feeling a bit blah
May. 29th, 2006 08:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerI'm annoyed because Rupert is not well. He's got something slightly wrong with (I think) his front wheel. There's a sound that suggests to me that the wheel is slightly out of true and rubbing against one of the brake shoes once each revolution. The problem is, I don't have the skill to fix it; I tried loosening the wheel and reseating it (per the tutorial on my shop's website), and that doesn't seem to help. I tried adjusting the tension on the brake, and that didn't help either. He'll need to go to the shop, only I imagine they're closed today and I have guy's night tomorrow. And either way, it means I can't go riding today. :-( Well, maybe I'll take him in when I'm off work tomorrow doing the cat thing.
It put rather a damper on my riding yesterday, which I did after I got back from Peter's. I did about four miles, but between the squeak, which I kept stopping to try and fix, and all the gnats, it wasn't as much fun as it might have been. I need to find some clear goggles, or just a perspex windscreen for my face :-) Gnat impacts on the face and in the mouth are one thing, but I got a gnat in my EYE, and that is not on!
Peter and Bryan and Peter's friend Bob and I had gamed during the morning and afternoon, and that had started off my feelings of frustration. I was trying to teach them all a game that I've played with other folks several times now. But I just don't seem to be very good at teaching people games. When I try to go through explanations or processes carefully and methodically, people get bored and stop paying attention, but then when I rush through things to explain them quickly, I miss bits out (and consequently get heckled "Oh, that's Jan for you; forgets to tell you all the rules until after you've made a mistake...") And I feel bad because, as much as I play lots of games but don't often manage to win them, I feel as if Peter plays lots of games but doesn't often manage to enjoy them. And there's really nothing worse than feeling as if you've talked a friend into spending an afternoon (or many) doing something he doesn't really understand or enjoy.
So... after the gaming and the biking I went out, got some groceries, and grabbed some fast food as a treat to eat at home while I watched a movie. Of course, when I got home, it turned out I'd been given something other than what I ordered; but, you know, at that point I just ate it. I had "X Men" to watch (thanks to Bryan and Peter, who had mentioned that it and "X Men 2" were being shown a lot as previews for the third movie, which just came out). I'd not seen it before, and quite enjoyed it! I read the comic book *waaaaay* back in the day, before half the current characters were around, but I thought the story entertaining, the acting good, and the cast all well worth looking at (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, what a wonderful pairing; Anna Paquin--yummy! Famke Jannsen--wow! Hugh Jackman--ruggedly handsome!)
I appreciated the point ?Bryan? made the other evening about how Magneto (Ian McKellan's character) is the villain of the piece, but enough is shown of his character and motivations that he's not two-dimensional; the viewer has some sympathy with his point of view, even if it is extreme. He's ruthless, but you can see where all his ruth has gone and why.
Anna Paquin, while beautiful and not a bad actress, was screamingly funny (in an unintended way) with her accent. At the beginning of the film she's doing a very heavy-handed Southern accent, but during the course of the story it slowly disappears, resurfaces in a scene or two--just so there can be no plausible justification for her "losing" it as she begins to assimilate with the other kids at Xavier's school--and then fades away entirely.
Oh, and wholly unrelated to the movie, IMDB tells me that AP was a classmate of the stunningly beautiful Julia Stiles at Columbia. Wow! I'm astonished that NYC didn't explode from all the pulchritude!
It put rather a damper on my riding yesterday, which I did after I got back from Peter's. I did about four miles, but between the squeak, which I kept stopping to try and fix, and all the gnats, it wasn't as much fun as it might have been. I need to find some clear goggles, or just a perspex windscreen for my face :-) Gnat impacts on the face and in the mouth are one thing, but I got a gnat in my EYE, and that is not on!
Peter and Bryan and Peter's friend Bob and I had gamed during the morning and afternoon, and that had started off my feelings of frustration. I was trying to teach them all a game that I've played with other folks several times now. But I just don't seem to be very good at teaching people games. When I try to go through explanations or processes carefully and methodically, people get bored and stop paying attention, but then when I rush through things to explain them quickly, I miss bits out (and consequently get heckled "Oh, that's Jan for you; forgets to tell you all the rules until after you've made a mistake...") And I feel bad because, as much as I play lots of games but don't often manage to win them, I feel as if Peter plays lots of games but doesn't often manage to enjoy them. And there's really nothing worse than feeling as if you've talked a friend into spending an afternoon (or many) doing something he doesn't really understand or enjoy.
So... after the gaming and the biking I went out, got some groceries, and grabbed some fast food as a treat to eat at home while I watched a movie. Of course, when I got home, it turned out I'd been given something other than what I ordered; but, you know, at that point I just ate it. I had "X Men" to watch (thanks to Bryan and Peter, who had mentioned that it and "X Men 2" were being shown a lot as previews for the third movie, which just came out). I'd not seen it before, and quite enjoyed it! I read the comic book *waaaaay* back in the day, before half the current characters were around, but I thought the story entertaining, the acting good, and the cast all well worth looking at (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, what a wonderful pairing; Anna Paquin--yummy! Famke Jannsen--wow! Hugh Jackman--ruggedly handsome!)
I appreciated the point ?Bryan? made the other evening about how Magneto (Ian McKellan's character) is the villain of the piece, but enough is shown of his character and motivations that he's not two-dimensional; the viewer has some sympathy with his point of view, even if it is extreme. He's ruthless, but you can see where all his ruth has gone and why.
Anna Paquin, while beautiful and not a bad actress, was screamingly funny (in an unintended way) with her accent. At the beginning of the film she's doing a very heavy-handed Southern accent, but during the course of the story it slowly disappears, resurfaces in a scene or two--just so there can be no plausible justification for her "losing" it as she begins to assimilate with the other kids at Xavier's school--and then fades away entirely.
Oh, and wholly unrelated to the movie, IMDB tells me that AP was a classmate of the stunningly beautiful Julia Stiles at Columbia. Wow! I'm astonished that NYC didn't explode from all the pulchritude!
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Date: 2006-05-29 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-05-29 04:17 pm (UTC)