I didn’t have an incredibly great week last week. It started out pretty good but got increasingly poor as the days went on. This weekend was a blessing of a break. Even though we did a lot of driving I was still able to get away from here and that was good.

Saturday we drove to Poplar Bluff in Southern Missouri for my friend Ryan’s wedding. It was a 3 1/2 hour drive, but entirely worth it to see him get married. I also got to see my good friend Rod who lives on the East Coast now.

And we slept in. That was really nice. Today we went to the bookstore and I picked up Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue which I’ve been eyeing for a while. I’m excited to start reading it tonight before bed. I think it’s going to be really interesting.

But I am not excited to have work tomorrow. I need a break. I need an extended vacation. I need some time to recover. I haven’t had any time away from work since Christmas and I am definitely starting to feel the effects. I was going to take Jessica to Six Flags last week but didn’t feel I was able to after some things that happened at work and with Kevin taking Friday off. So hopefully I will be able to work out a long weekend this week and we can take care of these cheap Six Flags tickets I have.

And today was Father’s Day. Looks like I will finally be starting on a design for my dad’s site which is good. He needs it and I have a good idea for what I’m going to do design-wise. Hopefully  I’ll have some more freelance coming my way in the near future.

It’s no secret that I love this awesome reading social network called Readernaut. The site is awesome. it keeps track of your library, current reading progress, pages read, and shares that with friends who are also into reading.

Also super exciting is the fact that Readernaut is now out of private beta. That means anyone can sign up for a beta account and start helping make the site even more amazing than it is right now.

If you are at all a reader, go over to readernaut.com and sign up for an account. Then follow me so we can share books recommendations and stuff.

Wow. Sorry for the lack of posts. A ton is going on at work. And at night, well Jess and I have been burning through the How I Met Your Mother DVDs. Hilarious show. I highly recommend it.

So what else has been going on? Well, we’re rolling on our dotCMS project at work. We’re in the design stages, which is fantastic, and I’m acting as project manager. Kevin started work on Monday and is getting into the swing of stuff. We’re going to have a lot of fun with this as it moves.

I’ve been working on a site design for my friend Chris. I’m hoping to start slicing and markup by this weekend at the latest. I would like to have his blog rolled out by the middle of February, and once the designs are done, the actual coding shouldn’t take too horribly long. I’m pretty proud of it too, it’s pretty cool, if I do say so myself. Here’s a sample.

Implementing some new stuff over at AgapeFest.com. New videoBlog up, a deal with Sonicbids, some other stuff. It’s going good.

I’m reading this incredible book called The Meaning of Night. It’s incredible and complicated, so it’d take a lot to explain it. Hit up Amazon and read the summary. It’s so good.

Jess is finally reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves and thinks it is great, just as I predicted she would.

It is super cold here this morning. -2ºF. And my office is drafty.

Jessica and I saw Twilight this evening. Okay, maybe I should backtrack. We read the Twilight saga in about two and a half weeks last month. The books were nothing special, but they were at least interesting and moody and a fun read.

I fear movie adaptations of book series because I normally will read the publicated story first. We did that with Harry Potter and we did it with Twilight. The difference between the two is that the HP movies are actually incredibly good.

What I fear from adaptations goes along a thought process. If the book or series is relatively current–and, especially, enjoyable–you only get one shot at making a film that will do it justice. One shot at cinematography, one shot at casting, one shot at having a director that fits. And usually a movie-worthy novel will have to have a perfect match in order to work properly, not to mention a good screenplay.

Twilight had none of that. And it was really disappointing because I look at it and can point out exactly what was wrong. The casting–for the most part–was great. I wish the Bella character had had a higher pitched voice, but the only terrible casting decision was the Rosalie character. In the book, she is supposed to be a ravishing woman, the most beautiful thing anyone has seen. In the film she was kind of heavy, not very pretty, and annoying.

The directing for the film was horrid as well. Edward should have been much more cool, stoic and controlled and not as emotional as played out. The rest of the vampires should have had a much more “bad-ass” tone throughout the movie. And they didn’t.

