lewis and clark had a journal. you, beth-annie, have a diary.

Monday, January 31, 2005
So about 15 minutes ago we accepted an offer on our house for $100 above the asking price. And the villagers rejoiced.
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Thursday, January 27, 2005
Get ready for the shock of your life.
That's right my lovelies, not only has my dear sister finally posted to her own blog for the first time all year, but... YES, you guessed it!  The Trip-o-Logue returns!  And it's "seaQuest"-less to boot!  Happy birthday to you all.

DAY SEVEN: Tue. Nov. 30.
We magically woke up in Nassau (I love that), where we met first thing in the morning for our Seaworld Explorer excursion.  We took an open-air boat to the Sea Gardens Marine Park, where we transferred to the semi-submarine boat, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like -- half underwater and half... overwater.  We went down into the lower compartment, which was lined with big glass windows, each with a seat in front of it.  We spent about an hour moving along just above the ocean floor, seeing many a fish, coral, starfish, kelp, etc., and also passed over a shipwreck (I forget how old it was).  But the highlight for me was catching a glimpse of a blue angelfish just before it swam under the boat.

After we got back to Nassau, we did a little bit of shopping on our way back to the ship for lunch (yes, we opted for the free food rather than eating out).  After lunch we took a ferry to Paradise Island just across the harbor.  This would be where the famous Atlantis Resort and Casino resides.  Did you know that the bridge between the two towers is actually a single suite that costs $25,000 a night, has a four-night minimum and is booked solid for the next five years?  We do, because we heard it on three different boat trips (they always have someone narrating a sort of tour of what you can see from the boat, I think mainly as a way to get tips).  We walked around Atlantis for a while, just to look around (and to find somewhere to buy Bahamian stamps for our postcards), but most of the more interesting parts you can't see without paying or being a hotel guest.  So whatever.

[Wow, isn't Josh's hair messy?]

We walked to Cabbage Beach, which was a nice, long stretch of sand that thankfully wasn't very crowded, probably because it borders mostly a residential area instead of hotels.  We played in the water and relaxed on the beach -- exactly what you're supposed to do in the Bahamas.  I also took some sand because I wanted some sand from the Bahamas.  I'm weird like that.  And it's ironic, too, because I had so much of that sand stuck all over my body that even after showering back on the ship before dinner I was still finding the odd grain here and there.  I think it's finally all gone by now, but I can't be positive.

That night's dinner was the one formal night on our cruise, so we got all dressed up and had a formal portrait taken.  They're a bit of a rip-off, but we never have professional pictures taken of us, and we figured if it happened to come out really well we might just buy one.  It didn't and we didn't.  At dinner I tried escargot for the first time in my life.  See, here's the thing: when you're on a cruise and you've already paid for all your food, I figure there's no better time to try foods you wouldn't normally, since you won't be out the money if you don't like it.  Plus, even if you end up not eating much of anything because you didn't like anything, there are plenty of other opportunities to stuff your face after you leave the dining room.  And so I tried the escargot (that would be snails, for anyone from the planet Zurkon).  And it was actually quite good, and in a very yummy garlic butter sauce.  Delish.

After dinner we took a walk around the outside of the ship and then went up to the sun deck to a couple of the lounge chairs.  We lay there facing the pretty lights of downtown Nassau and the cruise ship that was docked next to us -- they're actually quite beautiful when all lit up at night -- and just talked and listened to the Shakira music emanating from the pool area below and watched the people on the other ship, as I'm sure some of them were watching us.  It may not sound very exciting, but it was one of my favorite moments of our entire trip.

What followed was not.  The nightly entertainment was threefold: the "Love and Marriage Game Show," which was I suppose a somewhat entertaining newlywed game type thing with three couples of varying marriage lengths taken out of the audience -- during which I admit I wasn't paying full attention as I was simultaneously writing my postcards so I could drop them in the mail that night (not that it did any good because no one ever got them -- did they?).  Next was Dario El Gaucho, the "South American Cowboy."  We wondered just what that was, and after seeing him we understood why there was no further description: his act really defies description.  He had these whip thingies that he spun around, and... ah skip it.  Like I said, it can't really be described.  Last was a comedian who was only occasionally funny.  Ah, well.  We didn't come for the entertainment.

