Of course, the only 2 Browns jerseys I own are Hillis and Quinn.

Travis Benjamin had a 93 yard punt return for a TD, and Cribbs almost got another. The receivers actually held onto to ball. Weeden tried to toss a couple of picks, but they were dropped.

The new phone's here! The new phone's here!

Played at H2's last week. Stayed too long. Played fine and was up almost $400. Didn't listen to my little man. Got AA cracked, made a couple bad calls, chased a couple draws that whiffed. Lost $75 on the night.

Got the new phone. It's BAD ASS! Only issue is slow 3G speeds and the 4G LTE network in the CLE area is gonna be a while. Hmmm...what to do. I know one thing, this thing blows the iPhone away. It does some really slick stuff. Oh, and I got it for $48 ($148 but I got a $100 gift card from Wal Mart) Got my mom a Google Nexus 7 with that. 32GB model for $249.

Weather has been decent again. 50's and 60's lately. I'll take it all winter long.

Saw Killing Them Softly over the weekend. I really liked it. Brutal scene with Ray Liotta. Interesting, great dialogue, and had a very cool look and feel, but the end was rather abrupt. Kinda like this blog post.