Today is the closest thing that we have to a last day of relaxing in any way. It is Sunday and Dominica’s mom’s birthday. So we are heading up to the Grices’ on the early side and spending the day there. After today we have to be totally focused on getting ready to travel back to Europe. The deadline is rapidly approaching.
We headed over to the Grices’ this morning and managed to be the first to wish Dominica’s mom a happy birthday (other than her dad, of course.) It’s always a bit of a competition.
Shortly after arriving, Dominica, her dad and I went to the movie theatre to see Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens. It was long and overall, I did not like it. They both did. Dominica thought that it was great. I felt like it was an incredibly cheesy and predictable remake of the original movie combined with ridiculous and pointless character cameos. It’s everything that I was worried that the new movie would be. There were no surprises and nothing original. It doesn’t feel like it carries the story forward but rather felt like a phoned-in half-assed money grab to exploit the fan boys. It is better than the first three movies, of course, but that is an incredibly low bar. I’m sure most people will like it and I must say that the new main star that they got is a very good actor and he did an excellent job but the movie itself isn’t true to the Star Wars universe and makes a mockery of the fans. I’m saddened, but not surprised.
I had planned to avoid the movie completely but Liesl had decided that she wanted to go since she is seven and I had gone to see the opening day of Star Wars VI: The Return of the Jedi with my parents when I was seven. But as we were walking out the door Liesl changed her mind because she did not want to give up time playing with her cousins. So I was going to cancel but Dominica yelled at me so I went, but I think that I would have been happier skipping it. I’m just so utterly disappointed. So much potential and so much time to get this right and I’m not sure that it could have realistically been worse given the money, time and expectations. Sure it technically could have had bad actors, made no sense and had bad effects but realistically the cast and effects were a given. But the writing, directing and direction that they are going are basically as bad as I feel that they could be. Maybe I am just jaded.
We got back and Emily and I did a Sonic run for food. While we were gone Francesca baked the cake too.
Tonight we set up the new projector and gave it a trial run. It works great. Very easy to use. We hooked it up to the gaming rig and projected it onto a side wall and Francesca spent the evening playing the point and click adventure game Alter Ego.