Either it was the Zyrtec or the fact that I bought airlines tickets to Maui on Friday that has put me in a lot better mood. I decided to splurge and buy some $14 hay fever medicine and I must admit to Zyrtec working alot better than the previously 24 hour non-drowsy medicine I had been taking. I still have a bad cough though that I am sort of worried about.
I had a pretty good weekend. Due to the allergies I have been spending a large quantity of time indoors on my MAC. I am in the middle of working on several scrapbooks at various companies. I am working on a Friends book, a Girlfriends book, a book on my dog Moses, a Halloween book and a book on my brother's wedding. I am completely in love with this book making program called Blurb. Personally, I think this is the best program out there. You get the best quality book for the best price. I have printed through Shutterfly and although I give them props for good themes, fun designs and a good end product they are still essentially expensive, pending coupons you find and even then compared to Blurb they are still not giving you the most bang for your buck. I am basically going to use Shutterfly for quick stories and for themed stories like my Halloween book. Blurb doesn't have all the cool themed papers. They let you be creative in other ways though. Since getting the latest version of iPhoto my husband suggested that I use their program. Now the iPhoto program is the easiest to use and most convenient when you have 18,000 digital photos stored in your library. I love this program for these reasons however, when I went to print my Girlfriends book they wanted $110 dollars for 100 pages. Still almost double-triple that of a book I make with Blurb. The other feature I don't like about the iPhoto book is that they limit you to 100 pages. Or I haven't found the feature to surpass the 100 page rule. I just made a 150 page book on my friend's wedding so I won't be using iPhoto for wedding books. I do like iPhoto though and they have cool mapping features. It might be perfect for trips and such. Well, the true test is when I finally break down and pay the $110 to print my Girlfriends book. We will see how their product turns out. But come on it's Apple so I am not that worried.
Scrapbooking is what I did Saturday morning and afternoon. Drinking and eating is what I did the remainder of the afternoon and evening. A couple of my friends celebrated their birthdays and Cinco de Mayo (early) and had a BBQ pool party. I brought my bathing suit ready to jump in although it was kind of cold outside. But the 94 degree temp my friends set the pool at made me forget the chill in the air. I was about to go back to the car and get m bathing suit when I saw a flock of ducks in the pool.
It wasn't any ordinary ducks but a Momma duck and 7 babies that my friend's had rescued the day before. Unfortunately for their party the ducks decided to take up residence in the warm pool. So no swimming for the rest of us. They were sooo stinking cute! When I wasn't watching ducks I was grubbing on some good carne asada beef and chicken. Totally yummers. In fact my friends had all these great treats. The best was when my friend's dad introduced hubby and I to homemade stout that he brewed back in March. All he had to do was tell me that it had chocolate in it and I tried it. At 12% alcohol it packed a punched. He even had us pair some dark chocolate with our beer and boy was that ever cool. 
To have a piece of chocolate in our mouth while sipping a good stout with chocolate in it. It was heavenly. I knew my hubby was thoroughly impressed with our friend's dad's brewing skills. I wouldn't be surprised if hubby took up brewing shortly. Hubby had several beers and was soon the life of the party. The funniest moment was when he meet this girl who I had known 
but hadn't seen in years and he found out (I had forgotten) that she grew up in Sanger. There were a lot of Apache references and comparisons of families each person knew. Anyhow I think we have some new friends as we are going to meet up with these Sangerites for some more brews at the Eagle Rock Brewery. The night ended with a pinyata and fake mustaches and squirt guns.
Before we left my friends asked us if we wanted some passes to the Turner Movie Classics Film Festival in Hollywood. They couldn't go and they knew the hubby and I loved movies so they offered us their $600 festival passes. Um sweet! So today we got up rather early. Cuz all that good beer in our tummies would have had us passed out till noon but alas we woke up early to make the movies. So we got ready and drove down to Mann's Chinese Theatre to watch THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. There was a discussion panel with Eli Wallach who starred in the film and whom some of your might remember played the kind old man that Kate Winslet befriended in the movie THE HOLIDAY.
In that movie he played the sweetest old man and really after listening to him talk today I don't think he was acting. He really was sweet and had the best stories to tell. He talked about all the people that got me dreaming about movies. John Houston, Clint Eastwood, etc. It was good for my soul and reminded me that not all of Hollywood was evil. It reminded me of the movies and that magic when the lights go out and the projector fires up and the picture flickers on screen. That is why I deal with a ton of shit at work because I love the movies and in some small way I love being just a small part of it. I do what I do because I love hearing these old guys talk about "the magic." Anyhow, this wasn't the first time i have seen this movie aka a spaghetti western. I actually saw the movie a few year's ago at another film festival I was invited to by my friend, Miguel. The second time around was just as good. I forgot how fun it is going to a fancy movie house like Mann's Chinese. I will have to try and go more often. You get more magic at one of the old palaces than at AMC. Sorry Burbank.
The film broke at 2pm and we decided to grab lunch. At first I thought we would eat at Disney's Soda Shop next tot he El Capitan but the minute I mentioned Mel's it was over. We used to go to Mel's Dinner all the time.
In fact we lived by one in Sherman Oaks. It had been forever since we been to the Hollywood one. We had a great lunch and then we headed back to the theatre and caught THE KING OF COMEDY. I must have gotten this movie confused with THE ORIGINAL KINGS OF COMEDY which was playing at AMC when I worked there. Cause it took me like 30 minutes to figure out that Bernie Mac was never going to show up on screen with Robert DeNiro. Plus I was kinda confused at to why Martin Scorsesee would be directing? I later realized there were two movies and I wasn't watching the one that played at AMC 10 years ago.
