Category: life events

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A Birthday Brewery Tour

The sampler at Six Row Brewing Company

Since moving back, Brooke and I have wanted to hit the wealth of new micro breweries that have sprung up in the St. Louis area in the past 2 years, most of which while were were in Iowa (figures…).  As our schedules tend to get busy rapidly, we hadn’t actually done this yet, but in my infinite wisdom, I suggested that a birthday-related excursion to hit some of the better-known breweries would be nice!  Thus, we recruited my Mom to stay at home with Meg while Dad kindly drove Brooke, Kristen, Jake and I to some “hoppin'” locations (see what I did there?) around the city.

The first stop (pictured above) was Six Row Brewing Company, just off of Forest Park Avenue close to Saint Louis University.  Generally speaking, I liked their beers quite a bit.  They also have more of a menu than the other breweries we went to, with sandwiches, soups and pizzas available.  After the sampler, I had a pint of their Centennial Rye, a beer that was quite a bit lighter than other ryes I’ve had in the past.  Quite tasty!  Overall, they had a strong mix of hoppy beers, wheaty beers, and others that can satisfy a wide variety of beer tastes.

Two samplers at Urban Chestnut.

Next, we made our way to Urban Chestnut Brewing Company, which is only a mile or less away from Six Row.  Brooke and I had actually been there before, but being so close to Six Row, I figured we’d be remiss not to check them out again.  Brooke really, really liked their Pilgrim 7 beer back in December, but we didn’t appear to get that one in our sampler.  Overall, I think I preferred this mix of beers to the last one Brooke and I tried, as it had a bit more variety in the beer styles.  In December, I seem to remember everything having more of a “heavy” character, which is fine for winter, but not so good for summer.  However, there were a few refreshing varieties in these samplers and was probably the favored brewery of Jake and Kristen.  Personally, as it is the namesake of the brewery, I thought all the beers were a bit too “nutty,” but you can get over it.  Of their beers, their “Old Tjikko” Spruce Ale was probably the most interesting.  Everyone else smelled a very heavy “tree” character, but I didn’t get much of that until I tasted it, and even then, I didn’t think it was that noticeable.  Apparently, my sense of smell is pretty terrible.  They had another one, “Thrales,” that isn’t listed on their website, but was a pretty spectacular (and alcoholic) Russian Imperial Stout.  It was shockingly smooth.  For something approaching 9%, it had a great flavor and was surprisingly easy to drink.  Worth a look!

The sampler at 4 Hands Brewing Company.

4 Hands Brewing Company was next on the list.  This one’s within walking distance (a bit far, but doable) of our old place in Soulard, so it’s pretty close to Busch Stadium.  Unlike the other breweries, 4 Hands doesn’t have a huge beer list available as they just launched at the end of December.  This was probably Kristen’s least favorite brewery because just about all the beers had a noticeable hop character…which, of course, is good so far as I’m concerned.  🙂

This is the first location where Dad had any beer, as well, so it’s probably a good thing he waited this long, as he tends to like hoppy beers, too.  I thought their Single-Speed Session, a Blonde Ale, was good, but Dad and I both got their Divided Sky Rye IPA.  Big and hoppy.  Mmmm…  Brooke had their Saison in Columbia last weekend at another bar, and it was still good here.  Sadly, while their website mentions a “Pyrus” saison for Fall and Winter that they didn’t have anymore of.  It’s made with “pear juice, whole white pepper corns, and the zest of fresh oranges,” so it definitely piqued her interest.  We’ll need to go back later in the year, I expect.

Four beers from The Civil Life.

Last, but not least, we went to The Civil Life Brewing Company, which is in an odd location about a mile or two from our house.  They also had sandwiches available, had a “back room” where some poetry reading was going on, and a nice upstairs seating area to get you away from the bar if you want to.  They were probably the most “industrial” of the locations, though from the outside, it looks pretty boring.  The beers were good, though to be honest, by the time you’re on your fourth stop of tasting all those previous beers, the flavors all start to run together a bit.  Also, I don’t really remember much about these four, and looking at their website, I’m not remembering much about which ones we actually got.  I just asked the bartender which four were their “best,” and I remember them being very good, but again, I can’t recall what they were.  If I had to guess, I’d say we had the American Pale, the Rye Pale, the British Bitter and the American Brown, but I could be wrong.

We need to go back there, though.  The beers pictured were 8 oz and were $2.50 each, so you can’t really argue with the pricing.  Especially for people like Brooke that may not want a whole pint of one beer style, it makes it pretty easy to get a good sampling without over-doing it.