The overall feel of the film was off too. The book had a melancholy, dark feel and was really “moody”. But the film came off as cheap. I haven’t seen how much they spent on the film but the shots were horrible, the music was atrocious, and the tone of the film was “amateur” and cheap. They spent too much money on the Carlisle character’s bad makeup job and could’ve hired a good cinematographer instead.

And that is the one chance they got. If you sat it next to even the first Harry Potter film and compared them simply on the quality points I listed above, Twilight wouldn’t even compare it was so bad.

The Twilight books as a series were engrossing. They suck you in and, though the first book’s plot doesn’t start for 370 pages, you can find other things in the book to enjoy. The film was repelling because of how amateurish it comes off. An extreme disappointment. I wish I could remake it right now.

I work for a small college (1600 total) in Southern Illinois, about 45 miles East of St Louis, MO. I work in the Office of Advancement which includes PR, Development (giving), Alumni Relations and Web. My entire department has 14 people in it at the moment. Everyone is in everyone’s business.

This also means that I end up working a lot of weekends. Not only am I the web guy but I’m also videographer and photographer for events. Such as Homecoming this weekend. I have to get up early in the morning tomorrow and go take photos of the Panther 5k run, then the women’s alumni volleyball game, and finally an alumni luncheon.

Jessica and I are also very nice people. We let our friends stay with us when they come out for these things. Even if it’s over, say, Jessica’s birthday which happens to be today. Yes, tonight we have a friend coming to stay with us. Which is fine. I really wanted to take Jessica out for her birthday at some point near the actual date.

We also need to go buy coffee. This has been a blah week.  But the election is less than two weeks away, which means I won’t have to listen to arguments and discussions anymore. Or get stressed out by them. Instead I can read and study more history so that I am even better informed for the next election.

I’m tired. I’m tired of my work and of being blocked from actually making improvements where they need to be made. I haven’t heard yet about my grad school app and probably won’t until after the first of the year. Maybe as far away as March. But I’m praying all the time I’m accepted so that we can leave here and start doing something more fun/worthwhile.

We read Twilight. It was “eh” – we’ll read the second one but I might actually write a review of the first novel in the saga. I think I might start doing book review/reports here. That might be fun. And an incentive to finish reading the mountain I’ve already started.

Currently Reading:

War has to become an instrument of policy, regardless of differences in culture, ideology, nationality, and personal morality, because with weapons that powerful the alternative could be annihilation.

- John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History

Sometimes I just get stressed out with life. But I’m okay. Finances suck sometimes. Not that I have problems; I just worry easily.

Adding to my summer listening list: Mike Dunn & the Kings of New England

Randall (actually Chad via Randall, I guess) recommended it, and it is FANTASTIC. I can’t tell you how stoked I was toward the end of my internship that the guys I looked up to at Militia loved Limbeck. When Chad passed on to me one of the Light Wires albums… oh man. So, Chad and Randall – thank you for the great music recommendations. Click that link up there and download it. The EP is less than $6 and totally worth that. This might be one of my favorite records for this summer (but it’s too early to tell yet).

I’ve been connecting with a lot of people I knew years ago on Facebook the last couple days. It’s been awesome. That’s one of the things I love about the social internet – being able to reconnect. That’s something that just wouldn’t happen without the tubes and interwebs.

Jess and I took some photos today that I’m pretty happy with. I’m looking for more gear to possibly take with us to Europe in July. Maybe a Kiev-4 or a Holga. I think I’m shying away from Holga because they’re common with the people I know. But we’ll see what happens.

Also, I’m reading a new book. Well, it’s kind of an old book, but it’s one my Britannia-centric friends (ahem, Randall) would enjoy. It’s called Outposts: Journey to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire and it’s a travel book… sort of. It’s a guy’s retelling of his attempt to visit every remaining outpost of Imperial Britain. I’m not too far in yet, but it’s already got me excited. I can’t wait to really get into it.

I’m also looking at some new Masters programs on the East coast. Stepping stones, if you will, to get to my final choice of MA/Ph.D. at William and Mary. Still working out the strategy in it all, but I think I’ve got it pretty airtight and will be brushing up for a GRE re-take and then applying to Syracuse University (possibly).

Restlessness kicks in about now. The campus is empty and I’m stuck doing web work. And not very creative web work at that. Hopefully my summer trips will keep me sane.