sugar mountain

My kind part-time coworker often brings in treats to the office break room to share (and solicit donations for his charity). Lately, he has been extremely generous as seen with this mountain of candy and doughnuts.

What's a bit odd though is that -- not counting him -- I'm the only other person who regularly works in the office, so I guess this is all intended for me. I do have some self control, but it is challenging to be here all day with sugar mountain just down the hall. Apparently he is trying to give my diabetes.

Inception: B

Inception Chibis, originally uploaded by nicoleleepeterson.

To beat the heat, Scott, Ma, and I went out to a movie on Saturday afternoon. I'm not sure how theaters are staying in business as there have been very few movies this year that I wanted to see. The Regal theater we went to had only the manager working concessions and the multiplex seemed vacant -- on a weekend.

Anyways, we settled for Inception. My main reluctance to seeing Inception were the comparisons I heard of it with The Matrix. Fortunately, Inception doesn't take itself as seriously as Matrix, but it is as convoluted with endless revelations regarding the shared dream sci-fi tech premise.

Ellen Page's college student character is supposed to be the audience's newbie stand-in walking through the technology with wonder, awe, and questions. Although it's a bit surprising a college student in the field doesn't know the intricacies of the technology. What kind of irked me was that she basically plays the same character in her Cisco ads in which she again wanders into the technology with wonder, awe, and questions:

Overall, it was an entertaining movie. Yes, I will make my standard complaint that the movie was too long. It's probably an unfair standard to hold against filmmakers, but my knees have a limited time in theater seats, so a movie had better be compelling to keep my interest past 90 minutes. Unfortunately, the dream within a dream within a dream premise and psycho-babble foreshadowing made for a predictable ending that merely had to play through.

Gma's revenge from beyond the grave

Years ago, one of the oddest comments my late grandmother made was that the city should cut down the giant trees lining the streets in historic Ladd's Addition. Her reason? They were a safety hazard because she slipped on some fall leaves while picking up my sister at Abernethy Elementary. Oh grandma...

Well, Gma somehow got her revenge. Although we saw the signs about the Dutch Elm disease, it was very surprising to see the stumps this weekend around Abernethy. It is very sad.

Save Our Elms is trying to save the neighborhood trees.