slight delay in posting

The illustrated version of The Hobbit that I have been reading to Thomas.

I’m trying to work on a few different posts at the same time.  One is a For Love of Film, one is the next batch of Oscar-nominated directors.  Another is a look at Adapted Screenplays from 1912-1926.  And there are a couple of For Love of Books posts that I’m trying to work on.

Three great characters. And one not so great.

That, and I have been reading to Thomas from The Hobbit every night.  We just finished last night, after having started back in December.  Now we’re moving on to The Wind in the Willows.

Oh, and Veronica and I have been watching our way through “Doctor Who”.  After finishing all of the current run (Eccleston, Tenant, Smith), we also went back and started at the beginning.  The very beginning: “An Unearthly Child”, which aired originally on 23 November 1963.  Well, after watching a bunch of Hartnell (most of which were “meh” but definitely get “The Chase”) and every available serial with Troughton (who was awesome), we have been watching our way through the 3rd Doctor – Jon Pertwee, with some mixed results (Veronica really doesn’t like a particular companion who happens to not be Liz or Sarah Jane).  We’ve been trying to finish before the second half of Series 7 begins on 30 March.  We won’t quite make it, but it will be close.

All of this means the next post might be ready for tomorrow or it might not.  But there will be some coming soon.  And after finishing three different series which ran for over three years each (Year in Film ran from 30 Oct 2009 to 3 March 2013, The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture ran from 9 March 2010 to 17 March 2013 and The Top 100 Novels ran from 10 January 2010 to 24 February 2013) I am a bit exhausted.  So more soon.  But now I’m off to watch more Pertwee (only six more serials until Sarah Jane!).

And we’ll let you all know how Thomas’ science fair project goes.  We’re investigating if crushing Mentos before you put them in Diet Coke effects how much they explode.  Let the messiness begin!

 

How We Spent the 2013 Blizzard they Called Nemo

Thomas and I on a snow pile. Veronica took the picture and stayed far from the pile.

Well, for once the weathermen in Boston were right.  We got a blizzard.  The picture on the left is partial proof.  This powerpoint (BlizzardFeb13) is more proof.  We got closer to three feet of snow rather than two.  But, with the drifts, as you can see when you get to the first picture of the car, it went closer to five feet.  Also, our upstairs neighbors did a timelapse video which you can see here.  But, two days in a row home with Thomas and Veronica – can’t remember the last time that happened.  I love the snow.

 

What’s Coming in 2013

I hope you all enjoyed 2012.  We actually spent the whole year in one place, a place we like living in, so that alone was good for us.  And Thomas is having a much better time now at the end of the year than he was having during the start.

So, if you come to the blog to read about Thomas and to follow what he’s doing, we’ll try to keep updating it in 2013 as much as we can.  Meanwhile, now that Veronica and I both have iPhones, we’ll be trying to put more videos of him up on YouTube.  If you keep watching after the first video, it will keep playing them.  Or you can find them all here.

But, if you are here for the posts about film and literature and other random things that I feel like writing about, keep reading after the jump.

 

Merry Christmas from the Boston Becks

Well, it’s Christmas.  I suspect you might have already known that.

That pile under the tree has now pretty much been devoured.  We have eaten our eggs, coffee cake and sausage and we have our croque monsieurs and chicken cacciatore to come.  We are watching Pixar Shorts Vol II (though last night we watched A Charlie Brown Christmas and Christmas Eve on Sesame Street and we watched Mickey’s Christmas Carol while opening presents), which Thomas got for Christmas.  And tonight it will be all about the new companion on the Christmas episode of Doctor Who.  Though before that, we’ll go out in the snow (yes – we actually have received the gift of a white christmas – at least it’s a gift to Erik).

Thanks to everyone who sent Thomas things – except for the pile in the back, everything under the tree was pretty much for him.  And he has been enjoying it all this morning.

 

Out of town

On the carousel at Sesame Place.

We’ve had to go out of town for personal reasons.  If you know us, send an e-mail and we’ll explain.  If you just like to read the posts, check back next week for the next year in film (2003), the next Top 100 Novel (Great Gatsby), and whatever random shit that comes into my head and comes out of my keyboard.  In the meantime, enjoy a random picture of Thomas.

 

Sesame Place Redux

Veronica and Thomas with Cookie Monster

Erik and Thomas with Bert and Ernie.

