Somusing

We had this DVD from Netflix for quite a while before we watched it. I can't remember why I moved it to the top of our queue, but after watching (and hating) Paper Heart , I had very little desire to see another movie with Michael Cera in it. Even before that, I suspected and feared that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World might be kind of like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow --I'd hear about how wonderful and innovative and amazing it was and then I'd see it and be kind of bored. But I was wrong. I found it delightful, funny, strange, clever. My favorite ex-boyfriend was the vegan one. I wish it were cleaner, so I could show it to my kids. I'm sure they'll all see it eventually, but there's too much "adult" material in it for a family flick.

Friday morning I left on an overnight backpacking trip with Zed, Jacob, and Phin. We drove up Teton Canyon from the Idaho side and had our camera take a picture of us. We hiked past the Devil's Stairs fork toward Alaska Basin, and stopped for lunch here. We arrived in Alaska Basin having met only 2 or 3 other hikers. We had made good time, so unlike the last time we hiked up to Alaska Basin 3 years ago, we decided we'd hike all the way to the east side of the Tetons to Jenny Lake. Thus motivated, we hiked up to Sunset Lake. These were some of our views leaving Sunset Lake and heading up to Hurricane Pass. Soon we arrived at the border between the Jedediah Smith Wilderness and Grand Teton National Park. Then we descended down to Hurricane Pass. Here was our view over Schoolroom Glacier . Zed looked down from Hurricane Pass into the South Fork of Cascade Canyon and the Teton Crest Trail. Morning sun made it a nice time to play around t...

Here's what IMDb says about this movie : Charlyne Yi embarks on a quest across America to make a documentary about the one subject she doesn't fully understand: Love. Jon and I watched it a few nights ago. Well, Jon fell asleep about halfway through, so I guess I'm the one who watched it. I didn't hate it while I was watching it, but the more time that goes by since I saw it, the more it makes me kind of mad that I wasted my time on it. Charlyne Yi doesn't believe in True Love, so she travels around the country (and even to Paris towards the end) asking people about True Love--do they believe in it, what is it, what are their experiences, etc. She even consults some "experts" who might have something to say about love--some professors of biochemistry or something like that. She has some famous friends, one of whom is Michael Cera, with whom she starts a relationship. In spite of her experience with him, she refuses to change her mind about the exist...

After our trip to Helsinki, we went to Amsterdam for a night. We stayed in a hostel that was movie themed. Our room was Star Wars themed, and had a huge picture of Darth Vader on the wall. We went to the Anne Frank house, and looked at some of the older buildings along the way. One of them was an old church that had a really weird Roman numeral on it. It looked like cbbc, but for real it was C I backwards C = M, I backwards C = D, C which adds up to 1600. Wikipedia has a close-up image . At the Anne Frank house we saw a lot of cool stuff. I didn’t really know anything about her before going, so I’m glad I could go. We went to an Indian restaurant that was really good, and then we returned to our hostel for our last night in Europe. This square was nearby:

Our ferry to Helsinki from Tallinn was canceled because of rough seas and they sent us over to another ferry, but we had to wait another two and a half hours so we walked around Tallinn for a while. Finally we got on the ferry and there we met these two Finnish guys who didn’t speak any English at all. They didn’t even understand hello. Dad thought they were speaking Estonian at first and kept trying to communicate with them using our phrase book. Finally one of the people next to us asked us if we wanted them to translate for us. After that little adventure, we went to our hotel. We just stayed in there because it was late. The next morning was Sunday. We went to church at a building about a quarter mile down the street. A lot of the people there spoke English, and missionaries translated for us. After church, we walked around in the bay area for a while, then went to a ferry to go to the fortress island Suomenlinna . That was awesome. It was probably a ten or twenty minute ferry ...

Thursday, 18th August 2011 We went for a walk around Riga for one last time before we went to Tallinn. Then we went to the bus station. There we met a guy who went to YAPC::EU. (We could tell by his t-shirt.) His name was Sergey and he lives in Tallinn. He rode the same bus as us there and was nice enough to show us how to get to our hostel. Our hostel is awesome. We are in a six person bedroom with four Germans. After that we walked around town for a while, seeing some of the sights. Here's a building by our hostel: It’s really a nice place. We went into the Alexander Nevsky Orthodox Cathedral, and saw some of the inside. After that we went back to the hostel and hung out in the lounge. They have guitars and other musical instruments that you can play in there. After a while we went to bed. Friday, 19th August 2011 So after a good night’s rest, we went to a bookstore in the old town that sold some old magazines, and stuff. We went to a free walking tour that lasted two h...

The weekend is over now, and tomorrow morning the YAPC::EU conference (Yet Another Perl Conference, Europe) begins. We'll be busy for the next three days with the conference, so we won't have much time for sightseeing. Here are some more photos from our trip so far, in chronological order. A balcony of The Powder Tower and Latvian War Museum : Jacob a short distance from the central market area: Views of the Riga central train station, Rīgas centrālā dzelzceļa stacija : A neighborhood of Communist-era Neubau apartments seen from the train en route back from the beach at Jūrmala: A street in Vecrīga , old town Riga: This morning Jacob and I went to church at one of the two Latvian Latter-day Saint (aka Mormon) branches in Rīga. There are also two Russian-language branches here. It was conveniently located just a few blocks from our hotel, on the appropriately named Baznīcas iela (Church Street), though of course named not for the LDS church but rather for...