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Greetings. Everything was going smoothly yesterday until about 11:00am. Then I noticed a slight raw feeling in my throat. By noon I was in the grip of a full-blown winter cold. Sore throat, headache, weakness, diziness, and general inability to keep my eyes open. I went home and slept until 5:00.

I was able to eat a bit, using my illness as an excuse to avoid my wife's patented "leftover crap 'n tofu" crockpot stew. (Hmmm, maybe I got sick as a pre-emptive measure against that. I wonder if anyone's ever done a study relating early morning sightings of a crockpot on the counter vs. evening nausea?)

Then we settled in on the couch to vegetate. (The Boy went into the office to surf the Internet for Nintendo cheat codes, and the cats wandered in and out trying to maximize their opportunities to annoy someone.) Since we had two Netflix DVDs waiting, we decided to skip the baseball game and go for a movie.

We chose "The Others" with Nicole Kidman and Fionulla Flanagan. It seemed to be a pretty straightforward entry in the "creepy old house full fulla odd and possibly brain-damaged English people" genre. Though I can't recall the circumstances, I had at some point in the past decided that I really disliked Kidman, but she wasn't too bad in this flick. It was creepy, though nothing to cause nightmares. And I was taken by surprise by the big "twist" toward the end. But it was more of the "hmpfh" variety of surprise, rather than the "Oh my God!" type.

A movie like that should at least make an attempt to have one or more characters who are a little bit likeable. And I'm wondering why it always has to be a creepy old Victorian type house. Has there ever been a creepy horror/ghost film set in an ultra-modern apartment? (OK, maybe Ghostbusters, but I can't think of any others.)

Anyway, I rather enjoyed the film, even though I really didn't care who got eaten by ghosts or buried under the leaves in the back yard. And I guess I still don't. I won't recommend it... but if you got nothing better to do, you could probably sit through it.

We checked the score in the ball game, and it looked like SF had it well under control, so we threw in another DVD. "Charlie's Angels". We both expected to hate it, since it just looked SO stupid and had gotten abysmal reviews. And I am pretty sure that my wife's expectations were met.

I was pleasantly surprised. I actually rather enjoyed it. Perhaps I was OD'd on guafenisen and dextromethorphan hydrobromide, but I smiled quite a bit throughout the film. It was stupid, no doubt, but it was stupid in a slightly amusing way. I still don't like Drew Barrymore, and I can't say that I'm a big fan of Cameron Diaz...and this movie did nothing to enhance my opinion of Lucy Liu, either. But I really enjoyed seeing Crispin Glover as the oil ninja-trained bad guy, and Bill Murray is always watchable. I also enjoyed Matt LeBlanc's small part. It was fluff, but it was better fluff than I'd been led to believe it would be. I was never able to suspend disbelief, but that was OK, cuz it was just a stupid movie about a stupid TV show. I wish I could come up with a better reason to say I liked it than "It didn't suck as bad as it should have", but I can't. It was what it was. Take it or leave it, I guess.

Not sure what's next on my movie viewing schedule. I'm teaching at CompuSkills tomorrow and Sunday, so I'd better be feeling better by morning. I'll probably take lots of drugs, so don't be surprised if you hear that students were told that Excel is small oriental bird with a habit of nesting deep within the tropical Pepsi and french fries on a lawnmower. Purple monkey diswasher.

Wish me luck. Hopefully I'll be healthy over the weekend. Don't forget to set your clocks back.

See ya,
Terry