Big memorial day weekend!

That's just what you might call it since it fell on the Memorial Day weekend in the US. Here, it was just the last weekend in May. Nothing wrong with that. Somebody's got to do it.

And, yet, it was a pretty big weekend. Zelda got a good walk. "We" had our first open house. Played games with John and Buhva at Andrew's in-law's home. Saw a movie in a group of 7! Then, toured the air traffic control center at Brisbane airport. Some of this could be talked about...

The walk. Kevin liked it. Zelda loved it. And, I was at work.

The open house. I understand there were several visitors. Kevin said one man lingered. Scoping out the games?

Gaming. I was totally creamed in Fiji- though it was fun competing to win shrunken heads; made a remarkable recovery to come in second in Trans America. I think I could have done better from the start if someone had explained to me that it wasn't about women pretending to be men pretending to be women. Had ONE good clue in Thingamajig- "What 27 is to 3". And, found my calling with... hmmmm you'd think I could remember that title. But, the gaming was just gaming. The cool bit was watching the possums in the backyard as we were eating supper. No one could tell me whether Australian possums "played possum". But then again, no one really believed me that American ones did either. You'd think you could count on your husband for something!



Zodiac- I wanted to love this movie, but I didn't/can't. I identified more with the following comments from (positive) reviews from rottentomatoes.com. "Overlong and lacking dramatic focus"; a "sprawling story". I'm particularly sensitive to "sprawling". Movies exceding 90 minutes are at a distinct disadvantage. And, Jake Gyllenhaal- he's cleaned up his diction but he's still a gay cowboy. Don't point to the wife and kids. They didn't mean anything in "Brokeback Mountain", either. While I enjoyed Robert Downey Jr.'s character and performance, I thought the movie really became more coherent once he was out of the story. What I liked: one, it WAS a true story; and, two, the effect that this series of murders had on the detectives and reporters interested me.

Air traffic control- A big, big thank you to Phil who arranged for us to see where he's keeping the skies safe above Broom (-which has a great fish shop, cool dinosaur footprints, and a neat-o effect that the moon produces- something about steps). Kevin and Steve drooled over the BIG computer screens and we all enjoyed the birds eye view of Brisbane, the ocean, the bush, and, oh yeah, the airport. Little known untrue fact: Brisbane's air traffic control centre was the inspiration for the movie "Snakes on a Plane" (see below).