It was another busy weekend, but thankfully we managed to pull ourselves away from all the things that have to be done around the house, and went out to dinner and saw a movie.

While Carrie went to a course for work on Saturday, I did home handyman stuff around the house, getting extremely frustrated with both mislabelled and shoddy merchandise and wishing I'd had a few more tools at my disposal. Needless to say, another few trips to the hardware store were in order! Later on we went out to dinner at a nice restaurant that looked like a castle, and did some shopping, picking up a nice "assembly-required" fish tank stand.

On Sunday went to see Shaun of the Dead. It was a hilarious movie, with the laughs coming thick and fast, and plenty of creepy zombies to boot. I'm having a hard time recalling any movie that has managed to blend horror and comedy so well. There's even a dash of romance there, too. There were quite a few running gags (which I won't spoil by mentioning here) and a great setup for the ending. Highly recommended, even if you're not normally into zombie flicks :)

There were also tonnes of previews for some truly bizarre and creepy movies, including Seed of Chucky (they're still cranking these out???), White Noise (this one looked real creepy -- all about EVP), I Heart Huckabees (looked like a load of philosophical claptrap), Team America : World Police (the guys behind South Park are going to give the PC brigade a heartattack with this twisted perversion of the old Thunderbirds marionettes), and others I forget (mustn't have been anything too wonderful).

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Over the weekend I also managed to catch up on critiques for the crit group, but I'm still yet to pen more of my own stuff and tackle the growing pile of stories requiring editing. However, I did take care of the growing pile of leaves in our backyard on Monday night...

On the audiobook front, I finished listening to The Minority Report and Other Stories which was as good as, if not better than, expected. The narrator does a great job with his tone of voice and conveying mood and different characters, and there are some real classic stories in this lot. This audiobook includes The Minority Report, (very different from the movie), We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (origin of the Arnie action extravaganza, Total Recall), Paycheck (another great story made into an average movie), Second Variety (a post apocalyptic tale with hunkered-down US and Russian soldiers separated by a no-man's land inhabited by 'claws' and other 'varieties' -- this is probably my favourite of the collection), and The Eyes Have It (PKD having fun with language, and having a jab at talentless hacks too, if I'm not mistaken).

Now I'm well and truly hooked on Audible and audiobooks in general! So much so that I signed up for Audible's unadvertised Ultimate Listener plan, where you pay up-front for 12 books at the same price (ie $120) as six month's worth on the Premium Listener plan. The advantage with this is you don't have to wait for your next month's allocation to download more books and you don't need to worry about not using up an allocation for any particular month. You've got a whole 2 years to use up those book credits before they expire, and apparently there are discounts if you ever want to buy audiobooks in addition to the credits on your plan (it can work out cheaper with the shorter books).

After hearing about James Patrick Kelly's free reads through the Locus audiobook reviews, I zipped across to his site and downloaded some of the MP3 audiobooks he has recorded. Jim Kelly is a frequent contributer to Asimov's Science Fiction, among other mags, and I'm really looking forward to hearing his stories :)

But before I get to Jim Kelly's stuff, I've got another audiobook from Audible to listen to: Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy. This one has some great stuff on it, with stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Greg Bear, Isaac Asimov, and others. More thoughts once I've listened to all the stories.

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And now the news about the new arrival... last night we got a little kitten! Carrie told me about someone at work who had some kittens to give away, and naturally I agreed that we should get one. We already have a cat, but we're always looking at kittens at the pet store and now that we have a bigger place, having two cats is a more realistic proposition.

This little guy (yet to be named) is only 6 weeks old, he's black and white, and fits neatly in the palm of your hand. We kept him in one of the upstairs bedrooms last night and during the day today, and we let him roam about this evening. Our old cat is not impressed, growling and hissing when she spots the kitten, but the kitten knows better than to bother her and keeps his distance. It'll be interesting to see how they get on over the coming weeks, because here on Journalscape I've read plenty of horror stories about the interaction of new and old cats. Let's hope they either become good pals, or at least don't get stuck into each other!

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Now for some closing observations...
1. I need to write shorter journal entries; and
2. The new Megadeth album is pretty damn good; a good deal better than, in my opinion, Metallica's most recent effort. Dave Mustaine rocks on...