I Want One: Parking Meter Alarm

This parking meter alarm from Restoration Hardware (via) is awesome! It holds quarters so you can just keep it in your car and never have to worry about having money for the parking meter. Also, it has an alarm that can be set so you know when you have to make it back to the meter to insert more quarters! Did I mention that it's a keychain too? Perfect!

I Want One: Unazukin

Unzaukin are cute little "dolls" that work like a Magic Eight Ball and come from Japan (via). They look like Fisher-Price people or Weebles or a nesting doll and apparently are voice-activated so when you talk to them, they nod or shake their head in response. Also, I guess no two are alike. It's a cute little toy that is perfect for my desk at work - when I eventually get a job, that is!

Which Super Villain Are You?

Unlike the Superhero quiz, this time I got a female match. Although I'm only a 55% match. I'm also glad that I got a villain I have actually heard of and know because I'll admit that many of those listed mean nothing to me!
Your results:
You are Mystique

Mystique 57% The Joker 53% Catwoman 53% Riddler 51% Dr. Doom 51% Magneto 49% Venom 49% Apocalypse 48% Poison Ivy 46% Juggernaut 45% Lex Luthor 44% Dark Phoenix 43% Mr. Freeze 39% Two-Face 33% Green Goblin 29% Kingpin 27%

Sometimes motherly, sometimes a beautiful companion, but most of the time a deceiving vixen.

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Which Superhero are You?

Here are my results from the 'Which Superhero are You?' quiz (via). I guess it's pretty cool that I am a 95% match with Spider-Man. I guess. I am intelligent, witty and a bit geeky but I'm not so sure that I have great power and responsibility. What does it say that despite being female, I do not much at all with the female superheroes?!

Spider-Man 95% Superman 55% Robin 53% Green Lantern 50% Hulk 50% Batman 40% The Flash 40% Iron Man 30% Wonder Woman 28% Catwoman 25% Supergirl 23%

You are intelligent, witty,a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Christmas movie review recap

I'm finished with the Christmas movies for the year! There was one more that I taped but after watching nearly 20 Christmas movies in the span of about two weeks, I am sick of them and don't want to watch any more. Thanks to my ratings and recaps, next year I'll know which ones I've seen, which ones I might want to see again and which ones I will want to get off of my television as quickly as possible! Looking at the overall grades (below), I think I may have been too generous!

A
Chasing Christmas (ABC Family)
Holiday Wishes (Lifetime)
Recipe for a Perfect Christmas (Lifetime)
Santa Baby (ABC Family)

A-
Christmas Do-Over (ABC Family)
Christmas in Boston (ABC Family)
Home by Christmas (Lifetime)
The Road to Christmas (Lifetime)
Under the Mistletoe (Lifetime)

B+
His & Her Christmas (Lifetime)
Snow (ABC Family)

B
A Perfect Day (TNT)

B-
A Christmas Wedding (Lifetime)
Christmas at Water's Edge (Lifetime)

C
If You Believe (Lifetime)

C-
The Year Without a Santa Claus (NBC)

D
Deck the Halls (Lifetime)

Christmas movie review: Deck the Halls

Rating: D

First of all, do not confuse this Deck the Halls for the one that hit the theatres this year starring Danny Devito and Matthew Broderick. This one is a cheesy Lifetime movie from 2005.

One word about Deck the Halls - Ugh! This movie was awful and I'm sad that I finished off my Christmas season by watching this horrible horrible movie. Gabrielle Carteris (Beverly Hills 90210) plays Holly, a widowed mom who moves back home to help run her dad's toy company. She's a tough, bottom line kind of gal and is in direct conflict with Nick, who her father has hired on as a consultant and is spending money like crazy. And is her neighbor. Oh yeah, and Holly has given up believing in Christmas and all that. Did I mention that Nick is apparently Santa Claus? Despite the fact that they never really come out and say that, we are supposed to believe this (Holly's son certainly does) and as such, he teaches Holly and her son about miracles. Holly hates Nick, for about 12 minutes and then seems to do a complete about face after maybe two conversations. It's a little hard to believe. Also, hard to believe is that Nick & Holly are seemingly attracted to each other and at the end, there is a vignette showing Holly's wedding to the town vetrenarian. Umm, what? Yeah, plotline that makes little sense, pure hokiness, bad acting and we have probably the worst Christmas movie I've seen in a long time! Ugh.

Word of the day: soporific

adj : causing sleep or drowsiness


My sentence using soporific: Thanks to the soporific effects of Christmas activities, I slept for a good solid ten hours last night and it was wonderful.

