Our neighbor's ancient cherry tree split apart this week, half of it is leaning against their house. The tree worried me, it was huge and old and only a matter of time. But, it landed on their house, not ours. Later in the week the tree cutting crew came by and took it all out, they did a neat job, too. I expect we'll get more light in our garden, and may even wake up with the sun in our eyes now, if the sun ever comes out.

I have gaming news, twelve year old and I played Hellas the other night, I was able to pull her away from her second viewing of The Princess Protection Program. It's a hex tile laying exploration light wargame kind of game, the first player to control ten cities wins, you can control them by finding new ones, or conguering existing ones. She won, her initial setup gave her a huge temple majority (3-0) so when she did a Burst of Strength (buildup turn) she got four actions to take Greeks, ship and cards, while I would only get three.

Oh yeah, The Princess Protection Program, the latest Disney movie of the week with young Disney stars (Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez). Some young princess of a tiny Latin American island country is spirited out of her country after a coup attempt to hide out in Louisiana, and ends up dealing with mean high school girls.

In better Disney films, I really like Lilo & Stitch, and suspect R. Crumb would love Hawaii, ooh those muscular thighs on Lilo's sister.

In incomplete movie reviews, we started watching Rambling Rose, and may never finish it. I might enjoy it more if I found Laura Dern more attractive, she's too skinny for me.

I have book reviews. I had wanted to read children of Hurin when it first came out a few years back, that part of the Silmarillion was the most tragic part in that whole tragic book. A local library had a few copies, I was in luck. It's a bit about a great leader of men named Hurin, mostly about his son, Turin, and his second daughter is prominent in the end, Nienor. Turin is the lead character, it tells of his journey from his conquered homeland to living (and chafing) under Elven protection, to living as an outlaw hunting orcs. It didn't grab me as much as LOTR, but maybe if I read it a few times I'll appreciate it like I appreciate the Silmarillion.

Next up was Neil Diamond Stephenson's Zodiac, his second novel, back from when he could write a short, fast paced book. It's about an asshole environmental extremist and his Zodiac boats, who finds some extreme PCB contamination in Boston Harbor. I enjoyed it, having been to Boston once, and around Buffalo and Niagara Falls many times.

It's been a short work week for me, we had yeaterday off, and we have today off. That hasn't stopped me from checking my work email, and doing a load of housework.

I'll wrap this up, later today we have to go my parents to clean up for nearly eight year old's party on Sunday. There should be a few familiar characters there. My nut brown ale is good, I'll bring a growler or too, it's not a kids party without beer.