These Are A Few of My Favorite Things

I love watching movies (as you can see here), and a two weeks ago I started a trial Netflix membership. [The post won’t be about Netflix, but I do have to say – I’m loving it. It’s a one month trial, and we can have one DVD at a time. The real win for me, though, is that we can watch tons of movies straight from their site (not all, but quite a bit), and we can also stream the movies through our Wii onto our TV. God is good!] [As a second aside, I’ve rated 685 movies that I’ve seen on Netflix. I may need help :)]

I also just recently found a blog by Robert Gelinas (the Jazz Theologian) – in one of his posts he lists his top 15 favorite movies of all times, so I am blatantly stealing the idea and posting mine. This is a list of movies I’ve seen that I would buy and watch over and over again. If I was stranded on a deserted island (along with a nice big screen, DVD player, and electricity, of course) . . . . these are the movies I would have (in no particular order):

1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy – I loved reading and re-reading the books, and the movies are ones I can watch over and over again as well. I love the scenery, the fantasy, and the conflict of good and evil.
2. The Star Wars movies – except for the horrible fiasco that was the romance scenes between Anikin and Amidala, these films will always hold a special place in my heart. I loved the originals as a kid, and I loved the newer ones as an adult. And I love the way “May the Force be with you” sounds so, so Catholic :)
3. The Matrix Trilogy – the first film is my favorite. I have wonderful memories of watching this movie with my youngest brother and being blown away by the first scene, then being blown away again with the training sequence fight. Wire-fu at it’s finest :)
4. Oscar – if you’ve never seen this comedy starting Sylvester Stallone and a whole host of other famous faces, go rent it now. One of the few comedies that my wife loves to watch (our humor tends to run in different directions!).
5. The Princess Bride – I fell in love with this movie when I first saw it, and it was one of the first DVD’s I ever purchased. A romantic fantasy/comedy/buddy movie that is intelligent and warm hearted. I love it :)
6. A Knight’s Tale – Fantasy again (see a trend?) with a touch of comedy – I loved the juxtaposition of modern music and sensibilites with the medieval trappings of jousting tournaments and politics. It helps that good triumphs over evil as well :)
7. A Man for All Seasons – an older movie that I first saw in High School. It made an impression on me seeing St. Thomas More standing up for his beliefs with passion, courage and intellect.
8. Romero – same as above. He has been a hero for me ever since I saw the movie and learned more about his life.
9. Luther
10. What Dreams May Come – this movie still evokes deep emotions when I watch it. A tale of love, loss and redemption.
11. Meet Joe Black – I saw this movie around the same time as #10. It tells the tale of Death becoming human to experience what human life is like. It gives an innocent’s take on the everyday blessings we tend to take for granted, and is a reminder to cherish the gift of life while we have it.
12. My Cousin Vinny – I love the courtroom drama, the relationship drama (“And your [stomp, stomp] biological clock is ticking!”), and the relationship between lawyer and judge.
13. Office Space – I recommended this movie to our former Assistant Principal, not knowing that the soundtrack to the movie was so peppered with . . . colorful words :) (I had only ever seen it on network TV before that!) I love the nonchalant way that the main character approaches life for the better part of the movie, and the way it subtly parodies modern life and our preoccupation with status, wealth, and control.
14. Schindler’s List – the conversion and courage of one human is front and center in this drama that makes me remember that one candle is better then cursing the darkness.
15. A Tale of Two Sisters – The only horror/thriller on here, it’s a twisted tale (not for kids or the faint of heart) that will have you watching it again after you see the ending.

And that’s my list :) There are many other movies that I enjoy watching (the whole genre of stupid parodies [Airplane, Hot Shots, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Top Secret, etc. comes to mind!], but if I was limited to fifteen, I could live well with this collection here.

What about you?

Blessings & Peace,
Hugo 

Sanctuary III

The third and final installment of the history of my current WOW guild (Sanctuary on Terokkar/US).

