Boys with Toys

I haven't been blogging much on this trip. I think it's a matter of comfort - the place where my laptop is set up just isn't very comfortable. So, while I have to sit there for research, I don't like sitting there to blog.
Last night, Big Sam and Sambo (Sambo is baby Nicholas' dad, and Big Sam is Sambo's dad) came to grab me, and they took me to dinner and a movie. Major thanks to Big Sam for kidnapping me for a guy's night out. He reminds me a lot of my dad, and it was nice to have someone around who was more conservative than I was, but with a sense of humor.
Anyway, we saw Hidalgo at the Jordan Commons - easily the best theater that Reeta and I have ever been at. Larry H. Miller (who owns the Jazz, and a ton of car dealerships here in Salt Lake), built this a few years ago as a pet project - it used to be a local high school - Jordan High. It was old, abandoned, condemned, really. And Larry bought it, tore it down, and built a great theater - keeping the old architectural facade of the original high school. This is where I found Dance Dance Revolution for the first time. This is where Reeta and I went to see Raiders of the Lost Ark as a date night - and brought crabs from Joe's Crab Shack next door into the theater with us. This is where I went to see LOTR:TTT, and got to watch the Warg battle on a giant bean bag chair about fifteen feet from the screen. According to Big Sam, he was talking with the person who did the sound for the theater - and he claimed it was the best in the country as far as sound when it was built. It's one of my favorite places.
And Hidalgo was really good.
Reeta has been doing great - she cut her hair, and has had a good time with the family. I got to see my baby brudder a couple of times, and his fiancee. That wedding is in a month. The weekend before finals.
^.^'' And I've got to be there. But it's going to be study study study in the car there and back.
Downloaded what seems to be a really great media player for my laptop last night - I've been using Crystal as my media player of choice, and it runs anime episodes smoother than anything else I've seen so far, but it doesn't play DVD's, and my DVD software tends to be choppy. Enter VideoLAN. It runs my anime eps AND my DVD's without a lot of hesitation or clipping. The hotkeys are taking a little getting used to, but other than that, it's been a good switch.