An Epiphany

Today is the Christian holiday of Epiphany, which commemorates the visitation by the wise men from the East (and by extension the revelation of Christ's coming to gentiles) as described in Matthew 2.

(The Christmas carol The Twelves Days of Christmas covers the days between Christmas and Epiphany, i.e., the twelve days of Christmas.)

Generally, the churches I've attend throughout my life have been Christian churches that didn't really observe the liturgical calendar... nearly all Baptist, and one Wesleyan. When I was young, I was pretty oblivious to the existence of such Christian holidays. I heard about Lent ("something about giving up chocolate for a week") and how Catholics typically (at least back in the day) had fish on Fridays. I'm not sure why some denominations stopped observing those holidays... probably having to do with concerns about legalism or a perception of form becoming too important. I think though that the result is that many Christians have lost a connection to the historical richness of their religion.

This morning some members of Congress read aloud the text of the Constitution from the floor of the House to kick off the beginning of the 112th Congress. I'm glad they did, and I think they should continue doing this at the opening of each subsequent congress. They all already swear an oath to uphold it... it's good for them to have a regular reminder of what it actually says.

Charles Krauthammer, a political commentator I greatly admire, remarked yesterday about the transfer of power from the 111th to the 112th Congress:

I’m always struck — I’m a sucker for this — the quiet majesty of the transfer of power. We are a country that’s been doing it for almost a quarter of a millennium, and to see it, even though it’s not at the presidential level but at the House level, is still impressive. [link to source at NRO]

I couldn't agree more.

Remember the massive snow storm that struck the east coast at the end of December, 2010? They received so much snow, it was like Hoth there, requiring the use of All Terrain Armored Transport vehicles in NYC. for moving around the city. More here at Gothamist.

A Different Kind of War

Not too much had happened yesterday. I felt really tired all day... stupid Monday. In the evening, Sarah found some card games. She and I played Non-Violent Politically Correct War. It's like the regular card game War, except that to win you need to get rid of all your cards. Plus, all the cards have on them nice PC terms like "unity", "diversity" and "peace". Though the Joker card looks like a cross between Rambo and Duke Nukem.  Sarah won, in case you were wondering. By the way, here's a link to the rules.

Overnight we received a few inches of snow. Nice to see the world covered in fresh snow again.

A co-worker at my day job celebrated 25 years with the company today. Hard to imagine working at the same company for so long. The cakes were all pretty good... they had three kinds:

• white with raspberry jam in middle layer,
• chocolate marble with bavarian cream middle layer, and
• chocolate with chocolate icing.

Sarah made empanadas tonight for supper, using a filling I'd made this morning of browned taco meat and chopped onions and green pepper. Mmm... The dough she used was left over from Dutch pigs in a blanket. (If you're up here in Dutch country, be sure to get some. They rock!)

After supper I had an LCS appointment to help a previous customer with a problem he was having with email software and his ISP's email servers. As far as I could tell, the problem was with the ISP. Very strange. And then his email software suddenly started working anyway! I think the ISP's email server doesn't like having multiple email software accessing the same mail account within some arbitrary time frame. Regardless, the customer had already created a Gmail account, so with his permission I set the ISP email to auto-forward everything to there, which I what I've been doing for years.

Sir Eustace and the Green Mist

movie poster

Two days after Christmas we went as a group to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. We did not see the 3D version. (By "we" I mean "Sarah with an 'h'", "Bennett the Backpack Wearer", "Tim the Ever-Hungry", and me.)

(warning: this post contains spoilers)

Before the Movie

Upon entering the theater, we promptly got into the admissions line. Standing immediately in front of us in line was a flock of teens who became confused about showtimes or admission charges or something when it was their turn to talk to the cashier. Fortunately, they quickly (well, quickly for a flock of teens) left the line so we could buy our tickets. It's so fascinating to observe them in the wild!

We took our seats in the appropriate theater in time to listen (not watch, just listen) to 20 or so minutes of commercials "on" the silver screen, as apparently the theater didn't see a need to run the projector. Just before they started playing the movie trailers, though, they decided to turn on the projector so we finally had something to watch.  Yay!

Bumblebee from Transformers

One of the trailers was really cool. It depicted mankind's first trip to the moon back in the late 1960s. According to the trailer, though, the astronauts landed first on the dark side of the moon in order to quickly investigate a crash-landed highly-advanced alien space craft. While this was playing, I, of course, was thinking about the first part of Alien (one of the best suspense/monster/scifi movies of all time). It's all really looking pretty cool, like the movie might be some sort of alternate history. Then they showed it... Transformers: Dark of the Moon. *sigh*

The Movie

I really liked the movie. When it had finished, it didn't seem as if we'd been watching it for so long (in a good way). Lots of good action and adventure, with little down time.

