The Ruins

Well for the first time since January Ms. AllClick and I finally made it out to the cinema. There just didn't really seem like anything worth going to see since umm Cloverfield? Maybe. It's hard to remember what the last film was that I saw on the big screen. I suppose it's due to the time of year, the fact that the oscars are so far away now or perhaps it's just my imagination. Either way I was missing the cinema experience and we thought "The Ruins" might actually be an interesting movie.

I'm not a fan of the horror genre..but I am a fan of movies based on books. I can't wait for the big screen adaptation of the Dictionary *silence*. Anyway, movies based on books seem to always have a reason. That is everything the characters do is for a reason, it has to have an explanation and it has a purpose in the plot. I guess it's because the writer (Scott Smith) probably had to revise the story several times before he arrived at the finished novel.

So, this film follows a group of 20 somethings out to Mexico and they discover some uncharted ruins and get in a whole heap of trouble. Nice premise if not terribly original. However, the story unfolds at a decent pace, the gore is expected but not over the top. There are a few scares, a lot of creepiness and a focus on the psychological. Not bad for a genre that is well worn. I found myself liking the movie while watching it and so this was a good sign. Overall I'd say 6 out of 10. Not a film for everyone but an interesting tale.

Putnam County Animal Relief Shelter

I had the great opportunity to visit the Putnam County Animal Relief Shelter a couple of weeks ago over in Winfield. It's not a very long drive from my house and I had heard about it so much that I thought I better do something productive for the community and check it out. I honestly had a great time. I had planned on staying there for two hours but after I had walked a couple of the dogs and been inducted and shown around the place only an hour had passed. So I played with the cats and the puppies and after another 45 minutes I headed on home. It can be a pretty tough experience being there, hoping that these animals will find a decent home. I would guess that when people do come to adopt the head straight for the puppies or kittens. The younger animals. I had a chance to walk one of the dogs that was certainly not a younger dog, but had way more energy than me and certainly out ran me and was such a well behaved dog. I hope she isn't overlooked because of her age. Another volunteer there said that she and her husband had visited a few times and walked some of the dogs to get the feel of them before adopting which I think is a great idea. Don't just look at the animals through the cages but walk them, pet them, play with them and spread some love before you choose one. So I recommend heading over there to spend some time with these lovely animals, adopt one or two perhaps and as Bob Barker would say "Spay or neuter your pets."

The Putnam County Animal Relief Shelter says this on their Petfinder.com website:

If interested, call the shelter at 304-586-0249. Shelter hours are M, W, F, and SA 10-3 and Tuesday's and Thursday's 12-6, so that you may have time to look and fill out paperwork- closed Sunday. Cost: dogs are $40, Cats $35.00 which includes sterilization, first shots, first worming, and if over 16 weeks a Rabies vaccination.

In the mood for music?

I checked out a great new website last night. Well new to me at least called Musicovery.com
The premise is that you select the kind of mood you are in from Calm to Energetic and Positive to Dark and then it selects a virtual web of songs to play to compliment your mood. You can register for free and select your favourites or remove songs from the list. You can choose specific decades or genres and then watch a colourful web of hits unfold. You don't have to register to just listen but you will have to register to save your playlist. It's well worth a 5 minute glance but may take a while to load up on slow machines. Here's a great song that came up in my playlist today. It's called Banquet by Bloc Party. Awesome.

My bite of the Big Apple

I have been to New York twice now and had very different experiences both times. The first time I was pretty much in awe. I was seeing all the famous sights I recognised from TV. The statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, World Trade Center, Central Park...I even snapped a pic of the steaming sewer/subway grate! I never even realised that wasn't just a special effect. Or perhaps it is something they do just for the tourists. It was a sight-seeing trip mostly so I tried to fit in as much as possible. Grand Central station was pretty impressive too!