A big thanks go to Mom and Dad for helping facilitate our little beer excursion!  I definitely had a lot of fun!  Next time we do this, we’ll probably keep it down to two breweries on a single trip, as four is, perhaps, a bit too much if you’re really wanting to appreciate the distinctions in beer varieties.

Oh well.  You live, you learn.  🙂

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Dominican Republic Vacation, Part III

I spent enough time talking about our experience(s) in the Dominican Republic, but I thought it would be useful to briefly discuss the country itself.  Generally speaking, all the people we met were very friendly and were very helpful.  Few spoke much English, though the host at the front desk of the main lobby spoke at least 5 languages to some degree.  There were a few instances when we would be shopping around the resort and the shop keeper wouldn’t understand much of what we were saying, but we made do.

There were quite a few Europeans at the resort.  Definitely a few Americans, but it appeared that the vast majority of other tourists were from Europe (also reflected by the number of topless women walking around on the public beach close to our hotel).  It seemed like many of the Europeans were from Spain, though some were French, a few Germans, some we thought were Dutch.  Overall, a good “smattering” of many Western European countries taking in the Caribbean air.

We were curious about the work force at the resort.  Specifically, the hostess at our buffet off the lobby, where we typically got breakfast, also worked at the French restaurant we went to Tuesday night.  Bear in mind that she was there when we rolled in for breakfast, and she was also there that night when we got dinner at 9:00.  And there are practically no towns near the resort for all these people to live in.  So where did they all come from?!

We asked two people, one a bartender at our lobby and the other, a guy who set people up with scuba trips near our pool (“Frannie,” as he was affectionately called by Rachel and Mallory.  Short for “Francisco”).  The bartender said he comes to stay in an apartment near the resort, where many other workers live for much of the time, and he’s there for 24 days straight before going home for 6 days once a month after about an 8 hour drive home.  Frannie, on the other hand, lives about an hour away and takes maybe 2 days off per month.  So generally speaking, if you work at the resort, you’re there a lot.

As I said, there aren’t many towns near the resort itself.  We drove through one town between the airport and the resort, but we only saw a few gas stations, a few small eateries and buildings, yet no houses or apartment complexes to speak of.  Certainly not enough housing to account for the hundreds of workers at our resort, let alone the others in the area.

The buggy ride is really where we really saw the impoverished conditions of the rural population.  There were shacks we passed with an adult or two sitting under a tree outside, and a few kids running up to our buddy train to give us “high fives” as we passed by.  The kids actually had some decent clothes on, but compared to their living conditions, that doesn’t say much.  There were a few run down buildings we passed that had satellite dishes, however, so it’s hard to determine exactly what resources they have.  At the “plantation” stop during the ride, we were told that the average wage in the area (if not the country) is about $100 per month.  He pointed across the road to a single-room rural school building, where the uniforms to attend there cost $65, obviously cutting in to that meager wage.  I can’t be sure how accurate the young man was who was describing this all to us, however.  He may have just been trying to sell some products in support of the school.  In any case, the people we saw in rural areas of the Dominican Republic didn’t seem to be living by standards anywhere close to what we do here.

According to Wikipedia, the gross annual minimum wage for the Dominican Republic is almost $1500.

I should note that, during that buggy ride, we were accosted a few times by sales people trying to get you to stop by their table or shop to buy some things from them.  Obviously, they knew where the buggies tended to bring tourists, so they set up specifically to prey upon them.  We were warned about it by the folks running the buggy service, but as it’s public land, there wasn’t anything they could do.  I’m sure this kind of thing is true of just about any country you go to, though.

The last thing I found interesting was the road system.  We were driving for a little over 30 min between the airport and the resort and a good deal of that trip was on 4-lane divided highway.  However, in many cases, we saw unfinished roads running alongside ours, or unfinished buildings with people selling things from the bottom floor while rebar stuck out at the top.  We would go through roundabouts that only had two roads connected.  Overall, it just seemed like they were either A). primed for expansion to send roads to additional towns and resorts, or B). they ran out of money and will continue their projects when more comes in.  Either way, the driving experience had an “unfinished” feel to it.

Regardless, it seemed like a nice country, one I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more of someday.  The capital, Santo Domingo, especially seems like it would be an interesting city to visit, with lots of sights and history to experience.

