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My Top 8 Movies of 2013

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movies This is a bit off topic, but it is something I wanted to write so I’m writing it. My picks for the top 8 movies are necessarily limited to movies that I’ve seen. Since I’ve only seen two out of the nine Academy Award Best Picture nominees my list will be quite a bit different from their list. I did see 48 movies in the theater last year. Adding 2013 movies I saw on DVD and Netflix I saw a total of about 60 movies during the year. These are the ones I liked best in order of when I saw them.

1. Identity Thief
2. The Heat
3. The Way Way Back
4. We’re the Millers
5. The Spectacular Now
6. Gravity
7. Bad Grandpa
8. This is the End

This is a top 8 list because that is how many movies I felt deserved to be on my top list. As you can see, I’m partial to raunchy comedies, but a couple of serious movies are among my picks. What do you think of these movies? What would be on your top movies of 2013 list?

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Possible Plans for 2014

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CAM00206 It has been a while since I’ve put up a post on this blog. I’ve decided to just post when I feel like writing a post and lately I haven’t felt like posting much. I even thought about quitting blogging completely, but I like having a record of my thoughts and finances. This blog has always been more of a journal than a magazine/advice type blog and now that will likely be even more so. I’m not setting any blogging goals for the year right now. I’m just going to blog when I want to blog.

I’m actually not making any yearly goals right now. I did fine on the two yearly goals I made last year, but this year I want to make some non-financial goals. I’m thinking those goals will be monthly goals so if I get off track one month I can get back on track the next month. The areas I need to make goals for are losing weight/getting in shape and (non-blog) writing. This month my goals are to take the steps at work and to spend less on fast food than I did in December. I’m doing fine on those goals so far this month and I’m thinking I probably made my goals too easy. I can set harder goals next month. Of course, I can also improve on my goals this month as well.

There are also a couple of things I would like to do this year that are not goals. They are just wishes at this point. I’d like to spend at least a month hiking. Based on my previous experiences, that isn’t likely to happen. At least not a month of consecutive days hiking. Nonetheless, I am going to try again. I plan to get in better shape before I start my hike so the hiking isn’t such a shock to my system. Also, I’ll be starting in April rather than July so the weather shouldn’t be nearly as hot.

The other thing I’d like to do is take a road trip across the United States. This is something I’ve wanted to do ever since I read “Blue Highways” when I was in high school. That was over 25 years ago and I never got around to doing it. Since I should finally have both the time and the money, this year seems like the time to do it. I’m not sure how long the trip or where all I’ll visit. I’d like to at least visit all of the lower 48 states that I haven’t yet visited. The states I haven’t visited are mainly the Northwest and Northeast states. I just haven’t had much inclination to visit those states since I’d rather go south where it is warm. The northern states should be warm enough in summer though and I might even make a short trip across the border into Canada as well. I’ve probably been to Mexico about 50 times so I should probably visit Canada at least once.

I will give more details when these events come closer to happening. I’ll also let you know about any new goals I set.

Document Review Job

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I have started working a new document review job.  On a document review job you basically spend all day sitting at a computer looking at electronically scanned documents and tagging whether they are responsive to a particular discovery request and whether the document should be privileged.  My first document review job was the one I did from July to September.  Having experience doing document review from that job and using a particular type of document review software allowed me to land this job.  I’m hoping that it will be easier for me to land future document review jobs in the future as I gain more experience.

Many people don’t like working document review jobs since it can be boring sitting at a computer looking at documents all day.  I actually mostly like doing document review.   I get to work pretty much autonomously and only have a minimal need to interact with other people.  For the most part I’m just looking at the computer all day.  Also, I can listen to music or podcasts on my phone which keeps the work from getting too boring.

The work schedule is another thing I like about the job.  The office is open 12 or more hours a day and as long as you get at least 40 hours in during the week it doesn’t matter what hours you work.  Since I’m not much of a morning person I usually arrive a little later in the morning and leave a little later at night.

The job I’m currently working is allowing people to work as many hours as they want.  There is no overtime for working over 40 hours in a week, but more hours is still more money so I’m working more than 40 hours.  I only managed 42.5 hours this week, but I plan to work more hours for the rest of the project.  Since the job is temporary I might as well make money while I can.  Plus, if I work a few extra hours at work I don’t feel as bad about being lazy when I get home.

I’m not sure how the paydays for this job will fall, but I’m hoping that I’ll get a couple of checks this month so I’ll have a shot at meeting my goal of saving 50% of my income for the year.  Since I’m concentrating on working my job blog posts will continue to be sporadic.  My plan for now is to do my blogging on the weekend and just worry about working my job during the week.

Have you ever had a job that allowed you to work as many hours as you want?  How many hours did you work?

 

Cruise Recap Part 2

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cruiseship This is the last of three posts about the cruise I took last month.  The firs post was about the cost of the cruise and the second post was about the room and the food on the cruise.  This post will be about the ship activities and the port excursions.

Ship Activities

There was quite a variety of activities available on the ship.   Many of our fellow passengers favorite activity seemed to be drinking and getting drunk.  I’m not much of a drinker and the drink prices on the ship were ridiculously high so I did not partake of that activity. Since the motion of the ship made me queasy drinking probably wouldn’t have been a good idea.

The main activities we attended were the shows.  There were only two nights where they had what I would consider a real show being performed.  Those were the shows with singing and dancing and actual sets.  I did enjoy those shows although they were somewhat short and seemed like a random collection of musical numbers rather than a cohesive show.

The standup comedians were my favorite entertainment on the boat.  They also only performed two out of the five nights.  The other nights had amateur shows.  These were basically the ship’s entertainment staff performing on stage without any set other than some chairs.  These shows were actually fairly entertaining despite the lack of production value.