My second trip was much different. I got to experience more of a real New York. I ate in deli's, China town and wandered through little Italy. I hailed a New York yellow cab. I went to see the Today show being filmed out in the street. Hailing a cab is certainly an experience. Especially for a self-conscious Brit. You get to stand out in the street and draw attention to yourself intentionally and uncomfortably while a thousand cabs drive past. I guess it's an experience that grows on you. Most of the cab drivers we had were great. They were fast but safe and relatively friendly. The only time I felt uncomfortably was the trip we took where I had to avoid the puddle of unknown liquid by my feet. What made it worse was that it was our longest cab ride and seemed to be completely out of the way of where we wanted to go (they have those handy digital maps in the back of the cabs now). And I didn't even get to win any money :-(.

I enjoyed the big city but I don't think I could ever really feel at home there. The rush of crowds on every single street, the distrust and air of underlying mild frustration that lingered on people, the 12 Starbucks on every block. The fact that everything is open late was great but it just wasn't me. I have to say though that New York has some kick-ass cheesecake. I'm yet to find decent cheesecake in West Virginia. So please let me know if you find some.

Easter...a time for eggs

Well Easter has come and gone and thankfully the Easter bunny dropped off a load of Easter candy for me. Cadbury's mini eggs by the bag load. Yum! Strangely enough the mini eggs I received this year looked incredibly like smaller robins egg. I would happen to know this because outside of my front door there happens to be a robins nest perched quite happily on a broken lamp on my neighbours stoop. I had the chance to take a couple of snaps which I'll get around to uploading at some point and the nest is really incredible. It looks man-made if you could see how neat and tidy and well made it is. I was impressed! Hopefully those little eggs will hatch sometime soon and maybe I can snap a couple more pictures. I have to say I'm pretty excited and feel a little like Bill Odie. Which only adds to my excitement.

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".

The Mean Green

Have you ever tried listening to this song while you balance your cheque check book? It's very liberating.

Bad news for Prozac

An interesting article today on BBC news. Turns out that antidepressant medication isn't actually doing you a whole lot of good. Well, it may be helping but not due to any substance within the drug but instead because of the placebo effect.

The researchers found that the drugs did have a positive impact on people with mild depression - but the effect was no bigger than that achieved by giving patients a sugar-coated "dummy" pill."

Unsurprisingly the makers of Prozac and GlaxoSmithKline disagree and state that they helping in reducing depression.

I think the most important aspect of this article is that it emphasizes the need for talking therapies. Whilst there are much harder to evaluate than say drug studies they are effective and can be individually designed for a specific person. I would say that depression is often caused by a number of environmental factors in a persons life and that taking medication might relieve some of the symptoms but actually getting those things off your chest, discussing some solutions and learning how to carry out the solutions has got to be a better option. In England 3,600 new therapists will be trained to increase patient access to talking therapies. Seems like a low number but at least it's a start.

Mental Health America found that West Virginia ranks 50 (out of 51 including DC) on depression making it the second most depressed state in the country. One of the factors they highlight is access to treatment and so I hope these findings can have some kind of effect locally.

Simple things...

I really hope no-one was seriously hurt in this very serious accident. But I couldn't help but smile a little when I read the headline of this local news story.

Shoes

I like talking about the mundane sometimes. But this is a kind of weird topic for me. I went to the mall the other day and obtained a great pair of "sneakers" aka "tennis shoes" aka trainers. Trainees as they up north. I hadn't been planning on it really. I still have a fully functional pair of "trainees" on my feet. Shoes really aren't my thing. I have been known in the past to wear shoes until they have a hole in them and then just keep going until my feet get too wet. I mean they still serve the purpose they are designed for. Yes, they inevitable end up looking pretty crappy, but these are the items that we wrap our feet in for walking on the ground, right? So having a clean pair is kind futile to me. They will just get dirty tomorrow. That's not to say that I don't keep the bottom of the clean but that's a heck of a lot easier.

Do you remember the film "The Shawshank Redemption"? Morgan Freeman "Red" says " I mean, how often do you look at a guys shoes?". That kinda sticks with me. I never look at anybody's shoes and if I do I rarely take note of them. My experience is that other people DO look at people's shoes. And they make opinions about them from the shoes. Strange but true. Well I'm still wearing my old shoes at the moment, I wouldn't want to get my nice clean ones dirty yet ;-) but they are clean (thanks to prompts and advice from Ms. Allclick) and I have brand spanking new (and very white) laces. If you are blinded walking around Huntington it's probably just from my feet.

