Wall-E

We took the children to watch this film today at the cinema. It was my wife's idea. There was a short animated film at the beginning about a magician and his rabbit. My 5 year old son absolutely loved it, laughed his head off he did! That was great. The main attraction was Wall-E. I've been aware of the hype recently, everywhere I go or every advert I watch seems to have the robot depicted somewhere. I had only read one brief review of the film before watching it but I think my wife was more exposed to it than I. The story is about man filling Earth up with junk and blasting off into space for a massive exodus vacation while the Wall-E robots clean the Earth up and make it habitable once more. However, as time goes by the vacation turns out to be much, much longer - like 700 years! By then, everyone's bones have gotten smaller since they just sit around on hover chairs constantly watching their personal screens infront of their noses. They get their daily nutrition from big drink cartons that robots are only to happy to supply after the slightest request. Meanwhile, Wall-E has been on Earth keeping it clean as the sole robot of his type. He has made a home for himself and a cockroach. His world is changed when he falls in love with another robot dropped off on Earth to check for signs of vegetation capable of sustaining human life. This other robot is super-sophisticated compared to Wall-E but somehow they fall in love and have to save humanity from the comfort and sloth of life on board the big pleasure cruiser. I thought the best part of the film was the scale of the worlds created by the animators. The detail was incredible, always is with Pixar, but on such a scale it was fascinated viewing. Particularly the first half hour on Earth which was mainly just Wall-E without talking. To keep the audience engaged for such a length of time without any dialogue in the script, was truly a magnificent feat in itself. My wife had read a review talking about it being the best film ever made (or words to that effect). It's certainly not that, but I thought it was a very enjoyable film and one for both adults and children to enjoy.

Work, Work and More Work!

I haven't mentioned this before but since the end of Spring I've been doing two jobs: trying to keep my own job going as well as looking after some of my managers stuff while he works on a new big project. Stepping up into a managers shoes is probably good experience for me, career-wise. However, the financial rewards aren't that great and in terms of what takes my time these days, you could say that I'm losing out on leisure time big style. This is the main reason I've not been here very often this year. Its a sad fact I'm afraid. I will try to be here more often because the work-life balance has to be in place, right? Next week, I have some time off, so I will be looking forward to relaxing.

A few months ago, I was browsing in a book shop and I saw a book that I knew a friend of mine would enjoy. I wasn't sure if he had it already but I bought it anyway - it called out to me. I put it on a shelf at home and forgot about it. Before I had thought about it more than a couple of times, my friend's birthday was upon me and I took it into town to post to him, luckily I had some free time on that day. It turns out that my friend enjoyed the book, he hadn't got it already and so it all turned out well. I like it when things like that happen, I rarely see something I know for a fact someone will like and buy it in advance of their birthday. I should do more of this, it would save worrying about what to get for someone near to their birthday.

Here comes the rain again

It absolutely heaved it down with rain this morning, I could even hear thunder. It has stopped now and the sun has come out. I wonder what this afternoon has in store?

Forgot to mention that yesterday we had a shopping trip and spent far too much. I got a couple of Wii games for the kids stockings this Christmas and I picked up a bargain DVD of John Carpenter's The Thing, a film I've always enjoyed when its been on the TV but never owned.

Bad Habits

On the food front, I've started to slip with my healthier eating - one too many burgers and chocolate thingies. I hope I can stop myself before going any further down this road because if I don't stop I'll just put back all the weight I lost.

I had a good idea today but I've completely forgotten what it was! It was a business idea or something like that, I was thinking of just changing the business model for it and reaping the rewards financially. I've forgotten what IT was though! Typical!

The good news is that we finally managed to see someone about getting a better savings plan this weekend. She was good, our fear was that she would be just trying to sell more of a particular financial product to make up sales figures for the month but instead she actually went on the web and looked at competitors rates and told us honestly what she thought. She accepted that some of our money was best left with a competitor. I hope we get her again when we need advice. She was also good with the kids, who decided to go a bit loopy.

On Saturday we watched the annual Roald Dahl street procession. There were the usual great models - this year the theme was The Twits.