That’s it!  Can’t think of anything else to write on the subject.  Surely I wrote enough by now. 🙂

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Dominican Republic Vacation, Part II

Picking up where we left off, Tuesday morning involved an excursion to the Dominican Republic countryside so we could drive buggies (or “boogies,” if you follow their spelling).  We rented 3 buggies (two people per car) and drove in a single-file line down dirt roads and along a beach.  We visited a few different locations, including the aforementioned beach, a “plantation” where coffee, cocoa and tobacco are harvested, then a cave that was supposedly filmed as part of “Jurassic Park.”  It was rather difficult to determine whether the “plantation” was actually functional, or whether it was an outpost in the middle of nowhere set up to show tourists how coffee and cocoa are made, and cigars rolled.  In any case, it was somewhat instructional and proved to be entertaining.  Overall, the buggy ride was a nice diversion from an otherwise beach-centric vacation.

Tuesday afternoon, we returned to the beach, though I think we were a bit more relaxed than the day before.  Brooke and I took the opportunity to remain in the shade for most of the time, giving our (limited) sun burns a rest before hitting it hard the next day.  We did, however, make an attempt at renting some kayaks to try and make our way out into the ocean where there was a partially submerged ship used mostly for scuba excursions (I think).  The girls were able to make it out there, but my kayak was very, very uncomfortable, so I couldn’t quite make the trip.

(…and before you think me a weakling, bear in mind that Brooke and I switched kayaks at one point and she had problems as well…it wasn’t just me!!  Brooke and I were both sore for the next few days from that kayak trip…stoopid kayak…)

That night, we ate at the buffet close to our hotel where we normally just ate breakfast.  This allowed us a bit more flexibility with how we spent our evening, so we were able to eat a bit earlier and then enjoy some “family time” that night playing cards and hanging out, getting a little more relaxation in.

Wednesday was our last full day in the Dominican Republic, so we generally stayed close to the beach.  Nothing too interesting to report from that day, though “the kids” sent Mark and Diana to the spa for a few hours in the afternoon, something I think they enjoyed.

After a long day out in the sun, we went out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant which, in my opinion, was the best meal we had the entire time down there.  It was a “teppanyaki“-style restaurant, where the food is cooked in front of a group of patrons and you choose what you want to eat.  Needless to say, I was pretty full after eating just about every meat imaginable, as well as a healthy portion of rice and soup.

The next morning, we all said our “goodbyes” to the country in our separate ways: some walking on the beach, some getting up early to read, some swimming in the pool.  We checked out late-morning and headed back to the airport, where we waited for a 3:00 pm flight (thankfully, there was a Wendy’s).  The flight back was mostly uneventful, aside from some turbulence.  Frontier was kind enough to provide 25 channels of cable TV once we crossed into US airspace, so that was a big plus.  We were on the ground by 7:00 pm and, somehow, made it through Customs in about 15 min, which shocked me to a sufficient degree.

All in all, it was a memorable, great vacation!  Thanks again to Mark and Diana for taking us all along with them, and to my parents for watching Meg and Edie while we were out of the country.  And Stu for taking care of the chickens and Sam.  Can’t forget that.  🙂

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Dominican Republic Vacation, Part I

In recent years, Brooke’s family has been hitting up tropical vacations.  Up until now, we haven’t gone along, but this year, as Rachel turned 21 and I am turning 30 in a few (short) weeks, they kindly took all of us on a Caribbean vacation to Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic!

We left Meg and Edie with my parents for the week and got up to hit an early morning flight to the DR on Sunday, putting us there in early afternoon.  That way, we had a good “half day” available to orient ourselves and check out the pool and beach before dinner.  We stayed at the Grand Bahia Principe Ambar, which is one of four hotels in the “Bahia Principe” family of all-inclusive resorts in Punta Cana.  Each hotel is situated next to one another, and each one has its own selection of restaurants, pools, and so on.  To some degree, visitors to each hotel can visit each other’s restaurants and attractions, but the Ambar hotel, specifically, is “adults only,” so while we could visit all the other restaurants, the visitors to the other hotels couldn’t visit ours.  It definitely helped keep our general environment quiet and relaxing.

Sunday was the only day we spent any significant time by the pool (pictured above), as it tended to be pretty hot with all that concrete abound.  Our rooms were on the bottom floor in a building right next to the pool, and just beyond the pool lies the beach, so we really couldn’t get much closer to our primary destination!