We had a poolside buffet at midnight.  Yup, more food.  And lots and lots of people in way too small a space.  But the burgers were to die for, and it was kind of cool to have a big party going on as we pulled out of port -- even if the DJ host chick was extremely annoying.

i want to see the pictures bethy please show them to me okay
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Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Word on the street is...
...that our house is officially on the market. No sign in our yard yet (we're told that should happen sometime today), but we had a bunch of realtor-types traipsing through our house this morning on their weekly tour of new listings. So we're on our way. Our house is nice and clean and half-packed-up already, so now we just wait and see, and start looking at houses in the Madison area. Potentailly unfortunately, we've found out about a significant monetary incentive for Josh to stay at his job through most of March, so we almost hope we don't get an offer on the house right away. Hmmmm...
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Tuesday, January 18, 2005
I feel I owe you a post.
Even though it's probably common sense, I'll explain anyway that for at least the next couple weeks, I'm not going to have nearly the time to devote to my blog as I have in the past.  Hopefully we can get our house mostly packed up (at least the stuff we won't need) within about that period of time, and then mostly all I'll have to do after that is make sure the house stays nice and clean (as in, cleaner than we usually keep it for just us, LOL) so we can have it shown at a moment's notice.  Once it's all clean and officially on the market I should have more time to get back to the Trip-o-Logue (remember that?) and finish up on my new blog design, which is actually about 80% done.

Just as a reminder to myself, I need to be sure to take pictures of rooms before I put too many things away, and before we take down the chandelier we put in the dining area, which we love so much there's no way we're leaving it here.  We also have to decide whether to unreplace the pretty new ceiling fan we put in our bedroom with the one that had been in there before.  Stupid ceiling fans are a lot of work.

And I hope you're all watching "Ed" on TBS at 12pm ET.  Or, at least, I hope Liz is watching.  ;)
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Thursday, January 13, 2005
Reader poll.
Don't worry, this will be very quick and painless. For purposes of some things I want to do in my spiffynew page design (which is well in progress), I need all of my regular/regularish readers to simply tell me, in the comments section of this post, what internet browser(s) you typically view this page with. As in, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, etc. It's kind of important. Thank you.

P.S. Also, if you use a non-Windows operating system, let me know that, too.
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Wednesday, January 12, 2005
"Let me go right now to what's happening right now..."
Yesterday Josh accepted the job offer in Madison. We're looking at moving probably sometime between the end of February and the end of March, though it's somewhat flexible. It all depends on how fast we can sell our house, really. And find a new one. Or at least something temporary, though we hope it won't come to that. Please pray that things go relatively smoothly during this transitional period in our lives, and we'll keep you updated on the important goings on.
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Tuesday, January 11, 2005
And now I give you "Beth-Annie's Best of Television" as if it actually mattered.

Cream of the Crop.
1.  Arrested Development (fox sunday)
2.  Lost  (abc wednesday)
3.  Gilmore Girls  (wb tuesday)
4.  Alias  (abc wednesday)
5.  Veronica Mars  (upn tuesday)

Second Tier.
1.  Scrubs  (nbc tuesday)
2.  24  (fox monday)
3.  Desperate Housewives  (abc sunday)
4.  The O.C.  (fox thursday)
5.  Everwood  (wb monday)

