La Moustache

Released in 2005, this film by French director, Emmanuel Carrère, is quite the mind-boggler. On the surface, we see Marc (Vincent Lindon) fall victim to what he thinks is a practical joke being played by his wife, friends and co-workers. After Marc shaved off his mustache, none of them noticed and led him to believe he hadn't ever worn one.

But upon digging deeper, we find that the story has more to do with perception and normalcy than it does the mustache.



I found the film to be thought evoking and extremely well produced. The piece by Philip Glass (Violin Concerto) perfectly complimented every scene and the acting performances by Lindon and Emmanuelle Devos are convincing as a tightly wound, passionate couple.

Millions

Tonight Josh and I finally got around to watching "Millions" which came in from Netflix almost two weeks ago. This film is a must see directed by Danny Boyle. For those of you living under a rock, Boyle was the recipient of oh...let's just say a couple-few Oscars for his amazingly beautiful film "Slumdog Millionaire".

Millions. Slumdog Millionaire. What's next? The Millionth Hour?

Anyways, "Millions" was shot well and had a great message concerning ethics. In a nutshell, the film is about a widowed father and his two young sons who (literally) have a duffel bag full of money land in their laps. The boys decide to keep this a secret from the father and ultimately have different ideas for how the money should be spent.

I feel I could watch it again and again and get more out of it each time.

Onesto - I Almost Forgot!

I fancy myself a pretty big pizza snob. And whether you agree or not, St. Louis has a fabulous selection of good pizza. Not just good pizza, great pizza! This is something I feel passionate about and will argue anyday!

Tonight I helped a friend of mine, Rosey, with her wedding invitations. We decided to order pizza for dinner to help "motivate" us before starting, but when she mentioned Bellacino's I about crapped my pants (pardon the dirty word). That is certainly not one of the finer choices in pies around here, but I'll admit it's a step above Pizza Hut (granted a small step). I quickly begged her to reconsider and so she looked online for a pizza place near her house; something more like a mom and pop shop.

Well, she found just that: Onesto Pizza & Trattoria

It may be owned by the Racanelli's, but it's a far cry from that lazy New York pizza you get slapped onto a paper plate for you in the Loop. This little place had charm out the wazoo and the pie itself was pretty decent. If you're in South City and need a bite to eat, definitely cruise over to Princeton Heights and get you some family style food at Onesto!

Posting: Our Final Days in Kauai

We've been back in "the Lou" for about four days now and things are back to normal. Work is work, which is great, but I miss the sun and sand already. Before we left the island, we spent our last day down on the South shore, back at Lawai Beach. My mom and I went out for one last snorkel and saw two different sea turtles from before, a crazy-looking eel and tons and tons of fish. We also shared the beach with one of the two monk seals which was still sunning from last Wednesday when he first sailed onto shore. Unfortunately, we also shared a good 15 minutes of our last day with a crazy woman who alleged that everyone at the beach was too close to the seal, thus violating him, and wished that we'all go to hell. This of course ruined my day and I threw a fit. Thank God for the great time we had the night before when my parents treated us to a luau at the Smith Family Plantation or else I would have had horrible memories of Kauai forever! Okay, I'm being a little dramatic...

Anyways, at the luau, we took a little train ride through their gardens; it was unbelievable! I take that back. We took a little "trolley" ride through their gardens. Whatever you want to call it, the ride afforded us beautiful vistas through tree branches looking back towards the mountains.



After our little tour, we walked around the gardens before sitting down for dinner. My dad and my husband even played a little game of coconutball (it's like football, but with an unshucked coconut).



Once it was time to eat, we grabbed a table and waited for our turn to raid the buffet. Anyone who knows me knows that I loathe buffets, but this one was actually really good. Oh, and I hate pork, so pleasing me at a kalua pork buffet was pretty impressive. I loaded my plate and just about ate everything on it, save for some beans.



After "pigging" out (get it?) we were treated to a rather entertaining performance by some local kids. My little Canon didn't take very great pics without the flash, but my mom got some pretty neat shots with her monster of a Canon. Check out her blog for some bad-ass eye candy at http://travelingwithsue.blogspot.com/.

The plane ride home was uneventful, but long. I get extremely bored on planes and can't sleep well, if at all, so I was really relieved once we landed in St. Louis Sunday afternoon. Josh's parents picked us up from the airport and brought us home. Since we were exhausted, we really didn't get to visit with them much, but we'll see them this weekend at Josh's brother's birthday dinner and we'll be able to catch up.

Photoshop Wars

For fun, I thought I'd post some of the recent casulties of Kartono's and my Photoshop Wars:

Seven Days of Vacation Wiped-Out by Six Hours of Work

Well, today was work as usual. I can't even begin to explain how ridiculous my day was, so I won't.

Anywho, I'm over at my parents right now hanging out with Roxy the dog for a bit. I haven't edited any video yet and have not gone through the photos from our last couple of nights of vacation. As soon as I have, I'll get them up!

Josh is working on our taxes tonight, which is not fun. There are a lot of deductions we think we should get, but don't know if we should, and do we have the paperwork if we can deduct it!?! It's quite the way to relax after a stress-filled first day back to work...let me tell ya!

When I get back home, I think I'll read some of my book "The Hour I First Believed" by Wally Lamb (read a review of it here) which, unfortunately, I didn't get to read much of on vacation. I was a huge fan of Lamb's first two books and have not been let down by this one yet.

Last Day in Kauai - Booo

Well, we scrambled to to get all packed this morning, because I thought we had until 10:30 before we needed to check-out, but we really had to be out by 10:00. However, it wasn't hard to wake up this morning what with pee-wee football practice going on in the unit above us. I decided to wash our clothes today, but they weren't completely dry by 10:00, so we packed them anyways, brought them to my parents condo, and threw them in their dryer.

So, here we are...our last day. I think we're going to go back down to the South Shore for one last snorkel. I didn't get around to blogging last night, but I figure I have all night on the plane to wrap up the details from this trip and then I'll post on Sunday.

Until then!!!