A joined the guild Gypsies (which is still active on the realm), and then tried Lightbringers (not sure if they’re still active or not), all the while keeping in touch with several people from the Stormwind Justicars and others who I’d met in game. After a few months of feeling homeless, I started talking to a few people about starting a new guild for those of us who wanted to play together more often. I remember brainstorming names for the guild (which seemed to take forever) and the brainstorming ranks (which seemed to take longer, and with which I still tinker from time to time). Finally, right on New Year’s Eve of 2007 Sanctuary was formed.

I had a few guild signatures that I got right away, and I remember advertising for a few signatures to flesh out our initial roster. I had to field many “how much gold will I get paid” questions, answering them all with “this will be a permanent guild, and if you sign I’d appreciate you staying in and giving us a try.” After a while we had our required signatures and the guild was born.

Initially I envisioned a leveling / social guild, and I spent lots of time talking in guild chat and recruiting for new members. However, being an introvert in real life, this soon got very hard for me to handle alone. Most of the original signers of the charter were made officers, and they helped immensely in organizing the guild at that point. Many of the activities I enjoy doing now were started in that initial period, like naked instance runs, hide and seek, and guild parties (with pictures and give a ways). I just remembered, too, running low level instances for loot to put into out freshly created guild bank :)

Currently I see us as a family-friendly social / casual raiding guild. We have a large population of 80’s that run heroics daily and a raid night or two each week (we just finished the first wing of ICC on our first guild try!). I’ve met many good people in game, and some of those friendships have moved into facebook / email territory. My son is in the guild, and it’s great getting to spend time with him like that. It’s hard to believe that we’ve been around for 2 1/2 years, but I have wonderful memories of the game, and I look forward to creating many more memories as we look forward to the coming Cataclysm.

Blessings & Peace,
Hugo

Sanctuary Part II

My students are looking up homework on my blog (for the Poverty Project unit we’re on) and one of them asked me why I had stopped posting. I truthfully answered laziness :) I figured it was setting a bad example . . . so here I go again with a new post – continuing my history of my WOW Guild, Sanctuary.

A few days after I started playing, I player named Kathorian invited me to join his newly formed guild, The Stormwind Justicars. Not knowing much about how guilds worked, and looking to meet some new people, I accepted his invitation. I had met another player named Cometdraven while we were questing in the same area, and it turned out she was in the guild as well. So my very first WOW friends were made, soon followed by Revelatio, Kennethwc, Kimmie, Nadonii, and more.

(Aside: Cometdraven created several other toons, and had her own guild for a while, but soon moved off server. Kathorian stopped playing for a while, came back, but has now been AFK for about a year. His character, however, is still in my current guild. Kennethwc has his own guild on our server [Myth], Revelatio has his own guild as well [can’t think of the name just now!], Kimmie is no longer playing as far as I know, and Nadonii and her husband Jimthefierce are in the guild but inactive at the moment.)

The guild grew slowly, and we quested together quite a bit. I still remember my very first run through Deadmines – it must have taken about two hours for the five of us to go through. I learned quite a bit that night about aggro, tabbing to target mobs, and the importance of always letting the tank hit first! :) But I remember as well the feelings of companionship and fun as we wiped because three of us in there were brand new to the game. :)

The guild continued to grow. We eventually transferred Term’s toon Searspan to Terokkar, and a real life friend (Milton) joined in as well. It was fun taking turns with Term playing on one account, but it was around this time that we got a separate account so we could both play at once.

All was going well until Kathorian had to distance himself from the game due to real life reasons. At first it wasn’t too bad, but as his absence stretched out, people began leaving the guild. I stuck it out for a while, but by this time many people had hit 70 and were looking to raid and/or run heroics. So it was with a heavy heart that one evening I /gquit The Justicars. :(

To be continued . . .

Blessings & Peace,
Hugo / D / Anarius (depending on who’s reading this and how I know you!) :)

Finding A Job - Poverty Project

Click here to go to my blog page that lists different job-finding resources. Follow the instructions on that post. :)

Blessings & Peace,
D

Desired Lifestyle Budget

Go here and you'll get your instructions :)

Blessings & Peace,
D :)