Speaking of which... the movie did at times feel rushed. As if the director were under orders to keep the total run-time under 2 hours and thus had to edit out scenes in order to hit that restriction. Scenes that weren't bad... but just pushed the run time over the arbitrary limit. And in the process, the movie ends up losing.

A really good example of this is when they were on the Magician's island (the one with the Dufflepuds)... that part alone probably could've been 5 - 10 minutes longer. Why do the Dufflepuds, according to the movie, have only one foot? And who wouldn't have wanted to see more of that island? Or of the Magician's mansion? In the movie, the Magician seems to exist solely for exposition, unfortunately, and he and his island are quickly gone.

There was another part of the movie, when they'd been sailing through a storm for quite a while, during which the captain of the ship warned Caspian about how the storm is affecting the crewmembers (hint: not in a good way). A few seconds later they're sailing out of the storm. It seemed like a minute or two had been cut here, too... the movie just seemed to jump too quickly from "the crew might do something drastic" to "yay, land & sunshine".

The movie also, I think, could've spent more time on Ramandu's island. And perhaps exploring the tension between Caspian and Edmund regarding his daughter.

Most any book turned into a movie will have its story altered to better fit the medium, and this story was no exception. Generally, I think the changes gave the movie a much tighter, faster-paced story, in a good way. Though, as I've already mentioned, perhaps too fast-paced.

I've read a few reviews complaining about the part of the movie when Aslan turns Eustace back into a boy differing significantly from the book. I think the way the movie did it well-suited the movie format.

A subplot involved a temptation Lucy faced, and the consequences she and others might have experienced were she to have fully given in. It was very well-done, especially with the foreshadowing used.

I loved the scene where Lucy caused snow to fall. That was really cool.

A big difference between the book and the movie, is that in the movie their quest quickly turns into a need to fight the Green Mist and its implied evil, and collect seven magic swords. None of that is in the book. Frankly, I think it's a much better story for having this in there... in that the Green Mist/magic swords plot provides a strong purpose for Caspian's voyage, a sense of urgency, that merely trying to find seven lost noblemen doesn't.

It was really clever how the movie makers continue to include the White Witch in the movies. I suspect that if they do make a movie based on The Silver Chair, that they will change the antagonist to be the White Witch, either resurrected or reborn in some way.

By the way, the dude who played Eustace did an amazingly good job.

I give the movie 3.0/4.0, good but not great. Definitely family friendly, though young children might be scared by the some scenes.

Links

Christianity Today's review (2.5/4.0)
interview with dude who played Eustace (from Christianity Today)
Christianity Today's section devoted to movie coverage
Walden Media's movie site

The post's title is a reference to the epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Day-Long Headache

Georgie at rest

We were awakened early this morning by a work call for Sarah. Neither of us slept well after that. Oh well.

This morning our pastor's sermon wrapped up a series about Christmas, God with us, focused on the work of the Holy Spirit who empowers us to follow Christ. Some major points were:

• Our struggle with sin is not just regarding our behavior, but also a battle of our mind.
• How this new year goes for us relies heavily on whether our minds are controlled by the Holy Spirit.
• Our perception of a situation matters greatly in how that situation affects us... do we pray that God will "fix" a tough situation vs. change our perception of that situation?
• We choose what we give our attention to... give attention to what is good.

After church, Sarah and I stopped at the school to return checked-in library books to the shelves. That didn't take too long.

Bears lost, but the Colts won. Playoffs start next week. Yay!

We all return to our normal schedules tomorrow. Christmas break wasn't as restful as I'd hoped. Not sure why. Oh well.

Temperature got up to 30 today, I think. Pretty windy at times.

Happy New Year, 2011

Winter returned today. Yay! The temperature dropped throughout the day and the winds picked up. I think the daytime temperature was around 35.

I got a good start on two of my new year's resolutions. One of them is to read the Bible through this year. The boys + Olivia had given me a chronological NIV Bible for Christmas. Neat!

Even though I was up pretty late the night before waiting for Tim to return from his party, I didn't sleep in too late. I just don't like feeling as if I'm sleeping the day away, and that's how I feel whenever I'm in bed past 10 AM.  I had a pretty busy day, anyway, and wanted to get started on it.

First, I started my world-famous pizza meatballs in the slow cooker... sauteed some chopped onions, then mixed into that some pasta sauce and my secret ingredients, and poured that over the meatballs.

After my wife's lunch break, I wrapped presents for our extended family Christmas party. Then we all went to that party. It was a pretty good time. Doug & Olivia showed up! And I kind of learned a new card game. I forget its name, though.  Something like "nerf" cards, because when you think you've one a round, you yell out "nerf!" (only not "nerf" but rather the word you're really supposed to yell out).

Here are some pictures:

dinner!

dinner, still! and there's Bennett again! and
Jon sure does turn around a lot!

snowman on the tree, just hanging out