Stardust and other things

We saw the movie Stardust today and we both really liked it. It was very beautiful and lush, and it was mostly true to Neil Gaiman's story. It is a very sweet story. I'm not spoiling anything, I think, to say that the swordfight with Septimus was very funny, and de Niro was well utilized in his role as Captain Shakespeare.

We also saw the Simpsons movie last night, and enjoyed it greatly. It was funny. Adam laughed his ass off and I did too.

Finally, and I'm telling things in reverse order from how they happened this weekend, we did a huge amount of work on the front yard, finally. We've been the neighbors with the horrible-looking front yard for four months. Our house looked from the front somewhat like a haunted house - the house the neighborhood kids are afraid to go near. Adam trimmed the hedges (though my personal preference would be to pull up those ugly holly bushes) and mowed the lawn in back as well as the weeds that have pushed out half the ivy in the center rectangle, and I used the weed whacker - WHICH DOUBLES AS AN EDGER!!! - and cleaned up all the yucky overgrowth. It's all very cleanly edged along the front walkways, the sidewalk, and the driveway. It looks great!





I suppose it doesn't look as exciting if you didn't see the previous state it was in:



Damn it, that doesn't show it in all its antiglory. Or if you don't know how much hard work we put in. We ended up with FOUR 30-gallon bags of leaves and other organic matter from it. That's 120 GALLONS of crap!