Christmas movie review: Home by Christmas

Rating: A-

Home by Christmas starts off cheerily enough, ha! Linda Hamilton plays Julie, a wealthy housewife who finds out her husband of twenty years is cheating on her. They divorce and she accepts a settlement of $25,000, a car and some odds and ends for their daughter. And apparently she thinks she can survive on that. Well, she has to move into a 1-bedroom apartment in a questionable area of town, has trouble finding a job and soon her daughter has moved back in with the dad. Then, Julie is mugged and things go from bad to worse as she is evicted, broke, alone and homeless! Thanks to some incredibly generous and giving people she meets along the way, Julie rebuilds her life and lives happily ever after. Basically. Although I question the rapidity in which everything happens (the whole entire story basically takes place within a couple of months, it seems, and I'm not sure you can even get a divorce to go through that quickly, let alone some of the other things that happen), it is a sweet story and you can't help but like Julie. Also, it sure is a great marketing campaign for free and cheap things like women's shelters, the library, post office boxes and stairwells in really tall buildings.

Christmas movie review: Holiday Wishes

Rating: A

Holiday Wishes is kind of Freaky Friday meets Christmas. Two fifteen-year-old girls (one a spoiled rich kid, the other a bounced around foster kid) make wishes at the exact same time at Christmas dance and find themselves switched. The rich girl, who wished for a pony, is now suddenly in foster home hell terrorized by her "siblings" and taking care of a pony 24/7, while the foster kid is suddenly thrust into a 'loving' home only to find that her parents are too wrapped up in their own lives to even notice her. The two girls quickly realize they want to return to their regular selves and somehow enlist the help of Danni, who is the party planner for the rich girl's mom. I'm still unsure why Danni is expected to solve the problem but she is and she tries and eventually manages to do it, with everyone learning a lesson along the way. It's pretty predictable but in a good way and it actually made me cry briefly and although it isn't that hard to make me cry, I appreciate sentimentality that can bring me to tears. That didn't happen in any of the other Christmas movies I watched this year! So yay, I loved it!

Christmas movie review: Recipe for a Perfect Christmas

Rating: A

Very enjoyable is Recipe for a Perfect Christmas. This is definitely one I'd watch again, although I really hate watching movies twice. It's a cute romantic comedy that happens to take place around Christmastime. It stars Christine Baranski (as Lee), Carly Pope (as JJ) and Bobby Cannavale (as Alex). JJ has just become a top NYC food critic and Alex is desperate to get his restaurant reviewed by her. Meanwhile, JJ's mom Lee shows up out of nowhere and moves in with JJ, much to JJ's chagrin. To get both her problems off her back, JJ sets Alex up with her mother, agreeing to check out his restaurant if he keeps her mother out of her hair. Needless to say, JJ starts to fall for Alex and is not so happy that Alex & her mother are seeing so much of each other, especially since JJ has not been able to get close to her mother in years, not since her father died. Anyway, I don't have to tell you how this ends; I'm sure you know. Everyone is happy and everything turns out great. It's sweet, though, and the plot turns are believable and to top it all off, these people can actually act. Plus, Bobby Cannavale is such a cutie. I've had a crush on him for a few years.

Christmas movie review: If You Believe

Rating: C

Nothing more than average was If You Believe. This one stars Ally Walker, who back in the day starred in that TV show The Profiler - which I never watched but thank god I didn't, because I found Ally Walker particularly annoying and not that good of an actress. Plus, she looked awful and yes, I am superficial. Anyway, her character is Scroogey Susan and after telling her seven-year-old niece that there is no Santa Claus during Thanksgiving dinner, her brother banishes her from his home. When she wakes up the next morning, seven-year-old HER has shown up and becomes her constant companion over the next month. The seven-year-old is there - I guess - to help her find her inner child and eventually it works, of course. The main reason I recorded this movie from 1999 was because the seven-year-old is played by Hayden Panettiere back in the days before she was the cheerleader who needed saving on Heroes. Hayden is cute, but also grating. So, anyway, whenever adult Susan does something, kid Susan is there to criticize and try to change behavior. Of course it works and soon adult Susan is happier, successful at her job again, finding romance and making sacrifices. Tres predictable and tres boring. Because I didn't get invested in anyone or anything, I give it an average rating.

