Ahhh, presents

Before I continue on with the narrative, I suppose I should interject with a few of the nice things people did for or bought for me.

On Friday night Steph took me out to MacKenzie River Pizza downtown. It is a really nice pizza place that I don't often go to because of the price. So Steph and I each got our own deepdish pizzas. I got mine with Italian sausage, green peppers, and sun-dried tomatoes, she had a pizza called the Sequoia with basil pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, avocado (instead of artichoke hearts) and sliced toasted almonds. It was quite good.

After dinner we headed to the crappy movie theater in town, Campus Square 8, to see Hero. Wow, what a film. You just never know what to expect when it isn't some cookie cutter American director behind the camera. The movie was beautiful, completely different than what I expected, and surprised me a few times. If you liked Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at all I am quite confident that you will like this as well. It isn't as much action, but still so good and just different than films we're used to seeing here.

One thing that surprised me was the role they had for Ziyi Zhang. We (in the West) have really only seen her in Crouching Tiger, where she had a major role. (and to a lesser extent as a bad-gal in Rush Hour 2) From my experience with CTHD and what I consider her powerful performance I think of her as a nearly-leading lady with crazy kung-fu skills. It was odd to see her in a minor role with only a tiny bit of action.

So tasty dinner was my first present (I took Steph to the movie), along with a couple of bday cards I had received that day but didn't open until Saturday. Then when I woke up on Saturday I walked out of my bedroom and on the main room table was a wrapped box with a card on it. Wow, what could that be? It turned out to be from Eric, my roommate. He had gotten two bottles of BBQ sauce from my favorite BBQ restuarant in town. The place is called Bar 3 BBQ and is owned and run by a guy on my hockey team. My favorite menu item is the pulled pork slathered in the house BBQ sauce. I have often thought about buying some bottles (they sell them, obviously) but they are a bit more expensive than stuff at the grocery store. So now I have two bottles, it was a great present.