i had big plans for a photographic ending to 2015 and my 365 photo-a-day project, but alas life got in the way. i suppose it’s appropriate that i find myself ending both in a hockey arena watching odin run hockey drills 🙂
after practice, we’ll end 2015 the same as 2014, going to bed early to get up at 5:45am for early morning new year’s day hockey tournament. stay safe, ya’ll. see you on the flipside.
after a week away, we arrived home at 10pm after a seven hour drive to find a Good Samaritan slow blowed our 100 feet of sidewalks and our 100 foot driveway!
they didn’t leave a calling card, but i think i know who did it. THANK YOU! Mightily appreciate not having to come home and dig out of 8 inches of snow that fell while we were gone.
the weather forecast called for 0.5″ of ice followed by rain, but what fell last night was mostly sleet.
now, with 30F temps, it makes for a sloppy, soaking, cold mess of a 6 mile run even if i try to stick to running in tire tracks on the side streets.
i’ve learned the hard way that these conditions are just right for a slip and fall after your feet get a good soaking in icy water, start to go numb and your shoes get sleet packed into the treads.
and to make matters worse, i have to run the last mile on top of this crap that the snow plows kicked over onto the sidewalk. it’s 4-6 inches of slippery, semi-compacted sleet.
fun times when your legs are tired and your feet are numb and there’s traffic coming at you at 45mph 😢
thankfully, innumerable slips but no falls!
neither reserved sold out seats nor the threat of a 0.5” of freezing rain and 50mph winds could keep us from getting to see star wars: the force awakens in imax and 3D!
the kids loved the movie and the adults love the movie! totally worth seeing again. pretty iconic experience overall. i’m thinking if your an 11 year old ( or older! ) the character rey in particular is going to stick with you for a long time.
my initial sense is that it’s probably better than “a new hope” and “return of the jedi” and on par with “the empire strikes back”. that said, i agree with pretty much every point in in this kottke.org summary of thoughts ( warning: spoilers! ), especially points 6 and 8.
we tried to just walk in off the street to see star wars: the force awakens only to discover the theater recent started taking reservations for seats and all the good seats were sold out for the day. i didnt even know reserved seating was a thing that existed! at first, it was annoying to not be able to walk off the street and get seating, but i think knowing we can get in tomorrow with a group of six and not have to stress about where we will be sitting will be awesome.
so, we made our reservations for the next day and then tried out the new, fancy d-box seating that you can reserve for even more money. the seats move and vibrate with the action in the movie. odin thought it was AWESOME! i thought it was a distracting gimmick that felt like you were in a broken massage chair.
most days i can’t remember what i had for breakfast, but drop me in a dozen locations around the country and i can remember half mile markers for runs even if i haven’t run the route in years. here’s one on a 5 mile route.
note the green grass on december 26th in grand rapids, michigan. very unusual!
we’re traveling so we left many of odin’s presents in wisconsin to be opened when we get back. but not all of them! we surprised him with a YI action camera which is comparable to a gopro hero but instead of costing $300+, it costs less than a $100. you can get it for $69 but we paid $20 bucks more for the convenience of amazon prime. an an underwater housing was on sale for $10 (?!) and a set of every mount he’ll need to get started ( helmet mount, chest mount, selfie stick, suction mount etc ) cost us just $25 more.
while that’s not nothing, it’s certainly makes it easier to get it for odin and not feel too much pain if ( when? ) he breaks it while starting to explore his interest in extreme sports videography 🙂 you can see the camera’s capabilities on their youtube page. i expect we’ll see much more video from odin soon.
unboxing impressions were great. he had the app downloaded in and was controlling the camera from his iPod in no time.