47. Ask five friends/family members what their favourite movies are, and watch them.

This definitely wasn't meant to be one of the more taxing 101 Things. In fact, I figured this would be one of the first ones done. As it turns out, it was #39 done, and I mainly blame Kristi. :)

Here are the movie recommendations I received, in order from first watched to last watched.


Lethal Weapon
Recommended by Jeff
I should mention first off that Jeff first recommended several other movies, all of which I love and had seen recently enough that I had to veto them. Excellent movie taste, that man. Lethal Weapon was a ton of fun. Classic stuff. (And this may be weird, but I found myself jealous of Riggs's home setup. Seemed to strike a chord with me somehow. Contained mess, sounds good to me.)


The Man Who Knew Too Little
Recommended by Erik
Holy cow, I don't know why I hadn't seen this before! Bill Murray is a god. (Tangent/slight spoiler: For further proof, see his recent cameo in the most excellent Zombieland.) This is an amazing movie, hilarious in the best tradition of Bill Murray being a complete goof. It belongs right up there with Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, and Groundhog Day. Well done!


Pride and Prejudice
Recommended by Kristi
[Dean shakes fist at Kristi.] Curses, I don't know how I allowed a 5 hr+ BBC miniseries qualify as a "movie", but I didn't want to turn down what was so obviously a challenge, so I watched it. Took me a while, and I'm not positive that I retained enough of the plot to recap it (except maybe: hundreds of social meetings and teas, people overly concerned with marriage, Colin Firth looking constipated - could just as easily have been called Tea and Constipation, just saying), but I did get all the way through it. It actually wasn't as bad as it could have been - some of the characters (the dad, and the main character, whatsername) weren't completely pathetic, and to be honest, it was quite well written. And I didn't notice any wristwatches or cell phones, so good on you, continuity** people. But man, if there's any bright side at all to having to watch five hours of Colin Firth, it's that at least he isn't Hugh Grant.

** Another tangent: Just as I was typing "continuity" (a pretty rare word to type), Holly (who was reading to Sophie in the other room) yelled out, "Dean, continuity!" I sat, stunned, wondering if I'd spelled it wrong or used the wrong word - wondering what objection she had to it, especially since she couldn't see the monitor. Turned out she wanted to show me a continuity error in a Richard Scarry book that Sophie had pointed out. What are the odds?


Last of the Mohicans
Recommended by Janet
Even though I'm suspicious that Janet's recommendation of this one was somehow linked to Daniel Day-Lewis's swarthy good looks, and not the (totally false) promises of a plethora of helicopters flying around in the movie, I still enjoyed this film. It had over-the-top 80s cheese, sure, but I live for that! The history surrounding early colonial North American settlement confused me just as much as a Socials 10 class, but when have I ever let lack of understanding stand in my way? It made up for it with lots of running around and fighting people, and fake gore, and stuff blowing up, even though no one had access to any C-4. It had love, it had sacrifice, it had fun continuity (there's that word again) errors! It had passionate pleas to "Just stay alive!" followed by jumping through a waterfall! Hooray!


Frida
Recommended by Trisha
Seeing as how it was my arch-nemesis that recommended this one, I thought it would be the worst of them all, so I saved it for last. I was pleasantly surprised! Frida was quite an enjoyable movie - fascinating story, excellent acting, altogether a very worthwhile watch. I even learned a few things, filled in a few deplorable gaps in my knowledge of Frida Kahlo, like what country she came from! Anyway, thanks to an actually good recommendation from Trish, I will now have to at least consider toning down one of my next 101 Things... (49. Send something unexpected and stupid to Trish in the mail.)

I think I'll have to do this one again, I could feel my horizons expanding as I was entertained. Thanks to one and all for the recommendations!

Meal plan

In an ongoing effort to stave off confusion and panic and eating crackers and cheese for dinner, we recently enacted a new meal plan initiative.

Put simply, this involves attaching a business card holder to our fridge, and sliding in little cards indicating what we'll eat each night for two weeks.



The cards have the title of what we'll eat (or where we'll be), with little notes about the basic ingredients needed for that meal, so we can make our shopping lists easier. We didn't include stuff like spices, but most other stuff is on there.



The cards are fun to make, although they take 5-10 minutes each to make. We currently have a stockpile of 28 cards, including meal cards, leftovers cards, go out cards, and dinner at Aunt Kristi's cards!



Now that we have most of the cards, it should be reasonably easy to add more, and keep the project interesting and up-to-date. We'll see if we continue with it, and if Sophie shows any interest. (Maybe she'll learn to spell "quinoa" before the others in her class, and that should really give her a head start into the wide world of ancient grains.)

Hooray for no more cheese and crackers for dinner! (Unless we decide to make a card for it.)