Actually Never

Years ago, I had a habit of regularly buying lotto tickets. Not, like, at a problem level – just a common thing when at the 7-Eleven or Shoppers or whatever. I got enough free ticket and $2 and $5 winners that I figured I came close to breaking even. To put this theory to the test, I made a spreadsheet – my answer to everything – to track my winners. It showed that I was, in fact, very much in the red.

I mention this because when I started this here blog, I assumed that I organically have enough new-to-me experiences that it would be easy to come up with content here. Much like with my lotto winning, I have clearly thought wrong. I need to put in some more effort. Remember when I suggested there’d be a post a week?

There were a few things that I planned to write about but skipped:

• After 20 (!) years of living in Regina, I finally went to Regina Beach for an afternoon. But it’s a resort area and I went at the end of April, before it opened for the season, so I didn’t really get the full experience. I learned that the actual beach part of Regina Beach is comically small; the concept of “Regina Beach” is funny enough and then you see how tiny it actually is and wonder how a whole community sprung up around it. I also learned it’s not a beach biome in Pokémon Go so Wiglett and Wugtrio continue to elude me for now.
• I ate what were called soup dumplings but really wound up being just regular dumpling dumplings. In retrospect I shouldn’t have been surprised that 7-Eleven brand frozen soup dumplings were less than the ideal form. They were still good, though, even if soupless. Hard for dumplings to be truly bad.

It’s a good feeling, being able to give you the jibber-jabber about dumplings that you were hoping for on a post about The Martian. This blog only exists so I can give back to the world.

What I knew

I’d read the book, so basically everything?

What I know

I liked the movie better than the book. That never happens. And I didn’t dislike the book.

The book does give you more of the science behind everything that happens, which I liked. Because of having to cut things down, the movie made certain developments feel easier than they would be. But condensing the story also meant that there was less goofy comedy. Still plenty of goofy comedy, mind you, but I didn’t feel like it was excessive like I did with the book. Maybe that’s due to Matt Damon’s performance; he’s a very charming space botanist. That character could have been annoying in the wrong hands.

Despite the long-ish running time, the movie felt like it flew by. And the ending was surprisingly tense considering I knew going in exactly how it ended.

Movies are great because Dumb or Dumber can go on to be the head of NASA and be Nate Shelley’s boss.