Christmas movie review: Christmas at Water's Edge

Rating: B-

Christmas at Water's Edge is your typical Christmas story, I guess, in that the selfish character discovers the true meaning of Christmas, and just in time, too. It's kind of blah, to be honest. An angel with a mission.... A really spoiled, selfish rich girl who needs to be taught the "Christmas" lesson... a group of underprivileged kids who hang out together after school at a place called "Angel House".... that's about it. The rich girl (played by The Cosby Show baby Keshia Knight Pulliam) has to work at Angel House as part of a school assignment. The angel has to work with the rich girl to earn his wings. The kids at Angel House want to put on a Christmas concert. Rich girl finds out she really loves helping out at Angel House and then oops, daddy's company is trying to shut it down to build a shopping center. But, no worries, everything ends happily ever after when rich girl yells at Daddy and figures out a solution. It's not that good, but it's not that bad either.

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone has a very merry Christmas!!

Christmas movie review: The Road to Christmas

Rating: A-

I really liked The Road to Christmas. It almost makes me want to go back and make the grade for A Christmas Wedding even lower because they both have really similar plotlines, yet I enjoyed this one so much more. It's kind of bizarre that they both debuted on Lifetime at around the same time.

Anyway, this again is a story of a kind of workaholic woman (played by Jennifer Grey!) who plans to marry at Christmastime. She decides to leave town early and surprise her Italian fiance, who is apparently making all the wedding arrangements in Aspen. Of course, transportation problems ensue and she can't just take a plane or rent a car. She ends up hitching a ride with a man and his daughter, who are both still a little messed up about the loss of their wife/mom quite a few years before and are lacking a real female presence in their lives. Of course, although there is some early tension between Jennifer's character and Tom, the main male character (played by Clark Gregg, Jennifer's real-life husband), the two soon find themselves growing attracted to each other. Despite fighting it and thanks to Jennifer's cheating fiance (which is expected but also somewhat unexpected!), everything ends happily ever after, of course.

Overall, it was just a cute love story for the holidays. The only downfall to the film was that the daughter, who is supposedly 13 years old, looks much older than 13. Upon further IMDB investigation, she is 20 years old! 20 years old playing a 13 year old? Give me a break! They couldn't have made her just a few years older or found an actress that was younger? That was too distracting to me to give the movie a solid 'A'.

Christmas movie review: A Perfect Day

Rating: B

A Perfect Day is yet another movie that is only incidentally a Christmas one. It is based on a book by Richard Paul Evans, author of Christmas drivel like The Christmas Box and Timepiece, and tells the story of a man (I guess like Evans himself probably) who loses his job, decides to finally write that book he's been working on and soon finds himself a very successful author. And, along with his newfound fame and money, he also becomes kind of a jerk. He is never home as he has one huge non-stop book tour and starts to treat his family like crap. He goes from devoted family man to asshat in about three days. However, just as you begin to think there is nothing redeemable about him anymore, he meets a stranger (an angel?) who informs him his days are numbered. Thinking he's going to die, the main character kind of realizes what an ass he's been and starts to remember what's important in life and returns to the man he once was.

Overall, yes, it's a little hokey (of course!) and has a good cast (Rob Lowe is the main character, Paget Brewster his wife, Frances Conroy his agent, Christopher Lloyd the stranger), but I didn't really enjoy it. The portion of the movie where he becomes a jerk seems to be about 1 hour and 40 minutes long while the redemption part seems to be about 20 minutes long. It just seemed rushed towards the end and while I understood the twist at the end (regarding the stranger), it just didn't make enough sense to me. I'll take a miraculous turnaround but I'm not so convinced that this one is for keeps.

Job in Chicago

So I've had a whirlwind week sort of, starting with last Friday when I had a phone interview at a trade association in Chicago. That was actually my second phone interview there. It went pretty well and they called late Friday afternoon to set up a time for me to come there in person. Well, to tell me when to come, because it honestly didn't seem like I had much say in the matter. After setting up a time, though, I soon realized that to go there Thursday like they wanted was going to be a lot more expensive and likely a lot more hassle for me than if I could reschedule it for earlier in the week or the following week. Finally, late Monday afternoon they gave me the go-ahead to come in Wednesday instead. So I got up at about 4:30am Weds. to fly to Chicago for a 9am interview and then flew directly home again afterwards!

In Chicago, the interview went okay. I met with the two people with whom I had already phone interviewed plus a new person (some VP) and also got a tour of the office, a tour of the library, and was taken out to breakfast at the apparently extremely famous Lou Mitchell's. It seemed to go well, at least for the first three hours. I was pretty exhausted and had a splitting headache by the time noon rolled around and I finally met with the VP. I found her kind of annoying in ways I can't really describe. Also, she seemed to want me to jump on the table and scream with excitement, "I LOVE it here! This is exactly what I want!!" which I wasn't about to do. For one thing, I'm not that kind of person and also, I just don't feel that way about this job.