Best of Cable, 2004.
1.  Long Way Round  (bravo)
- Actor Ewan McGregor and best friend Charley Boorman take a 20,000-mile, four-month motorcycle trip from the UK to the U.S., passing through and experiencing the cultures (and at times quite strange people) of countries such as Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, and Siberia, as well as the often lack of anything resembling decent roads in a six-part documentary series.  I've rarely been simultaneously educated and so utterly fascinated by a program, and it didn't even have anything to do with Ewan McGregor's deliciousness.  Highly, highly impressive and strongly recommended if Bravo ever reruns it or it's released on DVD.
2.  The Daily Show with Jon Stewart  (comedy central)
- Everyone knows what this is, right?  Only the best "fake" news program ever.  Smarter and funnier than even David Letterman.  Most of the time, anyway.
3.  Celebrity Poker Showdown  (bravo)
- Okay, so it's not the "celebrity" thing, and it's not the "poker" thing that makes this show so good... it's the combination along with every other little thing (Dave Foley and Phil Gordon, the witty banter, the production values) that makes this the ONE of all the ubiquitous poker shows that's actually worth watching.
4.  Joe Schmo 2  (spike)
- A (mostly) hilarious send-up of just about every bad reality show out there, that's also better than just about every reality show out there.  In this case, two contestants think they're competing on a real show with other real people, but in reality everyone else is an actor playing a specific "reality show stereotype character."  Spoofs most of the stupidest stuff on reality shows, sometimes to downright unbelievable (you'd think) or goofy extremes while hoping the marks -- who the show actually treats with great affection, rather than mean-spiritedness -- continue to buy into the hoopla.  Here's hoping for a #3.
5.  Best Week Ever  (vh1)
- Just a stupid little show where comedians and others react to news and entertainment events of the past week.  It also happens to be pretty funny.  I know, I know, comedians aren't usually funny, but it's not like they're doing standup or anything -- that's almost never funny.

Now everybody dance.
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Monday, January 10, 2005
Just look at me not lying.
As promised, I have updated the movie list on the bottom-right side of this page.  It's been so long since I last did that every movie now listed there is new ("new" as in it hadn't been listed there before).  Mucho thanks to Josh for writing a program into which I can plug all future additions to the list and it will automatically generate it for me.  Happy happy.

So if I were to be like everyone else, I would make my own little list thingy of the best movies of 2004.  But I'm not going to do that.  No, instead, I'm going to make a list of the movies I liked the best, which I would argue is not the same thing as the "best."  (For instance, "seaQuest" may be my favorite TV show ever, but I would NEVER argue that it was one of the best shows ever.  Not even close.)  So here are my favorites from 2004, minus all the year's movies I still want to see, of which there are a lot.  So this isn't exactly comprehensive, but it's what I have for now.

1.  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - The best Charlie Kaufman movie yet.  More, more!
2.  Spider-man 2 - Better than the first, and would have been even better if only Kirsten Dunst could act worth snot.
3.  The Notebook - Maybe the most romantic movie I've ever seen.  Unabashedly sentimental, which certainly isn't everyone's thing, but it was done so well that this one got me but good.
4.  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - I think I've liked each HP movie better than the last, though I've never read a single sentence of any of the books.  I hope they just keep getting better.
5.  The Village - Better than M. Night's last two movies.  Sorry critics, you blew this one.  I loved this movie.
6.  The Passion of the Christ - In my opinion, both an impressive cinematic achievement and the most personally emotional movie I've ever seen, and one that filled a niche that I think needed to be filled.
7.  Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - People tended to either love or hate this movie, and I obviously loved it.  I loved the style, the meeting of past and future, and the wit.  Sue me.

Those are the only ones I think were really good enough to put on a list like this.  I mean, contrary to what Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly may think, 13 Going on 30 was NOT the 9th best movie of the year.  Please.  Don't let's be silly.

As for the worst:

1.  Garfield: The Movie - Oh!  Oh!  The torture!  (In my defense, the only reason I saw this was because it was part of a double-feature at the drive-in.  And I like the drive-in.)
2.  The Stepford Wives - Boring, creepy (not in a good way), and in the end quite nonsensical.  Buh-bye.
3.  Home on the Range - Disney just can't make good 2-D animated movies anymore, and it's a darn shame.
4.  Shrek 2 - That's right!  I said Shrek 2!  Inexplicably one of the most beloved movies of the year, by both the mindless public (more explicable) and the critics (less explicable).  The first one was good-ish.  This one was just plain ish.  I said it before and I'll say it again: I just don't get it.
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Thursday, January 06, 2005
Upcomingness.
In the (hopefully) days to come, I'll be updating my movie list with around 40 new movies, updating my CD list with probably more than 40 new CDs, and giving my best of 2004 in music, movies, and TV. I'm having to fix some major issues with my blog right now, so if things occasionally look messed up, that's why. I'm also starting work on a complete overhauling of this page's design -- actually, more of a starting-from-scratch than an overhauling, I guess. Sorry for all the not posting and posting about boring things when I do. Stuff is coming, though. Stuff is coming...
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