Movie Review

Fer and I went to see a late showing of Dinner for Schmucks last night, which I went into with fairly low expectations based on reviews and reactions from friends. My expectations were not exceeded. While I find Steve Carrell and Zach Galifinakis pretty consistently hilarious, I think I would have better satisfied my comedy cravings by watching reruns of the Office and "Between Two Ferns". Which isn't to say the movie was completely charmless- there were some funny one liners, and the "mousterpieces" really cracked me up. Final verdict- a good choice for a late night vacation flick, but not worth the $12 NYC ticket price. Now tell me that isn't more useful than some silly star rating system.

Cannonball!!!

Lemme tell you, I love vacation, and I really love vacation here in Charlotte. I have no complaints about a day like yesterday, when we spent the whole afternoon at the pool with our good friends the Eddes. Although we were defeated in pool volleyball, I was on the victorious team in the salad bowl game!
We've also been eating some good food, which of course is a crucial component of any successful vacation in my book. On Tuesday night we went to New South Kitchen, where I had fried green tomatoes for the first time, followed by low country crab cakes, as well as some fantastic pecan pie. Mmm Southern cuisine- I could get used to this.

Chillin in the Queen City

We're on vacation in Charlotte, North Carolina! Had a bit of a fracas involving missing our flight yesterday, but after a long, pleasant (not so much) conversation with our friendly Delta representative, and a short trip from JFK to LaGuardia airport, we found our way here late last night. Highlight of the day was getting a dinner of 2 sizeable pizzas and two beers for $15. Our NYC-wired brains almost short-circuited when we saw the check.
Had a relaxing day here so far- necessary to recover from the stresses of travel yesterday (life is so hard). Went to the pool, which is lovely lovely and we plan to return every day. Only exception to the relaxation agenda was this morning when I dragged Fer with me on a seemingly endless trek to find a drugstore, oops. Umm, I didn't bring a camera on vacation (gasp!) so sadly I can't provide any fantastic pictures of our fun, unless I somehow figure out how to transfer pictures from the Blackberry to the computer (i.e. don't hold your breath).

MOMA!

I went to the MOMA (which receives my vote for cutest art museum name) today because I get free admission with my school ID and wanted to see the new Matisse exhibit. By the time I got there they didn't have any more timed admission tickets to the exhibit, which is apparently very popular, judging by this lack of tickets and abundance of Frenchies wandering around looking bemused. But it was ok because there are lots of other amazing things to see there- which some other museum patrons seemed to fail to understand as they stormed away from the ticket counter in outrage. I really liked an exhibit of works by female photographers and a "sound sculpture" called Days.

New News!

I'm not even gonna bother with the whole explanations bit this time...I'm just a bad blogger. But the internet is working this morning and inspiration struck, so here's some jess butler updates for y'all. I got a new job! Which most of you probably know, since thankfully I am (marginally) better at keeping in touch with my family and friends than keeping up with this blog. For the next year I will be the speech-language pathologist at a system of 3 charter schools in the South Bronx. I've already started observing, planning, and meeting everyone at the middle and high schools over the past 3 weeks. Now I have 2 weeks vacation before I start with the middle school- yippee!!
In other news- an eventful day in Central Park for me yesterday. I arrived at 7 in the morning to sit on line for free tickets to Shakespeare in the Park ("free" as in they only cost you six hours of your day). Was gleeful to obtain said tickets at 1 pm, even though they were for the show without Al Pacino (less famous people - boo hiss!). While wandering out of the park I was drawn to the sounds of jazz coming from the bandshell and suddenly found myself standing in a long line of people waiting for....something. While I was initially unsure of what this something was, I figured if this many people were waiting it was probably something a) good and b) free. And indeed it was! I had happened onto the celebration of Korea Day in the park where they were giving out plentiful samples of Korean food as well as demonstrating other aspects of Korean culture (which were interesting, but less delicious). I ended up consuming a Korean food feast, before continuing on my way out of the park. I returned later that evening with Fer for the show (A Winter's Tale) and we enjoyed a lovely evening of beautiful warm weather and open-air theater.