The Star Wars marathon is on a temporary hiatus because it seems that somehow my Empire Strikes Back DVD is cracked in two. I suspect this came about during my move last September, but as I haven’t watched any of these films in ages I can’t truly be sure when or how this happened. Anyway, will have to replace the DVD before we can continue on with the watching.

Instead, I have been attempting to rid the house of dog hair. I say attempt because not only is this a futile effort but also because I took a rather lengthy break to watch The Prestige, which I found surprisingly good. I don’t know why I’m always annoyed with myself for liking a Christopher Nolan film, especially since I generally do enjoy his work, but I always am. I think I still have anger from The Dark Knight. I will say that I did find the ending almost a cheat, but having not read the book the film is based on I can’t say if I really can blame Nolan for that. Anyway, it was an interesting film and even if it weren’t there was more than enough eye candy to keep me interested.

Anyway, on a marginally related topic, I saw the features for The Lord of the Rings extended edition Blu-ray were unveiled and I’m quite happy. Obviously, the entirety of the DVD release is there, but also the Costa Botes documentaries are included. These were part of the double theatrical/extended edition release that I staunchly refused to buy since I already owned two copies of the films. But because of that I have never seen these bonus features. So, while I doubt there’s anything that I haven’t really seen and/or read about, it is a nice addition.

Aside from all that things here are quite boring. Uschi’s been on an intermittent food strike; probably I jinxed things when I was said how well she’s been doing. She did pick at her food a bit today, so hopefully she’ll be hungry enough later tonight or tomorrow morning to get back on a normal schedule. The warmer weather has brought with us more opportunities to take some leisurely walks, which I think we’re both rather enjoying. I really want to do more in downtown Schenectady, but the crossings there are set up in such a superbly asinine way. The traffic buttons are usually far removed than the actual crosswalk, so using them is sometimes pointless. However a lot of the lights change very quickly! I’ve been focusing on downtown Albany where the crossings are more routine and I can leave myself to pay attention to other things, like Uschi’s animal distraction or propensity to sniff. All in all, she’s doing a fabulous job for our lack of extensive curb-to-curb work. Along with this better weather comes the option of calling Jay, our Fidelco instructor, and having a “make-up” day of training. I don’t really feel an strong need for it and so have been going back and forth about bothering to call and set it up. We’ll see.