The drive last night went well. We were out of Warren in great time and were on the road so much earlier than we are used to. We took the backroads shortcut straight north out of Warren to get to US 287 as quickly as possible and then took US 287 right up to the New York Thruway. We had great weather and traffic almost the entire way and were able to meet Dominica’s parents and brother in Herkimer for dinner.
It was nice that we were able to get out of New Jersey so early that we actually had time to hang out on Friday evening. Dominica only got Friday night to see Joe before he left for college so that was important.
Friday night was pretty much just relaxing. Oreo and Dexter had a good time getting to play. They miss each other when they are apart even if they spent their whole time together competing for attention.
Dominica’s parents left early in the morning to take Joe out to Albany so Min and I were on our own until the middle of the afternoon. They got home and we all took a ride out to New Hartford in the BMW with the top down even though it was quite chilly and went to Stone Cold Creamery for some ice cream (mmmm… bubble gum with rainbow sprinkles!), the pet store, Barnes and Nobles, Best Buy and then off to dinner at the Castlewood in Utica. I picked up a book at B&N that Andy has been reading recently and said that it was really good “The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide to Subverion”.
At Best Buy I managed to get a number of good movie deals like the newly released Poseidon that Dominica has really been wanting to see, the American Pie trilogy which really isn’t very good but it is so much a part of the culture for people our age that it just seemed like something that we should own, Major League II which is awesome and came with the really weak Major League III: Back to the Minors but at least it was free, Jackie Chan’s New Police Story and lastly, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. New Police Story is actually the fifth movie in the Police Story series. The most popular movies of the series here in the states are PS III and IV which are generally knows as Supercop and First Strike respectively. I have never seen either of the original PS movies nor any of the Michelle Yeoh spin off series (Supercop II, etc.)
After shopping and dinner we returned to the Tocco residence and plunked down to watch Poseidon. I have never seen the original Poseidon Adventure so I have no way to compare this movie to that one but both Dominica and her dad made a big deal about this version’s lack of character development. As it was the movie was entertaining but nothing special. The action was okay, the characters were okay, the plot was okay. As always with these movies I was disappointed that no one cared at all about any sort of accuracy. And, as always, if they don’t care enough to put real effort into a movie that costs this much then why should I care?
Dominica’s dad went to bed her mother having left part way through the movie finding it less than engaging and we went on to watch American Wedding which was even worse than American Pie 2 which was pretty bad. After the movie we still were not tired so we went on and watched Anchorman which was somewhat funny but only barely. Everyone had raved about that movie but it just didn’t cut it.