I think the job would be okay and it's better than half of the other things I've interviewed for, but I couldn't say I would be excited to work there, no. It would be more me just biding time until I could find something better. I do think I would be picking up some good skills for my resume for the next job I might want to find, so it could be useful. And, I do think I would get along well with the other librarian so that's a plus. However, the prospect of moving to Chicago is less than desirable to me. While there are definitely worse places to live, there are also a few places I would be a lot more excited about. If the job was really cool, I think Chicago would look more desirable to me but the combination of the two has me less than enthused. Chicago is a lot more expensive than I thought and while I know their public transportation system is pretty exhaustive, it's also difficult to understand and find your way around. It took me a long time to get any useful information from their outdated, unfriendly Web sites and the few people I conversed with while there - lifelong Chicagoans! - seemed equally perplexed by it all. So, if it doesn't even become clearer once you live there, how encouraging is that to me?

Overall, I think they really liked me. They called yesterday while I was out to possibly make an offer. Although I do think they sensed my reluctance and that might mean they chose to go with someone else. I have yet to hear back from them today so I'm just waiting. I have no idea what I'd do if they did indeed make an offer but it would probably depend a LOT on the offer that was made and their explanation of the benefits. The brief explanation of benefits I got makes me think they are really less than ideal.

Choosing your 2008 Presidential Candidate

Take this quiz and find out who to vote for among the potential 2008 Presidential candidates.
I'm a 100% match with Senator Obama and a 97% match with Congressman (MY Congressman, in fact) Kucinich. Those are some pretty high matches, eh? That's kind of encouraging. I already knew that I liked a lot of what Kucinich says but it's good to know that I apparently like a lot of what Obama says, too, especially since he's much more likely to get the nomination over Kucinich. Ah, poor Dennis.

"A classic time of year"

An appropriate article (found via TV Tattle) about what makes a Christmas movie a classic considering I've been reviewing all these made-for-TV Christmas movies. I'm not sure I agree entirely with everything she says but nonetheless, I'm sharing...

Christmas movie review: Under the Mistletoe

Rating: A-

Overall, I enjoyed this movie. And, I really didn't think I would. The downgrade from an A to an A- is simply because it's only incidentally a Christmas movie. Under the Mistletoe tells the story of a mother and son living in sort of perpetual sadness because they lost their husband/father in a car accident at Christmas the year before. And it's now Christmas time again and both are still clinging to the deceased man too much. The son, in particular, is having trouble moving on because he sees and talks to his dad's ghost nearly every day! Needless to say, the mother is worried about her son's "visions" and also kind of jealous that she can't see her husband like her son can. For reasons I still don't get, the son & father decide to enter the mother (played by Jaime Ray Newman, who played the memorable Kristina Cassidine on General Hospital) in a dating contest sponsored by the local radio station. I guess the idea is that she needs to move on. Of course, as soon as she starts dating someone, the son and father don't like it. I guess it's just because the guy is a jerk, which he is, but they can't have everything, you know? Meanwhile, the son bonds with his counselor at his school and it doesn't take a psychic to realize which man Jaime's character will end up with. Anyway, it's a pretty good movie: sometimes funny, sometimes cute, sometimes sad, sometimes mystical. Pretty much, it's a little bit of everything. A small gripe is that I found it somewhat hard-to-believe that Jaime Ray Newman could have an 11-year-old. In real life, she's 28 and sure, it's possible, but she just looks too young, I guess. I also had a slightly difficult time differentiating between the actor who played the dead husband and the actor who played the school counselor. They look enough alike that every time one of them was on screen, I had to stop and think "Is this the ghost dad? Okay, no, it's the counselor." It didn't help that both actors had a lot of scenes with the son. Overall, though, really enjoyable!

Christmas movie review: Christmas Do Over

Rating: A-

Ah, what to say about Christmas Do Over? This is a Groundhog Day rip-off in which the main character, who is a total ass and is played by Jay Mohr, keeps reliving Christmas Day over and over and over and over again. At first, he takes the opportunity to be even MORE obnoxious and a-holey than he already is. Eventually, he of course becomes a better father and better person and realizes some of his shortcomings. It's predictable but kind of sweet, despite the fact that Jay Mohr is pretty grating. Daphne Zuniga, who I swear hasn't worked since Melrose Place despite what her bio says, plays the ex-wife. Go figure, Jay & Daphne actually have a little bit of chemistry.

Check out the full movie, streaming online here.