Saturday, September 17, 2005
After Vanessa returned from her birthday party, we headed downtown to the Paramount in order to see Tim Burton's Corpse Bride.
Both Vanessa and Annie are fans of the Nightmare Before Christmas, and from everything I've read the actual fright factor is low, so I felt alright about bringing Annie along.
The movie was fun, and we arrived in time to get excellent seats. The movie was short (I think it about 70 minutes long or so), but as a consequence it never dragged. Despite the big names of the voice actors who worked on the film, the stop motion animation is the real "star" (though it is another opportunity for Johnny Depp to show off his chameleon-like qualities in the role of Victor, the would-be groom). Arguably one of the best scenes is one without dialog, a piano duet between the groom and corpse bride. A fun film -- would that there were more like it (and soon enough, there will be). My only qualm about the showing was that the volume was higher than was comfortable. Another possible sign of the times was the woman who appeared to be a house manager who stayed around for the first part of the movie watching the audience, presumably on the look-out for anyone trying to surreptitiously record the movie.
We regularly go to the local Lick's restaurant a couple of times a month, sometimes more.
About a month ago I put in a ballot for one of the seasonal contests they tend to hold. It being summer, the prizes included a getaway to a local resort, a gas BBQ, games for kids and so on.
I remember at the time Erika chiding me about putting in an entry, saying that it would lead only to junk mail. I pointed that junk mail from Licks was likely to take the form of coupons, so even if e didn't win we'd probably get a discount for future meals.
And from that one ballot I won the gas BBQ. A Fiesta Express XT40046, specifically.
I got the news about this earlier in the week, but we went and picked it up over lunchtime today.
Vanessa was away at a birthday party so I just had Annie with me, and we met Erika there after her usual Saturday morning yoga session, truck in tow.
In claiming the prize I donned a Lick's cooking apron and shook the hand of a manager while another employee took some Polaroids. In addition to the grill we were offered a free meal, and I bought some packaged burgers for a later cook-up.
When we got the grill home it was time to size things up. We already have a gas grill, a Ducane model hooked up to our gas main. I did all the measurements and it turns out that new grill is in fact smaller than our existing one. It is also designed for use with propane, so we would have to have the grill retro-fitted to work with our existing setup.
So in the end we will likely not keep the grill. It will likely go to my mother-in-law or sister-in-law, though am hoping I can find a charity that could make some use of it. In any event I will passing the results of my good luck along to someone else.
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