The hotel was pretty nice, overall, with a stocked mini bar, bathrooms with Jacuzzi tubs and walk-in showers, and cable TV with a total of three English-language channels (CBS, NBC and ABC).  If you want to watch Mythbusters dubbed in Spanish, they’ve got you covered.

My primary hiccup with the whole excursion, of course, was a lack of free Wifi except in the main lobby area.  Granted, I know we were down there to “relax,” but with one of the biggest electronics and gaming conferences going on all week, my RSS readers were collecting 600+ articles for me to wade through by the end of the day.  The Wifi they provided, however, was pretty quick and not the job done.  Just a minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things!

At least they were kind enough to bring me a cocktail while I skimmed metric tons of articles, eh? 😉

Before continuing, I should mention the general “structure” of our days.  We’d all get up and go to the main lobby area, which was connected to an all-purpose buffet that switched out their selections for each meal.  We always ate breakfast there, but usually ate lunch at a beach-side buffet that didn’t care so much about “dress codes.”  After spending our days at the beach, we’d usually clean up before dinner and meet at the lobby again for a cocktail or two (and some free Wifi).  Then, it’d be dinner time, shopping/walking/cards, then sleep time.

Anyway, Sunday encompassed some time spent at the pool, taking in our surroundings.  We went to an Italian restaurant for dinner that night around 9:00, so by the time we were done there, we were mostly ready for bed.  There were more than a few restaurants available for eating, and sometimes multiple in each style.  Many seemed to required reservations, even though there weren’t very many people eating by the time we got there.  I think some restaurants were more lax on that requirement than others…

Monday was a “beach day,” so we didn’t do all that much, aside from get some swimming, tanning and reading done.  For the record, I finished Catching Fire and started another book, Losing My Religion, so yes, indeed, I did read books while on vacation.  After a long day on the beach, we hit up a French restaurant, where I had lobster for the first time (good!).  It’s the kind of thing I didn’t really feel right having in the Midwest (as we don’t really get fresh lobster here…), so I was anxious to have some while in the Caribbean.  Again, this was a late-night dinner reservation, so we didn’t do much afterwards.

That’s probably enough for now.  More to come in a few days!

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Back Yard

"How can I sneak some of this into the house...hmmmm..."

Though we don’t have the massive yard we had up in Iowa (and all the mowing to go with it…), we do have some space with which we can toy around.  While a chicken coop and a garden of some sort are still in the plans, for now, we’ve got some back yard toys for Meg.

Last summer, she was content to play with a bucket of water, splashing about for hours on end.  Now that she can move around more, Meg very much enjoys going down the street to our neighborhood park to go down slides and use the swings.  Her daycare has a pretty nice playground area as well, so it’s nice that we’ve got the space in our yard to facilitate something along those lines.  On nights when it’s nice out and we want to BBQ, it’s even better, as she can entertain herself in the sandbox, rather than having me hold her while trying to flip burgers.

Regardless, Meg got a swingset from her “Mimi” and “Poppy,” a sandbox from her “Aunt Dadum,” a tricycle from her “Aunt Mal,” and a small slide from us for her birthday last weekend.  Now that the weather’s been so excellent, she can go out and enjoy them!

"Would you like to use the slide, Chicks?"

Personally, my goal at this point is to have so much of the yard taken up by playground equipment and farm implements that I won’t have any mowing to complete when the time comes.  🙂

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Meg Turns 2

Hard to believe, but 2 years ago…oh…right about now, Meg was born.  And just like that, we no longer have a baby, but instead have a little girl running around.

Last week was pretty busy, in general, but thankfully I think we were able to enjoy the celebration yesterday.  Brooke made an excellent cake (additional post forthcoming), and soup, and all kinds of other things.  Mallory and Rachel came over Saturday to help get the bulk of the work done while I entertained Meg.  Our family and some friends came over, crowding into our living room to help celebrate the day.  It would have been nice to be outside, but it was about as good as one could ask for with an early March birthday.

Regardless, it’s been a wild two years and I’m sure it’s only a prelude to what’s to come.  We’re looking forward to what’s ahead!

Happy birthday, Meg.  🙂

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Homemade Presents for Christmas-Updated!

Now that we’re a full month out from Christmas, I thought I’d share our “homemade” Christmas gifts with you. Our house was a mess from the time we moved in in late October until… ummm, actually, there are still boxes that need to be unpacked. But, we managed to give some pretty cool and personalized gifts. In the end, I don’t think we saved very much money, but the gifts we gave were definitely worth far more than anything we would have been able to purchase for the same amount. I thrifted/repurposed/cleared out my stash for most of these projects, so not only did we end up with a fairly inexpensive gift list, but also with a very “green” holiday!  Helped to offset our vapid consumerism the rest of the year, I suppose!  We probably won’t go to this extreme in the future, but will definitely add homemade touches and do a few things here and there!