We were on ship for Halloween night and a lot of people dressed up and there were some great costumes.  There was a Halloween costume contest that was won by a couple of guys dressed up as KISS.  They did have authentic costumes and could have easily passed as actual members of KISS.  The runner up was a group of guys dressed as the Avengers. The man in the Iron Man costume made the costume himself from metal and spent over $800.  The costume looked great, but I don’t know if it was $800 great.  Our costumes were much cheaper.  We went as Pornstache and a prisoner from the show “Orange Is The New Black.”

pornstache

Not many people knew we were portraying people from a TV show, but they did still like the guard and prisoner costumers.  We were smart enough not to use blackface to make the costume more authentic.

Ports and Excursions

The cruise left and returned from New Orleans.  It would have been nice to add a couple days in New Orleans to the beginning or ending of the cruise, but we didn’t really have time for that and it would have increased the cost of the vacation a fair amount.

The ship stopped in the ports of Progreso and Cozumel during the cruise.  In Progreso we had booked a tour of the ruins at Dzibilchaltun before we embarked.  This allowed us to pay less than half than what the tour would have cost if we had booked through the cruise line.  The guided portion of the tour was only about a half hour and after that we had time to further explore the ruins and/or swim in a nearby cenote(sinkhole) for the remainder of the tour time.  Since it was hot we opted for the swimming.  The total time of the tour including transportation to and from the ruins was a little under about 4 hours.  This was just about right since it gave us a little time to explore Progreso before going on the tour and allowed us plenty of time after the tour to get back on the ship.  There isn’t a lot to see in Progreso so I’d recommend booking a tour for that port.

In Cozumel we didn’t have a tour booked and decided to just wing it.  The tour guide in Progreso suggested that we go to Chankanaab.  Admission was $21 each and basically all we got for that was access to the beach.  I wasn’t impressed with that recommendation.  We still had a good time swimming in the ocean and relaxing on the beach, but I think we could have done that for less.  If there is a next time, I’ll either book a tour ahead of time or at least do some prior research.

That wraps up the cruise posts.  Going on a cruise was something I’d wanted to do for a long time and I’m glad I did it.  Although I did enjoy this cruise, if I ever go on another cruise it will need to be an even better deal and go somewhere I haven’t been.

 

 

First Cruise Recap

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cruiseship  In case you don’t already know, my girlfriend and I took a cruise at the end of October. I already shared the financial cost of the cruise in my Cruise Cost Breakdown post, in this post I am sharing my general thoughts about the cruise. Since this was my first cruise I can’t compare this cruise to any other cruises.  Any comparisons will be to other similar vacation options.

The Room

We had an interior cabin which was the cheapest option.  Several people had told me that the room would be really small.  The room was indeed quite small, but it was as big as it needed to be.  The size of the room was not an issue for me.  The lack of a window also was not a big deal.  I think a window might have actually been a negative since looking out through the window probably would have made me queasy.

The room was a little outdated.  It was apparent that the room fixtures hadn’t been changed out in a long time.  The TV cabinet was made to hold a tube TV and now held a flat screen TV.  The closet had been broken at some point and the repair job was rather apparent.  The king size bed was two twin beds pushed together.  The bed was very comfortable as long as you didn’t roll into the middle of the bed.  None of these things were a big deal and not unexpected given that this was basically a budget motel room.

On the plus side, the room was very clean.  Our room attendant was very friendly.  It was really nice to have a clean room when we came back from breakfast and to have the bed turned down and a new towel animal when we returned from dinner.  The shower was great.  I was a little worried that the shower pressure would be weak given that we were on a ship.  The shower actually had better shower pressure than our shower at home and the water was piping hot.   The endless hot water led to me taking even longer showers than usual which makes for some pretty long showers.  I do love my showers and the shower was one of my favorite parts of the cruise.

The Food

Whenever I mentioned that I was going on a cruise, previous cruise goers always talked about the variety and quantity of food available on a cruise.   The food on the cruise was okay, but I can’t say I was impressed by it.  Many people telling me about their cruises commented on how much they liked that food was available 24 hours a day.  That doesn’t seem like a big deal to me since if you live in a city with 24 hour drive-thrus and grocery stores you also have food available 24 hours a day. It isn’t too hard for me to indulge my food cravings at home anytime of day so the cruise didn’t seem like that big of a difference to me.  The main difference is that on the cruise you don’t have to directly pay for each meal.  The first night I wanted to get a late night snack around 11pm and all the restaurants were closed.  My free food options were self-serve ice cream or pizza. There was a long line for pizza so I chose to forego my late night snack.    The fact that I didn’t gain any weight on the cruise shows that I didn’t indulge anymore than normal.  Of course, my normal level of indulgence is pretty high so it might be hard for it to get any worse.

We did make it a point to eat in the dining room every night.  I tried to expand my palate a little by having a different item every night and only had my default burger one night.  The menu featured a different “exotic” appetizer choice every night.  The options I remember were frog legs, snails, sushi, alligator.  Since I’d had sushi before and didn’t like it, I didn’t try it again. Growing up in the Ozarks, I’d also had frog legs several times when I was a kid and didn’t have any desire to have them again.  I’d never had snails, but I still didn’t want to try them.  The only exotic appetizer I tried was the alligator.  It had so much breading and seasoning though that I couldn’t even taste any alligator.

The servers provided excellent service and also provided entertainment with a short song and dance routine towards the end of mealtime.  Even though eating in the dining room was a nice experience I probably would have been happier just eating from the buffet most nights.  My favorite meals were the cheeseburger and fries I had for lunch everyday.  I even liked the buffet burger better than the dining room burger.  I guess my unrefined palate just prefers the cheap food so I don’t really get an added value from the fancier food.

This post is already long enough so I will finish writing about my thoughts on my first cruise in Wednesday’s post.