Great movie death scenes: Alien

Remember when you watched this movie for the first time? I'm not sure if I do. But everytime I think of the movie I love this death scene. The whole film is fantastic. From the slow and suitably quiet camera pans throughout the ship to the real spacecrafty looking spacecraft and vague but tremendously scary aliens themselves. The whole cast are fantastic. You'll spend the first 30 minutes screaming at the movie "Don't do that!! It's an alien! no!!" but then as this scene rolls around at last you have the smug satisfaction of "I told you so". Brilliant and look at those very real reactions ;-)

A return from the city: Amtrak.

Well I spent the last few days chilling out in the Big Apple. Well actually I didn't get to do that much chilling. But I had a great time. I'll probably write some more on the experience in a few days time when I'm caught up on sleep. I travelled by train and here are some train related revelations from my trip:

1. If you go by train you can travel through 7 states in one day.

2. Getting a chance to sleep laying down, in the dark, in the quiet, on a bed on a 13 hour trip is great.

3. Train food ain't that bad.

4. Train bathrooms are.

5. The most scenic part of the journey is here in good ole WV (of course).

6. After leaving the train you'll spend at least 12 hours feeling like your still rocking.

7. Having a toilet in your train room sounds like a better idea than it is.

Lunch choices and why I dislike change

Well I just got back from having lunch "out" today. It's something I like to do at least once a week as it's a nice break from eating home made sandwiches and a good chance to socialize. I have to say that I don't like change. I'm a creature of habit. And this will even affect my choice of where I like to eat. I choose Husson's pizza today. It's somewhere I'm familiar with but it's not just the actual building and layout that I need to be aware of. It's the whole process. From where you order, what payments they accept, the likely cost, the choice of drinks, how you get your food, and where the restroom is. Knowing all of these things allows me to relax and feel at home in such a place.

I have a real limit sense of taste in that I dislike a lot of food. I've probably mentioned it before but it kinda annoys me when I'm referred to as "a fussy eater". It's not that I CHOOSE not to eat certian foods, it's that the taste is just incredibly unpleasant to me. The worst part about it is I can actually taste the pickle/tomato juice even once it's been removed from a sandwich/plate. Most of the time it's likely to be in my head I'm sure. So my taste in food often has an impact on whether or not I try new places but not more so than the familiarity.

So when I do go to a new restaurant (such as the excellent Thai House in Dunbar) I feel like I can't relax. I'm constantly analyzing the culture of the place. How often are the servers coming over, what condiments are there, where is a good place to sit, what's the lighting like, what the heck will my tip be....the list goes on.

This week I'll be getting a great opportunity to try a lot of new restaurants so that should be pretty fun. It's a good job that even change won't put me off my appetite.

The Wal-Mart Cometh

The day has finally arrived. The Hurricane Wal-mart is apparently open today. Ms Allclick alerted me just now that wsaz.com is reporting it opened this morning at 7:30am. I was pretty sure it was going to open Saturday. Hmm I guess when you are nearly a year late opening that one day doesn't really make much difference. Perhaps we'll go up there this weekend and check it out. I'll give you all the skinny when I get back. I expect it will look, smell, sound and taste like every other Wal-Mart but you never know.

While I'm rambling about Wal-Mart it reminds me to mention that the store is supposed to bring other businesses to the area. Now, the Hurricane/Teays Valley/Scott Depot area has an incredible need for some decent sit-down restaurants. It's like a barren wasteland. So with the new Wal-mart I was hoping for something a steak house, decent burger place, somewhere for ribs or wings. Turns out that the only food place opening is a Rocky top pizza which I've never even heard of. They are also building another car lot up there.

If there is anything Hurricane doesn't need it's more pizza places and more car lots.

Just for my own amusements heres a list of places to get a pizza in the area of the top of my head:

Gino's, Fox's, Monty's, Papa John's, Domino's, Pizza Hut, Graziano, Kali's, Subway, Schlotsky's and probably a few more that I'm forgetting. So, please someone build some restaurants in Putnam. We're starving up here.

New movie Countdowns

If you scroll down my page a bit you will find some new countdowns to a couple of the most anticipated films of the year...in my opinion. The new Indy film and the new Batman film. Awesome. If you haven't checked out the new Indiana Jones trailer then go find it. If you can't find a better version then here it is for you in tiny widescreen.

Who opened the flood gates?

No I'm afraid I'm not about to report on the flooding of the Grand Canyon recently. I'm still not really sure what that was all about, I mean it must take an entire ocean to fill that baby up! In fact I'm talking about my blog. I like to watch the stats on my blog. It's just plain interesting to see the amount of people who accidentally and intentional visit. Sometimes it even gives me a little boost of enthusiasm and makes me put extra effort into my posts. Sometimes it just makes me wonder why the heck so many people are searching for "irrational thoughts".

My usual daily total is about 30 peeps. I'm happy with that. More would be great but I'd probably feel more pressure to have some decent posts. So you can imagine my surprise yesterday when I discovered that about 372 visitors viewed my blog on Wednesday! I really couldn't understand it. Had I written something that was coming up in a search engine a lot? Was there a sudden demand for reading a Brits views of West Virginia??

Turns out it was none of those things. But instead the website http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/ had a link to my incredibly insightful post about Tudor's Biscuits. I hope those 372 visitors are enlightened now with the knowledge of my love for Tudor's. Thanks for the name drop Passiveaggressivenotes.com and thanks for stopping by.

It seems today my visitor count is back into my comfort range again so thanks to my "loyal" readers also!

March Madness

Well I haven't posted a single blog post in March! And here we are on the 6th already. Whilst waiting for an appointment to begin I thought I would check in with my blog and at least have something new to look at when I load up my own page. I have been pretty distracted thinking about a bunch of different things and idea and activities and have had less time to make witty observations about the world, America and West Virginia which is a shame.

I was reminded this week that a new experience for me since I entered the states was the "visit to the vet". Now I've never had any pets before. Both my brothers are terrified of cats and dogs and so that kinda ruled out any pets that needed any significant attention. We had a couple of goldfish I seem to remember and a hamster called "Harry" that lasted less than a year and was surprisingly unfriendly. But I've always loved animals and so am delighted to spend time with my current adopted cats. So, going to the vet was a new one to me. I have to say it's probably the most entertaining waiting room I've ever been in despite smelling the worst. We waited for about an hour as other pets went through like the young cat who had lost most of its ears from jumping into an oven and then having the burnt parts nibbled off by it's mother and giant dogs called "Thor" who really didn't want to be there.

It went fine which was a relief for us. And the cat got a treat for going too.

I can't really report whether culturally it is any different. The people in the waiting room were friendly but I suspect that that is usually due to a animal loving personality rather than anything else. Still that's one more new experience to add to the list. Now I just need to find me a "hollow".