So that was my day today. Movie day. For sitting all day I was tired when I got home. The allergies are still keeping me down but thankfully the Zyrtec is keeping me juiced up for a while. Tomorrow is Monday though and back to the grind.
I had a pretty good weekend. Due to the allergies I have been spending a large quantity of time indoors on my MAC. I am in the middle of working on several scrapbooks at various companies. I am working on a Friends book, a Girlfriends book, a book on my dog Moses, a Halloween book and a book on my brother's wedding. I am completely in love with this book making program called Blurb. Personally, I think this is the best program out there. You get the best quality book for the best price. I have printed through Shutterfly and although I give them props for good themes, fun designs and a good end product they are still essentially expensive, pending coupons you find and even then compared to Blurb they are still not giving you the most bang for your buck. I am basically going to use Shutterfly for quick stories and for themed stories like my Halloween book. Blurb doesn't have all the cool themed papers. They let you be creative in other ways though. Since getting the latest version of iPhoto my husband suggested that I use their program. Now the iPhoto program is the easiest to use and most convenient when you have 18,000 digital photos stored in your library. I love this program for these reasons however, when I went to print my Girlfriends book they wanted $110 dollars for 100 pages. Still almost double-triple that of a book I make with Blurb. The other feature I don't like about the iPhoto book is that they limit you to 100 pages. Or I haven't found the feature to surpass the 100 page rule. I just made a 150 page book on my friend's wedding so I won't be using iPhoto for wedding books. I do like iPhoto though and they have cool mapping features. It might be perfect for trips and such. Well, the true test is when I finally break down and pay the $110 to print my Girlfriends book. We will see how their product turns out. But come on it's Apple so I am not that worried.
Scrapbooking is what I did Saturday morning and afternoon. Drinking and eating is what I did the remainder of the afternoon and evening. A couple of my friends celebrated their birthdays and Cinco de Mayo (early) and had a BBQ pool party. I brought my bathing suit ready to jump in although it was kind of cold outside. But the 94 degree temp my friends set the pool at made me forget the chill in the air. I was about to go back to the car and get m bathing suit when I saw a flock of ducks in the pool.
It wasn't any ordinary ducks but a Momma duck and 7 babies that my friend's had rescued the day before. Unfortunately for their party the ducks decided to take up residence in the warm pool. So no swimming for the rest of us. They were sooo stinking cute! When I wasn't watching ducks I was grubbing on some good carne asada beef and chicken. Totally yummers. In fact my friends had all these great treats. The best was when my friend's dad introduced hubby and I to homemade stout that he brewed back in March. All he had to do was tell me that it had chocolate in it and I tried it. At 12% alcohol it packed a punched. He even had us pair some dark chocolate with our beer and boy was that ever cool. 
To have a piece of chocolate in our mouth while sipping a good stout with chocolate in it. It was heavenly. I knew my hubby was thoroughly impressed with our friend's dad's brewing skills. I wouldn't be surprised if hubby took up brewing shortly. Hubby had several beers and was soon the life of the party. The funniest moment was when he meet this girl who I had known 
but hadn't seen in years and he found out (I had forgotten) that she grew up in Sanger. There were a lot of Apache references and comparisons of families each person knew. Anyhow I think we have some new friends as we are going to meet up with these Sangerites for some more brews at the Eagle Rock Brewery. The night ended with a pinyata and fake mustaches and squirt guns. Before we left my friends asked us if we wanted some passes to the Turner Movie Classics Film Festival in Hollywood. They couldn't go and they knew the hubby and I loved movies so they offered us their $600 festival passes. Um sweet! So today we got up rather early. Cuz all that good beer in our tummies would have had us passed out till noon but alas we woke up early to make the movies. So we got ready and drove down to Mann's Chinese Theatre to watch THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. There was a discussion panel with Eli Wallach who starred in the film and whom some of your might remember played the kind old man that Kate Winslet befriended in the movie THE HOLIDAY.
In that movie he played the sweetest old man and really after listening to him talk today I don't think he was acting. He really was sweet and had the best stories to tell. He talked about all the people that got me dreaming about movies. John Houston, Clint Eastwood, etc. It was good for my soul and reminded me that not all of Hollywood was evil. It reminded me of the movies and that magic when the lights go out and the projector fires up and the picture flickers on screen. That is why I deal with a ton of shit at work because I love the movies and in some small way I love being just a small part of it. I do what I do because I love hearing these old guys talk about "the magic." Anyhow, this wasn't the first time i have seen this movie aka a spaghetti western. I actually saw the movie a few year's ago at another film festival I was invited to by my friend, Miguel. The second time around was just as good. I forgot how fun it is going to a fancy movie house like Mann's Chinese. I will have to try and go more often. You get more magic at one of the old palaces than at AMC. Sorry Burbank. The film broke at 2pm and we decided to grab lunch. At first I thought we would eat at Disney's Soda Shop next tot he El Capitan but the minute I mentioned Mel's it was over. We used to go to Mel's Dinner all the time.
In fact we lived by one in Sherman Oaks. It had been forever since we been to the Hollywood one. We had a great lunch and then we headed back to the theatre and caught THE KING OF COMEDY. I must have gotten this movie confused with THE ORIGINAL KINGS OF COMEDY which was playing at AMC when I worked there. Cause it took me like 30 minutes to figure out that Bernie Mac was never going to show up on screen with Robert DeNiro. Plus I was kinda confused at to why Martin Scorsesee would be directing? I later realized there were two movies and I wasn't watching the one that played at AMC 10 years ago. So that was my day today. Movie day. For sitting all day I was tired when I got home. The allergies are still keeping me down but thankfully the Zyrtec is keeping me juiced up for a while. Tomorrow is Monday though and back to the grind.
Comments