Tudors Biscuit World

Well what can I say about Tudors? I'll start off by saying that it is now one of my all-time favourite places to eat. A Tudor's breakfast is a treat for me and a great way to start the day. Once upon a time I used to eat Mcdonald's Egg McMuffin for breakfast. As a treat of course. I'd been insane to eat that everyday. It was nice, greasy though, and left me feeling bloated rather than full. Then one sunny, early morning in 2006 I sat upon the steps in Marshall Stadium and tasted my first Tudors. I think it was Dottie..but i'm probably wrong. From then on I didn't need much persuasion to indulge in a "biscuit" (nothing like a digestive) from Tudors or any other place for that matter. I've been to several now across the state and my only complaints are that sometimes they use the messy cheese (It's a) messy and b) a little salty for my liking), and sometimes it looks like they assembled the biscuit in the dark. Apart from that I can't complain and I snap up all the coupons they send to me. The one in Hurricane is a good one, and does have light and fluffy biscuits. I have to say that the one I stopped at just outside Winfield was even better though. Almost a work of art and tasty to boot. My favourite biscuit from Tudor's you ask? Well, anything with cheese, potato and egg gets my vote. Is that the Ron? Answers on a postcard please.

More Wal-Mart news...(not pictured)

After mentioning the new Hurricane Wal-mart it seemed apt to go up there and take a look at the progress. I was very tempted to take a few piccies but decided I would look incredibly uncool. Plus there were a bunch of trainees up there...erm..training I guess. Looks like the main building is complete now and there are actually signs of a few items inside. I saw the banner today that said "Food center opening soon" so am not sure what that means. Anyway, the parking lot looked nice. Nearby, there is a row of empty shops at the moment. A Dollar Tree will be moving in up there to one of the bigger spaces but the rest look pretty vacant. I have my fingers crossed for a decent restaurant around there somewhere. You'd think that a Longhorn, Outback, or any other steak house would do great business just off the interstate and in one of the most affleunt areas of this part of the state. Mind you, I'd settle for a Wendys right there too. You gotta love that chilli.

A fine line

Well I guess I've been away for a bit. Not from a lack of insights I assure you but simply too busy to blurt my mind out onto a computer screen. I thought I'd make a effort to address Valentines day tomorrow. After asking a few colleagues, friends, and family it seems like everyone has almost discarded the day. Written it off as just one of those "commercial invented days to scam me out of money". Well, yes it is getting very commercial. But it always has been in my experience. I'm most amused at the offer that Hallmark is running at the moment in which you must buy three cards. Three valentines?? How many sweethearts can have one at one time? Anyway, the response of doing nothing seems to be a little drastic. I say that you can either plunge head deep into the commercialism and buy the chocolates, cards, flowers, balloons and toys or express your love in whatever way suits you best. Either way it's a nice excuse to spoil and be spoilt even if you don't spend a dime. So, wear a little red and enjoy the day!

The Invasion - Movie Review

Thanks to all those who offered their views on which movie to see last weekend. I was impressed that some even managed to work the phrase "turd-shaped monkey balls" into their response. In fact I didn't end up going to the cinema in the end. But I appreciated the input all the same! Instead, Ms. AllClick and I rented "The Invasion" starring Nicole Kidman as a Psychiatrist who discovers that an alien virus is sweeping across the globe more or less taking over people's minds and bodies. It's a remake of Invasion of the Body snatchers but from what I can I gather has a different approach. The original movies tended to be more of a horror flick. Creepy and suspenseful. This movie is more of a sci-fi/thriller flick so don't be surprised if it lacks the scares and cheap jumps. It is much more about the fundamentals of human nature. I thought it was pretty decent. Better than I was expecting but not amazing. Worth a rental on a saturday night if you have nothing better to do.