Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving Day and feast with family and/or friends! I will be having some ham instead of turkey (Chris doesn't prefer turkey) and a few sides. It should be good eatin'! I also have the day off from work (we're closed) and it's a paid holiday! In fact, Friday is also a paid holiday, but we are open. We had a few customers who said they wished we were open on Thanksgiving Day and I just had to ignore the comment because there is no way I want to be at work on Thanksgiving! I will be working a full 40-hours this week so I get, basically, 16 extra hours of pay. The pay is nice, but the days off would have been nicer. I am perpetually tired this week and I think it's because of my 7-day week last week. I was good that week, but I'm just tired this week. Almost everyone else got 3 days off this week. I was one of two who didn't (the other person had all last week off, so it hardly counts!), but I guess that's what I get for being Assistant Manager and also us being short. Oh well. Maybe I'll take extra time off around Christmas. We'll see.

Anyway, I painted my nails for Thanksgiving. I used China Glaze Champagne Kisses (a little more pink in person and less gold), mostly, but did accent nails with SpaRitual Liquid Gold for the base. I haven't done nail art in a while and was going to do the turkeys on both hands, but decided doing the turkey on my right hand wasn't going to work out well (I'm right-handed) so I opted for the Pilgrim hat instead. (The nail art was done with various nubar nail art pens.) It was easier to do, but I still messed it up a little too. Oh well! I still like it for Thanksgiving! I think this weekend (next day off on Sat) I'll try a water marble...

On to movies...

Skyfall (Daniel Craig, Judi Dench) - It wasn't too bad. It showed the "softer" side of Bond with Dench's M, which I really liked. It showed their loyalty to each other. This was probably the best of the 3 Craig Bond films. It kind of had everything: emotion, action, nicely cinematic scenes, a crazy villain, etc. I liked the villain too since he was always just a little ahead of Bond/MI6. The Bond Girl had a sort of "rough" go in this movie, though...My one thing about the film is that Craig has 2 more Bond films to do and I'm kind of finished with him as Bond. It's not so much that I don't like him as Bond, but Craig is getting a little old to play Bond. So I hope they do the films sooner rather than later and I hope they play more along Skyfall's lines. They acknowledged his age in Skyfall and I appreciated that. It would be nice to see Bond back to his normal kick-butt/suave manner too, but to keep to the storytelling like Skyfall, which had depth. Grade: B+

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (Steve Carell, Kiera Knightley) - Let me first say that I liked this film. It had a vulnerability to it, but when you sat down and thought about the film, you started to wonder about its rhythm or something. I don't know. There's just something slightly off about the film and, let's be honest, it does have a kind of depressing-happy end. I did like it overall, though, and it was an interesting movie about what do you do when the world is going to end and you know when it'll end. Seeing Carell and Knightley together was sort of weird, but it somehow worked for both their characters. Knightley's Penny is sort of the care-free one and Carell's Dodge was the one who wanted "the life," but somehow fell short in every way. They end up together on the road together to achieve their final goals before the world ends. I liked it, but it does sort of go from one thing to another, but also somehow worked for me. I don't know. I liked it, but it's not fantastic either. It was a good rental. Grade: B/B- (B, if you don't think about it too much...)

The Expendables 2 (Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Chuck Norris, etc) - After recently watching the first one, I wanted to watch the 2nd one. I have to say, I'm glad I did. I actually liked the 2nd one more than the 1st one! There's actual laughs (intentional laughs) and the girl just wasn't a maiden in distress (she was smart and held her own). The story was a little more far-fetched and silly than the first movie (first one made a little more sense to their band of guys), but it's not like you expected Shakespeare or something in this either so I feel like the actual storyline is moot as long as the rest of it supports it and it does. There was still a lot of guns, explosions, knives, blood, etc, but it was much better this time and the story helped those explosions, knives, blood, etc along a little better. You also saw the "softer" side of the guys when "Billy the Kid" ends up dying. Chuck Norris in the film cracked me up, though. They definitely made his role to fit his enigma and they even got in a Chuck Norris joke, which really made me laugh (actually, almost every scene with Norris was my favorite). I could have lived without Schwarzenegger (*gag*), but I liked Bruce Willis. So, yeah, better than the first one, in my opinion, but it's still silly too. Grade: C+ (maybe a B- just because I really liked the Chuck Norris joke!)

With that...I'm off to read. Once again, a Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I have a lot to be thankful for and it's always good to remember the good in our lives.