The list:

  • Handkerchiefs, both two sided with flannel and unhemmed hand dyed knit
  • Pocket squares
  • Shaving cream
  • Wool cooler cups/koozies (I learned how to do a blanket stitch for those!)
  • Apple cider mustard
  • Alcohol:  black pepper vodka, ginger-orange rum, creamsicle rum, cranberry vodka, cherry bounce
  • Vanilla extract
  • Hot cocoa mix
  • Pajama pants
  • Spiced nuts
  • About a million vanilla-peppermint soy candles
  • Vanilla-peppermint lip balm
  • Frosted votive candle holders
  • Scarves, scarves, more scarves, and flower pins
  • “Cream of everything” soup mix
  • Star crayons for Meg’s school friends
  • Cloth napkins
  • Framed handprints
  • Granola
  • Coffee Beans (ok, not made by us, but by people we know!!)

For full-size version of these images, click on over to our Picasa album.

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Cabin Fever 2012

This is an India Brown Ale in the tasting glass you get for attending the event. Mmmm!!

We went to Schlafly’s annual Cabin Fever event this past weekend at their Maplewood restaurant, the Bottleworks. It’s always held around this time of the year as their Winter Festival, featuring somewhere around 30 of their beers.

Generally, you pay $25 for a ticket (or $30 at the door, but it’s always sold out if you wait that long) and, in exchange, you get a nifty tasting glass and eighteen 2 oz samples of various beers.  As it’s wintertime, the beers tend to be “high gravity,” meaning they’re a bit heavier and tend to have a higher alcohol content.  They always have a few of their lighter beers on tap, too, but the big draw is their other fare.

Now, you say, “well Andy, that doesn’t sound like very much beer for the money you’re spending.”  To a degree, you’re right, but the kind folks doling out the beer are kind enough to a). “forget” to bring along a Sharpie to mark off your ticket, and b). start at 2 oz of beer, and as the afternoon wears on, the volume increases.  So in the end, you can get plenty of beer and taste just about anything you want to.

In the Picasa album that’s accompanying this post, you’ll see pictures of the list of beers that were available, including a brief description of each one, and my own marks to show which ones I had.  You’ll see that I actually did get all 18 beer tastings…

…but my ticket only had maybe 5 of them marked off…  😛

There were quite a few great beers on that list that we tried.  The India Brown Ale (pictured above) was probably my favorite, as it was pretty different from others I’ve had before.  The similar, yet different, India Wheat Ale was also pretty good, but the hops didn’t seem to gel as well with the “wheat beer” flavor as it did with the “brown ale” flavor as before.  The Raspberry Coffee Stout was also exceptional, with a flavor leaning closer to the “raspberry” than the “coffee,” yet not as fruity as you might expect.  I had figured I’d prefer the Strawberry-Cocoa Porter over the Stout, but alas.

The Southern Hemisphere IPA was also shockingly good, mostly because it tasted recognizable, yet different. I mean, it was hoppy, as you’d expect, but the hops they used were something from Tasmania called “Galaxy,” so it turned out to have a very different flavor profile than other IPAs I’ve had in the past.  Believe you me, I hope they put that beer in bottles so I can get more of it!

Regardless, the event was quite fun.  Granted, the weather turned out to be cloudier and cold(i)er than the forecast had led us to believe, but with some good friends to crowd around and some strategically placed fire pits, we weren’t bothered all that much.  That, and high gravity beer tends to keep you all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

If you want some additional pictures of the event, STLhops was there taking pictures.  We even made it into one of them!

That's Stu, Brooke and my bald head off to the right...

I expect you all to go along next year. 🙂

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Nine Days of Potter

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Famously (or infamously), I avoided the Harry Potter franchise.  Not quite to the same degree I refuse to watch Titanic, but perhaps similar.  I jumped on the Lord of the Rings bandwagon and figured I’d put off Harry Potter until Meg would be old enough to appreciate the books.

Well, she’s not quite old enough, but now that all of the movies are available on DVD, we figured it had been long enough.  Brooke had never seen them either, though she read all of the books, a few more than once.  Last weekend, Meg was visiting my parents, so we borrowed the early movies and watched them, starting last Friday night.

