So this is the last day of school and I am sitting in my (soon to be former) cubicle, posting a quick one before I bounce. We will be holding house in 15 minutes, when we will be handing out report cards, then on an awards ceremony across the street at LaGuardia college. After that, who knows? It has been a hectic year in general, and not only because of the career change: Grandma's death, 2 new babies, meeting Mikey again, all of it, has made this what the Chinese called "interesting times." More to come later.

Sith and Stuff

So it has been a while. Just some updates, then:

Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith - saw this at the Midway at the midnight show. Not bad, though not great. It had definite moments of greatness, but you sort of had to swirl through the rest of the stuff to get to it.
In the plus column:
Coruscant (I love the Coruscant stuff);
The final battle, which was OK;
Lotsa Wookiees;
Finally seeing Darth again.

In the minus column:
The de-badassification of General Grievous, which defeated the purpose of the Clone Wars cartoons, although Lucas probably did that on purpose;
All the love scenes, which were ham-handed and crappy, and of which there has been plenty mentioned already;
Anakin's sudden and seemingly arbitrary switch from good to evil;
The birth scene, which (yet again) violates apparent continuity -- this has happened so often and so consistently that I have given up trying to reconcile events anymore.

Overall a good film, though it could have -- should have -- been great. Keep Lucas off the word processor and in the computer lab, where he seems happiest. Let him generate the ideas by all means, because the fecundity of his imagination is staggering, he really needs to keep away from anything having to do with dialogue.

I dread the train wreck that the fourth Indiana Jones flick threatens to be.


What else?


Work went OK, I got a Satisfactory rating from Aaron, the principal, which means my career is on track. School is finally almost over. Some students failed my classes who I did not think were going to fail, others failed as expected, and some, happily, passed despite expectations.

This has been a time of reflection for me. It has been almost a year since I left Citigroup. I always have a bittersweet memopry of my time there, ending the way it did. I am happy I left on my own terms, though, even if it did mean taking a huge cut in salary.