Saw "The Two Towers". I enjoyed it. The CG was cool. My favorite seen visually was the Ents flooding Isengard. At least assuming the water effects there were all or mostly CG, they were pretty impressive. And yeah, Liv Tyler is hot. I guess Tolkein didn't leave quite as many female characters for us to drool over as y'all drooling over aragorn and poncy-elf-boy-wossname. In any event, I have a lot of respect for any three-hour movie that leaves me wanting more rather than wishing it were over.
Went out to dinner with pete's parents, pete & martin, and my sister stephanie. Mmm, chicken parm. Went back to my mom's house, ate cherry pie, chatted.
Over at the pete'n'martin pad again now. Actually brought my laptop this time, and they have wireless. Played another game of Puerto Rico against james, pete, and danny. I won 36-35-33-31. Pretty close one. My strategy of [(i) income maxization through coffee-trading, small market, factory, and quarry (also preferably office if there is competition for coffee sales) (ii) minimal priority on shipping and (iii) guild hall and lots of big commodity buildings late in the game] seems to be moderately effective. The local ideolect favors monosyllabic words and acronyms to a comical extent. It had already begun when martin and pete were at CMU, but it has expanded. Puerto Rico is "PR", and involves "prods" like "shoogs", "tobbs", "inds", "coffs", and corn, and popular buildings are the "hoss", "swarehouse". I am somewhat afraid of picking it up.
Oh, cool, Lernu! just actually launched recently. Looks promising. Someone actually recorded audio for the first eight chapters of Gerda, which is neat.