The title of this post is intentional; yes, The Voyage Home is a Star Trek reference (it was the subtitle of Star Trek IV), which was the one with the crew saving the whales -- and for those of you who haven't seen it, no, I'm not making that up. It was the 80s, go with it. Anyway, the reason I've included this reference as a title is because we went to see Star Trek Into Darkness a week ago tonight, after getting a dinner of pizza and going out shopping for most of the day.
Meh.
No, really, that's my overall thoughts on Into Darkness. It did have some upsides -- it was very pretty, incredibly well-cast, and introduced one of my favorite starship designs ever, the "dreadnaught-class" USS Vengeance:
A larger version of this picture is my current computer wallpaper, by the way.
Other than that? Eh. I don't want to be spoiler-ish in my take on the film, but I will tell you that it's been done before, and the surprises in said film weren't necessarily the big surprises they could (and most certainly should) have been. Did I like it, and was it entertaining? Yes, on both counts, for what it was at least. Could I have waited to see it until it hit DVD? Yes, absolutely. But I didn't know that going in, of course. My final opinions on it are that they did with this movie exactly what I was hoping they wouldn't do, at least not for a few more sequels, and that made a good chunk of it all-too-predictable in its execution.
As for what Daisy thought of it, I'm not sure; she hadn't seen its 2009 predecessor, though I don't think that's incredibly necessary to enjoy this film as long as you have a basic knowledge of the original series' characters (and, hint hint, a knowledge of the original film series of the 80s). Knowing as much about Trek as I do (I watched Star Trek instead of getting laid in high school and college), I feel it is somewhat safe to say this. She found it interesting, at least as much as she could, but she also once referred to The Next Generation as "that show with the bald guy and the one with the funny head. In space." She did, however, tell me that my interpersonal, social cues are very much like Spock.
"Really?" I asked. "I always saw myself as a Kirk archetype."
If you know my middle name, it's pure coincidence.
"You're sometimes like Kirk," she said. "You'd always risk everything for a friend, to put yourself on the line and all that, but when it comes to logical stuff and analyzing situations, you are very calculating and matter-of-fact like Spock is."
Can't fault her in that observation; she's correct on all counts. When something's important, I am very logical and laser-focused on it, sometimes to a fault. In arguments I use logic and don't let my emotions get the best of me -- in fact, in arguments I tend to be logical and reasonable on all counts in order to either de-fuse the situation or to make the other person arguing with me realize what a stupid argument they're trying to make, especially since that's usually the case. And, most of the time, I am pretty level-headed. However, I do have my occasional Kirk-like moments, where I throw caution to the wind and dive into a situation regardless of how bad the outcome may be.
The movie experience was fine; in Omaha, the theaters are nice, they're clean, and we went to the later show (10:05) and the 2D version (3D tends to give me a headache) on a Tuesday night, so there were maaaaaybe only fifteen other people in the theater with us. Because the theater we went to does a special on Tuesday nights, we were able to get two movie tickets and a large Icee for Daisy for $20. Popcorn and snacks? Nope. From our Big Lots trip earlier that afternoon, Daisy had stuffed two bags of snacks into her purse, so that's what we ate while we were watching the film, because we're not only cheap, but resourceful as well.
Before the movie, of course, we'd gone out and done the majority of our shopping-and-fun time in Omaha on Tuesday. That was when we made that Big Lots trip, and when we went to the mall and Goodwill as well. I didn't find anything at the mall we went to (Daisy took me to one I hadn't been to yet, which had considerably fewer stores or interesting places in it than the one we'd been to over New Year's), though she found a shirt she liked and some incense at an Asian trading store. Everything I found was either overpriced or not in my size, though she did take this photo of me feeling up the testicles of a mannequin in JCPenney:
Wasn't lying, was I?
Anyway.
That night, before the movie, we came home for a bit to relax, as we knew we wouldn't make it to the 8PM showing we'd originally planned to go to, and talked to the parents for a while before they went to bed -- it would be the last time I would see the parents before we left the next day, since by the time we got home from Star Trek they would have been in bed for hours, and by the time I/we would get up the next morning to drive back to Kansas, they would have long before left for work. I once again thanked them for everything, and while they offered us dinner, we declined -- Daisy had planned for us to go to Night Flight Pizza, her favorite pizza place in the city, which had recently changed locations.
I've had Night Flight before; she brought down, once upon a time, a very large vegan pizza which was, and I'm not kidding, amazing. I shall cut and paste the description of it from the menu I linked to above:
V Vegetarian VERY VEGAN PIZZA V
Our Natural Signature Crust with 100% Organic Pizza Sauce and a Vegetable Topping of Your Choice. 100% Non-Dairy Soy Cheese Alternative available for an additional $4.00 per Pizza.(soy cheese costs us 60% morethen dairy cheese this has to be passed on to Vegans :(
as a vegan myself I don't understand why the cost is so high so i'm with you on the cost. THE UPSIDE IS THIS IS THE BEST VEGAN PIZZA YOU CAN FIND ANYWHERE.
