What a day!

Today has been so full of things, I'm tempted to change the title of my previous post from "Lazy Saturday" to "Saturday chock full of things." It ended up being a lot more eventful than I ever anticipated.

It all started with Charlotte's Web -- Anna and I attended the 11:50AM showing at the Cinemark 12 here in Ames. And let me tell you, I don't know that we could have gotten a better adaptation of that story than the one we saw this afternoon. I grew up with that book - actually, more that story as I've only read the book a couple of times - and I didn't want to see them stomp all over it and take away all the magic that I remember from it. On the contrary, it did a fabulous job of capturing the spirit of the book, while expanding and adding to it as well. And, thank the heavens, there were no musical numbers as there were in the 70s animated version. There were a raft of celebrity voices that you didn't recognize until you were watching the credits. And I'm not entirely sure how they did the animals - only Charlotte seemed to be a purely digital creation - but it was just engaging fun for everyone - children and adults alike. Although I think my favorite part of the movie was when I leaned over to Anna and asked her how she thought Charlotte was going to save Wilbur from becoming Christmas dinner -- she thought for a second and said "She's going to spin a web around the farmer!" That's my girl.

Then I spent some time cleaning up my office - we're doing this house rearrange the end result being that we're going to turn Anna's old toy room into a spare bedroom. The futon from the toy room is eventually going to end up in my office, so in preparation for that, I tried to clean up some of the general clutter. I was only mildly successful - being distracted by last.fm and a phenomenal version of "Like A Virgin" that I found on the web. Apparently, it's the Confessions Tour studio demo of the live version of the song -- a working version of the song they used to get ready for the show. And it's nothing short of amazing. I sent it to a buddy of mine and he summed up very well my feelings for the song - it's a version that is true to the original version of a classic Madonna song with some elements thrown in to make it, well, shiny and new. While I have several versions of the live version - this near flawless studio version is a prize!

And then, tonight, we watched "The Runaway Bride" episode of Doctor Who that aired on BBC1 on Christmas Day in the UK. I do miss Rose a little bit, but David Tennant is such a good Doctor that it more than made up for the lack of Billie Piper. Heidi and I mourned the loss of Rose, and as some of our more steely British counterparts put it - they've been through the loss of a companion before so it's not as big of a deal to them. I thought the episode was pretty clever - pretty standard fare sci-fi, but that's not a bad thing. I was chatting with a friend tonight, and he says that David Tennant has really taken the role of the Doctor and made it all his own. And this is very true. David Tennant has such a boyish charm about him that really brings a dimension to the Doctor that I don't think Christopher Eccleston quite captured. He was always a lot more serious. And while I know many would argue that David Tennant could use a bit of seriousness every now and again in his portrayal of the Doctor, I think he does a damn fine job.

And now it's 11PM and I'm drinking grape juice out of a wine glass. It has all the same heart benefits without the alcohol! It's been quite a day. And the weekend is only 1/3rd over.