Danielle Blog

In my spare time

I just finished watching X-Men First Class in Blu-Ray. What an amazing movie. I loved getting to hear the back story on Erik/Magneto, Raven/Mystique, and Charles. It was really cool and had some neat twists and turns. It is too bad that there wasn’t more of Hugh Jackman in it (Wolverine), BUT the fact that James McAvoy was in almost every scene made up for it.
I’m such a sucker for any James McAvoy movie. I fell for him when I saw him in Penelope and it blossomed into a huge crush when I saw Becoming Jane.
But I digress.
The X-Men movies are really great; I highly recommend them.

I had a lot of fun with my family for Christmas last weekend. And here we are, on Wednesday, headed into New Year’s weekend, which I’ll spend with them again! We are starting to make plans for more movies and meals together.

Yesterday and today, I’ve been trying to tie up various things on my work to-do list. The letter of recommendation I needed to do for a student was relatively easy. Of course, today I got another request from a different student. The curriculum proposal for a new Developmental Biology course has taken quite a bit more of my time and energy. But I got a pretty good draft completed tonight. I’ll talk to my department chair about it tomorrow and hopefully have it wrapped up and submitted tomorrow. It is officially due on Friday at 5 pm, so if I can finish it on Thursday, I can take Friday OFF and not think about work.

I DID go for an exercise walk yesterday in our gorgeous 60+ degree weather. It was really fabulous. I’d wanted to go again today, but I was focused and trying to get the proposal done by supper, so I skipped it.

I’ve also managed to run some errands, which included boring things like grocery shopping, and getting food for Max, but also included fun stuff like stopping in at Dress Barn to check out their sales. I did find one cute top and one sweater; both have some frills and ruffles and have purple in them!

I also found a new, fitted exercise (dry) t-shirt in purple too (at a sporting goods store). I’ve been wanting to buy some new clothes since the weather has turned cooler, and just haven’t managed to find the time. I’m hoping to get to some more stores in the upcoming weeks. Everything is pretty picked over, so it is a bit challenging, but this is when I finally have time, so this is when I’ll go!

I finally saw “The Blind Side” with Texas Seestor and Trainwreck last weekend. It was a really good movie. I can totally see why it won awards.

I also rented “Crazy, Stupid, Love” which I do NOT recommend unless you are a Ryan Gosling fan and just want some eye candy. I’d gone to redbox a bit spontaneously (and had not scouted the availability out ahead of time) and had wanted to rent X-Men. When it was empty, I just picked a “romantic comedy” instead that I’d thought had good reviews. Not the best choice, and it taught me to plan ahead, for sure! Oh well, two out of three movies is pretty good.

In other news, the new band that I’m in had our first practice last week. We are mainly working on songs that are designed for 2-3 part harmony and acoustic guitars (Crosby, Stills & Nash, Eagles, Simon & Garfunkel, John Denver), sort of a country/rock cross. We had some really gorgeous chords during some of our very first run-throughs on songs. I got goosebumps a couple of times! We have a lot of potential. We’ll see if anything more becomes of it than just playing for someone’s surprise birthday party in late January. I’d like it to become something more. But for now, it is just good that we have any kind of goal; it will keep us practicing regularly and getting a bit of a set list down. I’ve had fun learning harmonies on all kinds of new songs and resurrecting harmonies I’ve sort of learned but haven’t been able to sing with anyone (like the 80′s songs such as “More Than Words” or “Hole Hearted”). I’m also stretching into country a little bit more than I’ve ever done before with a Wynnona Judd song and Sons of the Pioneers. It has been really interesting to branch out a bit more.

Okay. It is 11 pm, so it is definitely time for bed so that I can be bright and bushy-tailed for my work on my proposal tomorrow. Later!