Grammar/punctuation/spelling errors aside, it really is the best vegan pizza. Ever since then I wanted to go there and eat in the restaurant, trying what they had, so we did. She got a pizza with onions, artichokes, and garlic (and good lord was it good) and vegan cheese sticks, and I got a double-pepperoni/double-cheese to see what their normal pizza was like. While I did indeed like mine, I liked hers much more -- which, I know, is strange of a carnivore like me to say. From this point forward, when we get Night Flight, we'll be getting the vegan pizzas exclusively (unless I want to try something really different one night). The prices are reasonable, too; I think my pizza was $11 or something like that, which is cheaper than it would be to order something from Papa John's here at home.
After we were finished and on our way back home, Daisy told me that Night Flight has a reputation of being the pizza place that nobody in town really likes unless they're drunk; most regard it as "greasy drunk food" or something like that. I don't get that, really. I think it's great, especially for the price, and Daisy and I both heartily appreciate the fact they do vegan stuff and lots of it. Regardless of the fact that I'm not vegan, I have been eating a lot more healthily in the past almost-year that Daisy and I have been together, and she's shown me many tricks and vegan alternatives to stuff I love (namely Vegenaise, Earth Balance, almond milk, and Daiya vegan cheeses). A life of eating mostly vegan stuff wouldn't bother me too much, though yes, I would still want, and eat, stuff that wasn't vegan much as I do now.
So we went to the movie and came home; in the interim, we stopped at the local Trader Joe's, where Daisy got a big bouquet of roses for her mother and where I was able to find another cat scratch pad (amazingly enough), but we didn't get home for good that night until after 1AM. I showered, using the last of Daisy's LUSH putty soap (which is amazing, let me tell you) and we went to sleep.
I really don't remember the time I got up on Wednesday morning, but it was still fairly early and long after the parents had gone to work. I let Daisy sleep; she'd barely gotten any real quality rest since we'd been in Omaha, and because of that, she needed it. We were also in no hurry; the cats had plenty of food/water/litter at home, and it's not like I had to be back in order to go back to campus or anything like that, since the semester had ended and I had already graduated. While I missed the cats and while I was curious to see if the bad storms in the area over the weekend prior had done any damage to the house or neighborhood, there was no reason to get in any sort of hurry about anything involving my trip home -- I knew even then that I would miss Omaha, and would miss being in that house with Daisy and her parents.
Mama had left me/us a note that morning saying that it was wonderful to have me visit, and gave me a list of colleges in the Omaha area to look into teaching positions at (I'll get to this in later posts, once I finish this tale). I found that incredibly endearing and sweet; I am very glad Daisy's parents love me and am thankful to have them in my life.
As an aside, I also got to see the shirt I bought Mama for Mother's Day, and while it looked a lot different than the photo on Amazon (much lighter in color, much more detailed in design) it was still gorgeous, and I'm glad she loved it. She was still altering it as of then, though I would imagine she's more than likely finished with said alterations by now.
Since I let Daisy sleep in, I spent a good chunk of my morning going about my normal morning routine of computer/coffee/cigarettes, though when I'm there the latter one (of course) is done outside. Eventually, Daisy awakened, and after eating and relaxing about the house a bit, we left the house around 2PM for Newton.
The drive southward was very pretty; because of the instability of the atmosphere and the storms that had been hitting around the area off and on for the previous several days, we drove through lots of dark clouds and bright sun, alternating. We stopped at Baker's first (a grocery store) to get some food for the trip, and stopped at York as per the usual, where I got a few little things at the local Walmart, before we made the rest of the drive home. We got back here just as it was starting to get dark, around 8 or so, and had just enough light and time to get everything into my garage before the sun set. Which wraps us back around to the beginning of this series of posts, really, in that I found that if we did get some nasty storms here while I was out of town, you couldn't tell -- but my grass desperately needed mowing (I mowed it three days ago, finally).
Daisy stayed the night, as there was no reason for her to drive back north until the morning. I made her dinner -- vegan chicken sandwiches and the like -- and we watched The Rocketeer, since she'd never seen it. I ate the rest of my Night Flight pizza, which I had made sure to bring home with me, and we went to bed with my three cats quickly joining us, as they'd missed sleeping with me/us for the past five days at that point. In the morning, I tried to let Daisy sleep in, but she was awake before I was (around 9AM) and told me that she was going to get ready to leave.
"You told me last night you didn't have to leave until like, 3PM," I said.
"3PM at the latest," she said.
Daisy returned to work that night on her normal schedule of 8:30PM to 7:30AM. This is why 3PM was the latest she could leave; it was the least amount of time she needed to get back to Omaha and go to work. I hadn't really thought about this.
I helped her get ready and we said our goodbyes; she left the house probably around noon or so at the latest, and thus our time together had ended. She arrived home well before work that night, and we Skyped briefly before she went in to the office for her shift.
In the meantime, I've only left my house twice since we came back home -- both for short trips to Walmart to get relatively few essentials, and one of those trips was this afternoon. It's been relatively quiet here in Newton since, though that is likely to change (see my next posts for details) and that doesn't mean nothing has been going on in my life. This story, however, has now finished, and I can go back to writing somewhat normal posts again.
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