More than meets the eye?

Last night I ventured out to see the new Transformers movie and I have to say it is worth a look if you follow into a few of the following categories.

 

1. You watched the cartoons and played with the toys in the mid 80s.
2. You are actually a fan of Michael Bay movies (Armageddon, Bad Boys, Pearl Harbor)
3. You have seen all the better movies out this summer.

 

That might be a little harsh for a movie I enjoyed but the truth is that even though I enjoyed it, I didn’t love it and I really don’t see a lot of people liking the movie. It was completely average. The story was as shallow as the ones from the cartoons, the acting was, well it wasn’t bad enough to distract from the non-stop action. And in typical Michael Bay fashion even though the action was moving a mile a minute it still felt slow at times. It was long, and though they tried to fill up some of the non-action moments with humor there were still so many times when I was bored waiting for the next fight. If I had to rate the movie it would be a 2.5/5, completely average and, for me at least, it was completely typical of the recent super hero movies (i.e. X Men, Spiderman and the like) the first one always seems to be slow and usually the sequel will be better. So, while I did not love this movie I can not wait for the speculation on Transformers 2. I can already hear all the scoops popping up on Rotten Tomatoes. Will we see Grimlock? Energon cubes? Soundwave? Clearly, there are a lot of cool storylines and given the end of the movie a lot of options for what comes next.

Upstarts in a Blowout

Have you ever woken up and just known it was gonna be a bad day? That is exactly how my day went last Thursday. Wednesday night I was supposed to go down to Virginia beach but everyone cancelled so instead I spent the night in my hotel room watching movies and resting up for another day of work. Everyone apparently had decided that Thursday night would be a better night to go to the beach, I did not agree and went to bed with my mind made up not to go the next day. When I awoke the next morning I went to the hotel coffee maker like I had every other morning but this morning I found that no coffee was there to make. Anyone who knows me also knows that I do not handle the lack of coffee very well. Still, I pressed on, began getting ready for work and picked up coffee on my way in to work. But, before I could get too far into my day I realized my sunglasses had gone missing, this time it seems they have been lost for good. With two mishaps so early in the morning I knew there was something left on the horizon but still I had a job to do and I could not let a few setbacks ruin an entire day. When I got to work everything went as usual, I bantered with clients, talked with co-workers, solved a few problems and let everyone know I would not be joining them on their trip to the beach. However, as the day wore on so did my resolve and eventually somehow not only did I get wrangled into going to the beach, I was driving.

 

In anticipation of driving to the beach we all made sure to get off post as fast as possible and by about 4:30 we were all ready to go. My car was full of beach things, one coworker was lying down in the backseat, and another was in the passenger seat resting her eyes. Everything seemed fine and then 2 miles from my hotel I decided to change lanes, a harmless act that I have done countless times. But, this time was not the usual. I hit some debris in the road and immediately heard my left front tire go boom. I instantly knew that Anya had just lost a tire but I was not going to do any more damage and quickly got the car to the side of the road. Of course I was upset but I had to get my car off the small shoulder of the highway. Thankfully, a VDOT truck came up within minutes and offered to change the tire for me as this particular stretch of highway was very unsafe. There had apparently been 5 deaths recently changing tires and I did not want to be number 6. After the donut was on and the car was ready to roll, we got back on the road and returned to the hotel where I took about 20 minutes to collect myself and decide whether or not to take care of the tire or head out to the beach. I called my mom, cracked open a beer, then another beer, then hopped in a car and headed to the beach. All in all, we lost an hour of sunlight, but we did make it and we had a great time.