Well, Sesame Place had their Free Autism Day again.  We decided not do anything big on the way down like last year (when we went to the Bronx Zoo).  I did, in a fit of insanity, decide to try to show Veronica a little of Manhattan.  It would have been fine, except for the following things:

1 – I went the wrong way at the end of the Throgs Neck Bridge and started heading out on Long Island

2 – I reversed myself by getting on the L.I.E., which, unfortunately, seems to be jam-packed with traffic at noon on a Friday.

3 – I thought this would be a good way to get to the Brooklyn Bridge (which I thought would be a nice way to go), when, in fact, it is a good way to get to the Midtown Tunnel.

4 – Once we were in Manhattan, I forgot that Broadway runs one-way downtown, so my thought of driving her towards Times Square so she could see it, didn’t really work.

5 – Tolls.  F#$%^g TOLLS!  We drove to Philadelphia and back.  Our trip encompassed some 660 miles.  We paid $56 in tolls.  On the list of things I dislike about living on the East Coast, right along with all the damn sporting events happening so late that I’m exhausted just staying up to watch them, tolls is one.  I used to drive all the time from Portland to Southern California.  2100 miles round trip.  The only time I would ever pay a toll is if I took the Golden Gate Bridge.

 

Thomas as Rumplestiltskin

Thomas in his costume.

Thomas had a Fairy Tale Theater at school last week.  One of those things where we suddenly learn he has to choose a character and come to school in a costume.  We decided to go the old-fashioned route and make the costume.  And by we, I mean Veronica, with one idea from me.

The shirt was something he already had.  The belt is Veronica’s.  The sweatpants were borrowed from our friend Terry when he got sick in Oregon last year.  The hat is made from some felt from an unfinished art project at his art class.  The beard was my input – it’s construction paper with holes cut out so it can fit over his ears and cotton balls glued to the front.  He also has pointy ears made from construction paper.

It went okay.  The class has a microphone which Thomas finds very distracting, so that was an issue.  But one more big project down.

And speaking of big projects, I have been going through boxes of old pictures, ranging from the early 40′s (pictures of my Mom) to recent pictures.  I am going to scan a bunch and we’ll probably have them up on Veronica’s Facebook page because it’s a lot easier to put them there then to put them here.  So keep an eye out for them.

 

One Million and Counting . . .

the original Thomas picture from our first post

We interrupt the regularly scheduled movie post (which isn’t finished anyway) to thank everyone who has ever come to the blog.

Thomas and Veronica in our most recent picture, from October.

This means family members, those who come for my movie pieces and those who randomly find us (usually looking for the best novels of the 21st Century).  Why am I thanking everyone?  Well, because this afternoon while I was at work, our blog passed 1,000,000 hits all-time.  It’s stunning to look at it and realize this.  When we started this back in 2007, we couldn’t have imagined this would happen.

The blog went live either in April (our stats begin there and that might have been when our About page went up) or in June (our earliest post is from the day after Thomas’ third birthday, which you can see here).  Our life was very different – one town and three apartments ago.  Thomas is now 7 and a half.

 

Apple picking

Thomas and Daddy after picking some apples

the result of Veronica's hard work

Well, in between horrible nights of sleep thanks to neighbors who can’t grasp the concept of being quiet, we got out yesterday morning and did some apple picking.

Thanks to a quirk of fate, Veronica captured a very short video of Thomas picking an apple (here).  When we got home, she decided to get ambitious and reduced much of the results into applesauce.  She then headed out and got some mason jars and actually canned the results.  So, we have 10 jars of homemade apple sauce (which came out very nice and made the apartment smell like apples all afternoon), an apple crisp that already has almost nothing left to it and still some apples left over.  So, a nice day all around.

Now if we could just get some sleep.

 

2011 summer trip

Thomas was definitely the shortest route to Wall Drug in 2005.

It occurs to me that we never put up anything about our trip in August.  I guess several days of a child throwing up in the backseat ending with a day of torrential rain will do that to you.

Maybe not quite the shortest anymore in 2011.

Well, if you say that we saw some friends we hadn’t seen in years, saw some family, saw some very sparsely inhabited parts of Canada, Veronica had a good conference and I discovered that you can’t get phone reception at 1353 feet and finally saw a game at Wrigley as a measure of a successful trip, then we had a successful trip.

But, when you plan to come back at a leisurely pace and see some sights, but instead blow across the country in a few days again because of a sick child and tropical storms and just wanting to get home, it doesn’t feel so great by the end of it.