Between Friday and Monday, we watched the first five movies.  The next three we spaced out due to Netflix DVD travel time.  Therefore, in a period of 9 days, we watched 8 Harry Potter movies.

Kinda nuts, I know.

Regardless, I must say that the movies, overall, hold up quite well.  The first movie, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, was released in 2001, so I expected the various CGI effects to have aged to a significant degree, however I found them to be surprisingly decent, even 10 years later.  This isn’t to say that the effects didn’t improve over the decade these movies were coming out: the last few, Deathly Hallows Part I and Part II had all the effects trappings of any other big-budget blockbuster.

The acting was always good, yet still improved over the years, likely because the three primary actors, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson were all 11 or 12 when the movies were released.  By the time they reached the end, they were all doing very well in their roles and had likely surpassed the adults that had been alongside throughout the series.

Each movie had its own “flavor,” of sorts, to contribute to the franchise.  Some focused more on the school experience at Hogwarts, others focused on some specific activity, like the Triwizard Tournament, and later movies (and the books, of course) laid more of a focus on the Good vs Evil aspects that run throughout the series.  Thus, the latter movies tend to be much darker than the earlier movies.  Also, I felt that the earlier movies were better at being “standalone” features, while the latter movies (Order of the Phoenix and later) flow into each other to some extent.

Speaking of which, Order of the Phoenix was probably my favorite in the franchise.  This movie featured a level of “political upheaval” in the fiction of the series that I found to be interesting, and I wish they could have explored it further.  Brooke says that there was quite a bit more of the Ministry of Magic (the group that acts as a sort of governing body over wizards and witches) in the Deathly Hallows (the final book, separated out into two movies), but very little of it remained by the book was translated to the silver screen.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I

One interesting bit about watching all of the movies in sequence in a short time like this is that you can observe all of the kids growing up.  I suppose it’s part of why these actors were chosen in the first place: their characters first attend Hogwarts when they turn 11, which is right around the age when the actors took on the roles.  Each book is supposed to represent an additional year at the school and, while they couldn’t quite keep the movies churning out each year, they still stayed close enough that the actors could have passed for 17 in the last story.  If my math is correct, Daniel Radcliffe turned 17 during the filming of Order of the Phoenix, which is the fifth book/movie of the series.  Still, looking at the pictures I’ve posted above, the actors have obviously aged during their tenure in the roles.

Overall, I was pretty impressed.  I’d expected a bit more “kiddie fare” throughout the series, but in actuality, it was really only persistent in the first movie, and followed into the second one to an extent.  The characters “grew up” relatively quickly, so the movies didn’t get bogged down in young-minded storylines to the extent I’d anticipated.

The latter half of the series, though, really seems to ape the “Star Wars” franchise, with Harry being Luke Skywalker and Lord Voldemort as…well…Lord Vader.  Much as Luke and Vader were connected by family, history, loss, good/evil, and so on, so were Harry and Voldemort.  I kinda wanted a bit more out of the Voldemort character, honestly.  He was present the whole time, and he was certainly bad, but somehow, he just didn’t seem evil enough to me.  They would constantly talk about their fear of “He Who Must Not Be Named,” yet the scenes we saw him in, he just wasn’t doing much that was particularly…evil.  Granted, it’s a children’s series, so you can’t get too dark, but I can’t help but think more could have been done.  Watching the movies, I was more disturbed by Dolores Umbridge, the teacher sent from the corrupt Ministry of Magic that is trying to sweep the return of Voldemort under the proverbial rug.  I’m sure the books make Voldemort seem more evil than he turns out to be in the movies, but I found him to be a bit lacking.  Perhaps it’ll take a few more viewings of the last two movies before I really settle on why that is.

In the end, I still prefer the Lord of the Rings series over this one, though the Harry Potter series was fun, interesting, and well-produced.  In many ways, the effects in the first few movies hold up better than the effects from LotR, though they were definitely less complicated (e.g. putting a light at the end of a wand is a bit cheaper than modeling Gollum, let alone developing the technology to create the character in the first place).  Order of the Phoenix was my favorite of the movies, though I really liked Chamber of Secrets, despite it being an “early” movie.  The later ones got quite a bit more confusing, but it’ll make more sense when I re-watch them in a few years, once Meg’s old enough.

Maybe I’ll even read the books when Meg does.

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Happy Holidays

From the Linsenbardt family to yours, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Be safe and have a good time with family and friends this season!