The GenCon stuff is coming, likely tonight. But I wanted to put up the recap of the weekend, which included Whale Watching, seafood eating, and for Lou and I, watching Hero.
Left early on Saturday morning for the Whale Watch, out of Rye Harbor, NH. The weather was hot and humid, but once we got past the harbor, the air cooled down some and of course there was a breeze.
Loaded with sunblock and a cooler full of mostly water, some diet coke (and some diet coke with lime), we were prepared to sit a bit and wait for whales. But the whales came to us! Just past the Isles of Shoals (which we couldn't actually see because the haze/fog was thick on the horizon), 10 miles out from the (tiny) NH seacoast, a finback whale was sitting there, waiting for us. We normally go about twenty miles out before we get the chance to see whales, and that day they had told us that we were likely going to have to go further south than we normally do, down to the tail end of Jeffreys Ledge. We had begun preparing for that long trip of nothing, but no! We were happily thwarted by this very pleasant finback who must have been sleeping, coming up often and then disappearing for 5 to 10+ minutes at a stretch. We just have stayed with him a good half hour, and he gave us a great show. When another boat showed up, he started to stay down a bit longer; perhaps awake now and feeding, and we stayed a bit more before heading out.
The next leg of our journey netted us a Minke whale, and for a little while we stayed with that one, then he up and vanished and we tried to make the southeast part of the Ledge, but got there in time to just take a quick look and then swing around and head for home.
I finished my reread of Tithe on the way back. Held up quite well on the reread. I can't wait to discuss it with our group on the 11th.
We headed off to dinner at Newick's, and stuffed ourselves full of seafood of varying cooking methods, and one hamburger. Then we all headed to Jack's place for a bit, to show Michael and Jenn (who had not seen it before) the place, but it was late, we were tired, and so we left Pat&Betsy there and the rest of us headed to the Hampton Inn, for a shower and a good night's sleep on a real bed instead of an air mattress or a couch. It may have cost us a lot more, but as my friend Carrie used to say, "I'm too old to be sleeping on floors."
The rest of us, minus Michael & Jenn, headed to Cracker Barrel for breakfast before we left Jack and headed back home. P&B slept some on the way back...okay, Betsy slept the entire way, and Pat slept some. I was feeling dozy, but I didn't want to have Lou driving without someone to talk to or something. I was just about to turn on the radio to keep myself awake when he asked for me to plug in my iPod and play something upbeat. I started with the B-52s Cosmic Thing, but it does have a decent amount of non-peppy songs to it, so I switched over to Shakira's Laundry Service after about 1/3 of the B-52s. That kept us bopping and awake.
We dropped P&B off, and then headed home to see the kitties. And after a brief stay at home, we headed out to catch a 2:35 showing of Hero, which is just amazing and beautiful and had me in tears at the end. I highly recommend everyone go see it. It's just beautiful and I SO want that soundtrack! Hmm...it's available in iTunes. *considers* I want to see it again, it was just so beautiful. And Tony Leung Chiu Wai is absolutely beautiful and I want to see just about every other movie he's made. *makes note to ask Jack if he has any of his stuff*
However, this is not an American movie. Don't expect it to be, and you may find that you like it, hopefully better than you thought you might. It's subtle, and might be hard to understand if you're not Chinese, but if you give it a try, I think you'll like it. And if it's not your cuppa, at least you got to see the pretty visuals. :)