Dagger of the Mind

This is a real test in loyalty to my own principles. About a month ago a local grocery store (which has gas pumps out front) ran a special where you could buy $100 in gift cards for various chain stores and they would give you $1 per gallon off a tank of gas. I knew what I wanted to get hubby for Christmas so I got a $100 gift card for that store, collected my $1.85 per gallon tank of gas, then tucked the gift card away for when I'd do my Christmas shopping. The problem? The damn gift card is for Lowes!

A month ago shopping at Lowes was no problem. Now, I wouldn't be caught dead in a Lowes because of their assinine, weak-willed, lilly-livered, xenophobic actions in aligning themselves with a fringe Christian!Hate Group. I can tell myself that the money is already spent, the gift card just allows me to go to Lowes and pick up what I've already bought. The problem is I would be embarassed to be seen in a Lowes store now. Ordering online isn't an option 1 day before Christmas. Plus, I don't want to add to any aggregate statistics of how many people are still shopping at Lowes.

I was hoping to wait for them to back down from the uproar, but the latest statement today is that Lowes is sticking to their guns on their decision to withdraw advertising from an American-Islamic tv show because of the complaints of a fringe hate group. So I guess in the morning it is off to Home Depot I go (their main competitor, for my non-American friends) to go shopping. Or better yet, the local Ace Hardware.

Wow! I can't believe how long its been since I posted to my own journal. I'm usually busy playing on everyone else's sandbox and forget about my own.

One very mild spoiler for the last Harry Potter movie ahead.

I finally got to see the last Harry Potter movie today. I held off waiting for my best friend to be in town. Also, I wanted to avoid the first couple of weekends of screaming kids. Even so, it's the 3rd weekend and the theater was completely packed. 

I'm a fan of the books and have always grumbled because the movies tend to eliminate the plot and string a bunch of action scenes together to the extent that I don't understand how anyone who hasn't read the books can follow along. This last movie is truer to the book, but requires a knowledge of the books even more than the previous movies. Let me explain.

My best friend is 90% deaf and requires the headsets in theaters to hear a movie. The batteries in the theater's headset went dead before the previews were even finished. The theater had no more, so gave her her money back and she watched the movie in silence. Because of this I was hyper-aware of the dialogue and was amazed at how very little there was. Aside from the Harry-Dumbledore scene at King's Cross, the scenes were very lite on dialogue, and depends on the viewers' knowledge of the story to carry them along. I mentioned this to my friend after the movie and she agreed. Without being able to hear ahe had no trouble following the movie because the dialogue was so lite and she is familiar with the books.

It makes me wonder what the specific impressions of the plot movie-only fans have - particularly this last film.

I am absolutely exhausted! We drove down to Gulf Shores for a long weekend (8 hour drive) and did the normal ritual as soon as we arrived: check in, walk to the beach to inhale the ocean, walk to the restaurant on the dock, stuff ourselves with fresh seafood and beer. But there appears to be a shrimp festival going on on the beach outside of our window, so we've spent the last several hours roaming around that. (This is after driving 8 hours). I'm going to go die now and hopefully will have energy to read my flist in the morning.

It seems like most of my flist on LiveJournal is headed this way, so I thought I'd go on and get set up. I've added a few people I know are here and I'll go hunting for more friends after later today.