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For those curious (you know who you are), I have, in fact, returned from Reno. Emily and I got back Sunday evening. We had a great time. It was good to see my folks, there was some gambling, we saw some museums, and there was much delicious food. All in all, a very successful and fun weekend!
In a couple of hours, Emily and I will be heading off to Reno for the weekend, where we'll meet up with my folks. I'm looking forward to it, should be a lot of fun.
Amusingly, the directions from our place to Reno are essentially "take the 80 until you see the big pink hotel. Exit."
I had a really good weekend. Emily and I (along with Em's cousin Mallory, who was spending the weekend with us) watched Conan the Barbarian and The Princess Bride. Those are probably two of the top ten fantasy movies of all time, and yet they're almost completely different. What a great genre.
In other weekend news...
UNICRON!!!
I finally found the recently released Unicron Transformer. My god, it's robo-heaven. Unicron first appeared in 1986's Transformers - The Movie, but there was never a toy made for him. He was the planet-eating mega bad guy in the movie, and was planet-sized himself, so no practical toy prototype was ever made.
Now, Unicron has been re-introduced as a villain in the current "Transformers: Armada" line, and there's a toy. Oh, yes, there's a toy.
In robot mode, Unicron is about 14" tall, and he transforms into a planet mode about the size of a volleyball, plus he has the planet ring / robot wings from the movie, enhancing his aura of "bigness." The toy is very movie accurate, while incorporating modern toy technology and gimmicks. Unicron is a TF fanboy's wet dream.
Click here for a review and pictures, and here for another review.
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As I recall (ba-dum-ching!), a significant - not primary, but significant - issue in the 2002 governor's race was whether or not Gray Davis would commit to staying on as governor all four years, and not bail to run for president in 2004.
Heh.
Emily and I returned from our Adventure! late last night. We went up to Ashland, Oregon, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We'd visited Ashland before, back in 1999 on our Vancouver road trip, and we loved the town, so we decided to take advantage of being a mere 300 miles away from Ashland while we're here in Sacramento.
We arrived in Ashland around noon Saturday. We had lunch at a great cafe (delicious yam french fries!), and then went to see our 1:30 PM matinee, Present Laughter, by Noel Coward. Laughter was very silly, but a fun play done well.
We wandered about town for a while, and had dinner at a great wrap/panini place called Pangea. Then we went to "Preface to Dream" at 6:30, a pre-show lecture on the play we'd see that night, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The lecture really helped us see how the director was interpreting the play, and also was a heads up on the plot of the play - it's often helpful to know where you're going when listening to Shakespearean English. Dream was really well done, and we saw it in OSF's outdoor Elizabethan theatre, which is a great way to see Shakespeare. Great acting, fun play, nifty costumes, had a great time.
Sunday we explored town some more, including more delicious restaurants. The whole town is very veggie friendly, since it's a hippie, artsy, college town - Southern Oregon University is in Ashland. We then head back to Sacramento in the afternoon, where we hit the only hitch of the whole weekend - a major traffic jam on the 5 that had us sitting in traffic for about an hour.
By the way, California north of Redding is just eye-poppin', jaw-droppin' beautiful. It's so green and lush it's just a great and very scenic drive. Which, of course, makes a 4.5 hour trip go much faster!
All in all, we had an absolutely wonderful time, and are going to try to get back up there in the spring for the beginning of their next season, before we hopefully move back south next summer.
It's time for birthday Adventure!
Happy birthday to my wonderful fiancee, Emily! Love ya, Babe!
The Encyclopedia of Arda is an absolutely awesome Lord of the Rings / Tolkein site. Highly recommended, I'm even adding it to my fantasy links to the right. Of particular note, even to the less fantasy-inclined, are movie/book comparisions for The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.