Movie review: The Princess and The Frog

I took some time last night to watch The Princess and The Frog with my daughter. While the basics of the original fairy tale are included, the story is mostly a big twist. Tiana is a little black girl growing up in (apparently mostly white) New Orleans with her seamstress mother and hard-working father. While it is never revealed what her father does for a living, the main plot point revolves around a restaurant named Tiana's Palace that he dreams of opening. As a child, she played princesses with her friend Charlotte ('Lottie'), who just happens to be the daughter of one of the richest men in New Orleans. However, where Lottie was given everything she wanted, Tiana was taught that hard work would make her dreams come true. When Prince Naveen comes to town, Lottie insists on throwing a party in order to get him to propose to her. Freewheeling Naveen has an unfortunate encounter with "The Shadow Man," a voodoo man, on his way to the costume ball and ends up a frog. Thinking that Tiana is a real princess, he talks her into kissing him, which only turns HER into a frog as well!

As a whole, I enjoyed the movie. Though I admit that I was waiting for the "poor black family" theme to bash me over the head. Luckily, that never really came. Yes, Tiana and her family are not rich and we see the juxtaposition with Charlotte's huge white mansion and her plethora of princess dresses. However, the messages are "You can do anything if you work hard" and "Don't forget what is important in life - loved ones, not money." In my opinion, this is what blasts Tiana way ahead any of the other Disney "princesses." (I actually find it kind of sad that she'll be lumped in with Snow White and Cinderella. She deserves better.) I would definitely recommend this to any parent with a little girl. Watch it together! You won't regret it.

More hard drive space for me!

Sadly, I still haven't done anything worth writing about. Well, I suppose I can publicly thank my husband for getting me a 500GB external hard drive for Mother's Day. ^_^ I'm always complaining that I need more space for my music and jdoramas. Now that I have plenty of space, I just need time. Does anyone know how to add more hours into a day? For those of you that don't know, I take a dance class Wednesday nights. This year it is a jazz/hip-hop fusion class. I really enjoy it, but I'm thinking about switching to horseback riding instead. See, horseback riding works all of the muscle groups. Dance mostly works the legs. My goal is to get rid of my belly fat (without "fat burners" like apidexin) and I think a more rigorous activity would help. And I could do that early Saturday or Sunday morning, which gets it out of the way and leaves me all night to do whatever. I like nights better than mornings.

Let's Get Back To Geeky Work

As I said last week, there has been a massive change at my job so I have been extremely busy. (No fat burner pills for me! I now come home with sore feet and knees from all the running around. That's a good thing, right?) Thankfully, I think everything has been taken care of. Now I can get into a groove where I can finish my work on time and still have a bit of time left over to update The Geek. Thank you for sticking by me. Let's all hope that something like this doesn't happen again.

So busy!

Sorry I haven't been around much. A lot of things have changed at my job and now I'm extremely busy. But this is a good thing for me. I got a raise so maybe I'll actually be able to afford to fix up my house. I'd still love to redo the bathroom. (These Robern Medicine cabinets look awesome...but they cost so much!) First, I have to muddle through the next couple of weeks. Stay with me until this all clears up!

PlayOn!

Around Christmastime last year, my husband purchased PlayOn a digital media server that streams to your Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. I think they handle the Wii too, but I'm not positive. To be honest, I didn't pay too much attention to the Wii stuff since we have both a 360 and a PS3. We haven't really been using it a lot lately. However, last night, we found streams for both anime and jdorama. That means my daughter can watch Cardcaptor Sakura (which is impossible to find on DVD) and I can watch jdoramas without having to wait for them to download. Unfortunately, all is not honey and cakes. What PlayOn basically does is scour sites like YouTube, Hulu, and Veoh to find streams of the show you want. That means there can be a ton of pixelation and just crappy video. A good example of this is the opening to Densha Otoko. It was pretty unwatchable. Though I did watch the first episode of Papa to Musume no Nanokakan without a ton of trouble. It was broken into 4 separate parts so that was kinda annoying, but the video wasn't completely awful. I'll give it a few more tries to see how I like it for my stuff. Otherwise, it'll be relegated to anime only, which is good news for my daughter!

And the stress melts away

This is a rather exciting time for my family. My husband starts an awesome new job in a little over a week. Besides being a career boost, it's also a rather large financial boost. That means that we'll be able to do more of the things we want to instead of having to wait months to save enough money. One of the items on my list is a day at the spa. A nice facial (reading prototype 37c reviews..I'm not sure if I want a wrinkle reducing thing. My face isn't all that wrinkly yet...), a lovely massage, and the obligatory manicure and pedicure. I think I'm going to treat my sister to a spa day for her birthday this year. Everyone will have such a nice time relaxing and being pampered for once.

Allergies and my eyes

Thanks to this crappy allergy season this year, I haven't been sleeping too well. Now I have these big dark circles under my eyes. I don't usually wear makeup so I can't just cover them up. Does anyone have any good suggestions for how to get rid of these? I've heard something like tea bags or cucumbers...but do they really work? Or are those only for puffiness? Maybe I'll just hibernate until the trees are done puking all over the place.

Game review: The Lost Cases of 221B Baker St.

While I was waiting for my laundry to finish yesterday, I decided to give one of the Sherlock Holmes hidden object games a go. Usually these are a little more difficult for a lazy Sunday afternoon, but I had faith that I could finish these puzzles without using my brain too much. I ended up being very surprised at what was presented to me. Instead of one big case you are trying to solve, The Lost Cases of 221B Baker St. is a collection of multiple smaller cases. In the sixty minute time frame of the demo, I was able to finish four different cases. Each case had similar yet different aspects. They each had a hidden object section, a puzzle section, and a memory section. The hidden object section was where you found your clues and, generally, one clue is messed up. This is where the puzzle section comes in. Sometimes you are piecing together a ripped up piece of paper; sometimes you are trying to slide a rock piece out of a box...each one is different. After you have found all of your clues, you move onto the memory section, where you figure out who is the suspect. Each suspect is attributed to a clue and it is your job to remember which clue goes to which suspect. You need to pick out the clue that has changed to eliminate that suspect.

I found the game much more interesting than other Sherlock Holmes games. There is usually a lot more exposition, which limits your actual game time. With this game, you can actually choose to play a version that has less dialogue. I prefer to get down to the game, myself. I can't wait to buy the full version of this game to see what the other cases have to offer.