Monday May 11

By most respects it was a pretty crappy day. Not that the events were bad per-se, I just feel wrong about them. One event was not at all a huge surprise, but was just further confirmation that a relationship with a person who was once very special to me is officially dead. Yeah, it's been on life support for a long time and I had essentially moved on, but this weekend, I was sucked back in and learned enough to wish I hadn't been. Oh well. At least I know, right?

The other event was extremely shocking. I learned that a friend of mine is pregnant and frankly, it was the last person I would have expected. It's good news and all and very happy for her. But at the same time, it has really forced me to step back and take a hard look at my own situation and see that my own social situation is still quite pathetic. I guess you could say I'm jealous. My friends are finding happiness with people left and right and here I am, still just me. I know I shouldn't look at it in such a self-centric way, but sometimes this bubbling of emotion gets to me.

Saturday May 9

I think I've had it with this piece of junk Toshiba machine. If it's not running slow, having a key get stuck or not coming back to life after its reset, the disk drive is getting stuck. Today, for example, I put in a CD and it doesn't even read the dang thing. I reset the computer at least 3 times to see if it would eventually do it, but it never did. Then, naturally, the CD wouldn't eject. I had to practically pry the cover off just to get the dang thing to open. 

I've had a rather uneventful few days. Unlike the last time I was home, things aren't quite as pressed this time around. I'm here for longer than a week this time... yay? 

Review: Star Trek

I'll start by saying that I am not a Star Trek fan. In fact, in my twitter comments, I twice misspelled it. That out of the way, here's what I think:

The movie has been criticized by some critics (Ebert most notably) for being rather intellectually dry and sort of mindless This is a pretty fair criticism, because it kind of was, but frankly, does everything need to have some profound meaning? This is a movie made for the masses, not for the art house goon and in gearing towards that particular audience, it works.

The casting was nothing short of brilliant and relied on good old fashoned talent rather than star power. The great tragedy, however, was that Pegg had such a small role. He was a riot and stole every scene he was in. I bet that the next movies will have more of him. I didn't see any Shatner at all in Pine's Kirk, but in this case, it worked. He took the character and made it his own without really changing it too much.

Then there's Bana, who played Nero, the Romulan chief. Funny him staring in a well recieved reboot when he, in fact, was a large part of the reason that another franchise needed to be rebooted in the Hulk. Frankly, I've never been a huge fan, but he played it pretty straight in this one and was pretty convincing as a bad guy. I dugg the face tatts too.  

Overall, I really enjoyed the movie and look forward to the rest of the series.

Review: Sexy Beast

Sexy Beast.... what a great title for what is an otherwise quite bland movie.

The protagonist, Gal, is an ex-thief who lives out his retirement soaking up the sun in his Malibuesqe house in southern Spain. He has an ex-porn star wife, several well tanned friends and even a Spanish pool boy. Talk about the high life, eh? Things were good until Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) arrives and drags him out of his sun soaked stupor to convince him to help out with a job back in London. 

I guess convince is the wrong word. To put it simply, Logan is crazy and  isn't going to accept any answer other than "yes". If Gal was ever some sort of hardened gangster and criminal mastermind, he certainly didn't show it in his interactions with Logan where he came off as limp-wristed and weak. You just knew he was going to cave and do the job. 

What I don't understand, however, is why they were so insistent on having him for the caper anyway. If he was some sort of expert thief, you would think their plan would be a bit more elaborate than drilling through the wall of the bath house next door and shorting out the alarm system. What's so sophisticated about that? Seems fairly crude to me, especially on a bank that, as we are told, has one of the best security systems in Europe. 

Then there's the accents.... oye the accents. To say they were thick cockney is putting it far too mildly. They were down right incomprehensible. I had to turn on the captioning just to understand what was going on. Not that it mattered,  the dialogue was just a bunch of drivel peppered in with a few f-words..... for good measure, of course.

If there is one redeeming quality in this movie it is Kingsley as Ben Logan. Part of it, surely, is the sheer novelty of an actor as refined as Kingsley ranting, raving, pissing on floors and dropping f-bombs like they were going out of style. I have to say that it was quite an interesting performance, especially the scene in the airplane where he simply refused to put out his cigarette so the plane could take off. 100% pure bad ass with no decency. There's something to respect in a character like that.

Monday May 4

Had a pretty good day today. The professor seemed impressed by my SAS project, the one I was not too sure about for most of the week. Looks like I will be getting out of here has planned on Wednesday. He didn't even really take that hard of a look at it, but glanced through a few things and gave me a 98. Of course, a 100 would have been better, but I'm not grade grubber.

Now all I have left is my public finance final. Naturally, the thing I have dreaded the most is LAST. I'm not too sure how it is going to be. The last two times I've gone in feeling really confident only to be grossly disappointed. I feel like I somewhat know the material, but then again, who really knows anything? This guy just has a way of writing a question that can throw me off. I was going to study some this afternoon, but frankly, the thought of even looking at the stuff just makes me want to vomit. That's pretty much how I know I'm as ready as I'm going to be for an exam.

I'm starting to tread some very dangerous ground. Over the last few days I've noticed myself starting to slip back into some of the habits I've been working really hard to correct, my obsessive email checking, my obsessive facebook checking, my caffeine consumption. I know that I'm not going to conquer all these demons in one attempt, but I need to keep my eye on the ball.

Saturday May 2nd

A rather slow and uneventful day so far. I've wasted most of it haha. I woke up this morning and my stomach was infuriated with me about my little pizza and ice cream bender the night before and was having none of this workout business, so I stayed home this morning and piddled around online until lunch time. I figure it's ok because I will be able to squeeze in a Tuesday workout this week because I don't have school that day.

I went to Quiznos again for lunch. I don't know, I've been craving their soup a lot lately and it has indeed made me very happy. 

I studied for public finance a little bit today, and thankfully, I have been able to focus on it fairly well the last few days. For as much as I don't want to take this exam, it is kind of important that I do well because that's the only class I have that I don't feel real confident about. But there I go again, worried about grades. I'm in graduate school for christ sakes, when is that going to stop being a concern?

Friday May 1st

Had a somewhat productive day today. Although it is hard to be real productive when you don't have a whole lot to do. I finished my SAS project (more on this later), had my macro final yesterday, and my econometrics final was canceled, so all I really have is public finance. That's enough, however, because that class is the absolute bane of my existence. I've found it hard to work up sufficient energy to even give a rat's ass about it anymore. It doesn't really seem to matter. I've busted my hump all semester in there and, in all likelihood, I'm going to end up with a low B or even a C. On the last test, I took a different approach to preparation and really focused more on knowing the material by studying it a little bit each day for almost a month... I got an 83 on the test... what a crock of shit!

Then there's the issue of my paper. I thought I had a really original idea that, while somewhat flawed in its execution, came out fairly well. I was proud of it anyway. But I think the professor was less than impressed. I figure if I can't win with this guy there is really no point to busting myself too hard.

The SAS project is another thing that is still kind of up in the air. Since we had no guidelines (literally), I just had to wing it and did what I thought needed to be done with it. He said if we turned it in early he would let us know if some things need to be added. Of course, I tried to do just that yesterday when he said he was going to be in his office.... but surprise... he wasn't. I suppose I shouldn't be so selfish, though. It could have been an emergency... however it is, though, it has really thrown off my plans for the rest of the semester.

I'm trying my hardest to soften my assessment of how this semester is gone, but it has been really hard to do that. I just can't help but feel really unfulfilled by the way everything has gone. I did learn some things, that's true, but a lot of this stuff was on my own and could have been done w/o paying for the books and the lectures.