Daily Archives: December 28, 2016

Sobbing and Clapping . . .

Well that didn’t last long.



At 7am this morning, about an hour after I got to sleep, Todd texted me that I was off my old gate tonight and then start another new gate tomorrow night. And by new I mean one I’ve never been to before, or even heard of, actually.

I was happy about this since the Internet is so crappy here. But disappointed for two reasons. One, I was hoping this was going to be somewhat permanent gate, and Two, because thinking this was a somewhat permanent gate, I left my wall clock and floor heater there, since I thought I would be back there tonight.

As I was trying to get back to sleep, it dawned on me that this might be a good time to make a quickie trip into San Antonio to see the new Star Wars movie and also have dinner. And when I called out to Jan to tell her, she was all giddy.

But when I got up about 1pm and started trying to make everything work, the 25 mile side trip to pick up my clock and heater, the Sam’s Club/ Wal-Mart shopping, the movie, and then dinner, it ddin’t fit. So it looked like we have to try to make it all work on the fly.

And the first fly showed up as soon as we left my old gate after picking up my stuff. According my GPS, we would arrive at the movie 15 minutes after it started. OOPS!

So after running through plans B – K, I flipped the whole schedule upside down. We’d shop first, then movie, then eat.

I hope.

And because of all this rapid rescheduling, and not knowing when we were going to eat, and where, even, we didn’t call our friends, Jim and Peri Dean to meet us like we had hoped to. Sorry guys, we’ll catch you next time.

The other problem with the rescheduling on the movie was that we were no longer seeing the 3D version, just the standard one. But not really a problem.

But because we were pushing dinner back to the 8:30 to 9:00 pm time frame after the movie, Jan was going need to stop and get something to eat. Otherwise her blood sugar goes ‘wonky’ and she gets, well, let’s just call it ‘cranky’.

Yeah, let’s go with that.



And where better to relieve possible crankiness, but the Whataburger in Floresville, right on the way. So that we didn’t fill up, we just each got our usual Double Whataburger Jr., but nothing else. No fries, no drink.

With that problem out of the way, it was on to our Sam’s/Wal-Mart stop. I finally got a chance to check out the new San’s Club Scan & Go app on my phone. It both worked, and didn’t work, but I’ll follow up on this tomorrow.

Then it was on to the 5:40 showing of Rogue One – A Star Wars Story.

All I can say if you liked/loved the original 1977 Star Wars, you will LOVE this movie.

Rogue One is prequel to the very first one, and actually ends just minutes before the action began in the first movie. You could just bump the two films together and you’d think you were watching one lone movie.

I don’t want to give anything away, but the movie answers two main questions, as well as a number of others.

Did you ever wonder how Princess Leia got the Deathstar  plans than she gave to R2D2 to get to Obi-Wan?

Did you ever wonder why this planet-size space station could be taken out by a single missile down a ventilation shaft?

This is the first movie in a long time that had people applauding loudly at the end. The last one I remember was Independence Day in 1996. There was also a lot of sobbing from the audience going on at the end.

Not me, of course. It’s just that I have allergies. That’s why I was tearing up.

Yeah, let’s go with that.

Besides the great storyline and the action, the most amazing thing about the movie were the digital characters.

Peter Crushing, who played Grand Mott Tarkin in the original movie, and who died in 1994, was resurrected digitally for this prequel. And you can not tell him from the live actors surrounding him. He just looks real. It’s uncanny.

There is one other major digital resurrection that I won’t give away, but if you were a real fan of the original, you will also recognize some of the X-Wing fighter pilots from the first movie, some digitally reproduced, some redone from unused scenes from the original one.

For us I think this is also  the first movie in a long time that I could easily see again.

Note that if you’ve got young kids, this movie is darker than the first one. A lot of people that you want to live, die, so be prepared.

It’s getting late, so I’ll save save our last minute change of dinner plans and the great time we had, until tomorrow.


Thought for the Day:

Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

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