I’ve long appreciated both Tim Burton and Danny Elfman and their collaborations together are usually winners. One of my favorites is The Nightmare Before Chritmas (1993). It’s a fun stop-motion animated movie with a great soundtrack (the lead sung by Danny Elfman himself).

Recently, Disney has re-released the movie after “converting” it to 3D. I was a bit skeptical that it would be any good. I mean, how well can you make a 3D movie out of something that was 2D to begin with?

The accomplishment was achieved by In-Three, Inc. The process develops a right-eye shot for every sceen which is can then be combined in whatever 3D presentation you would like. You can find more information on 3D in film on wikipedia.

I saw it yesterday with my kids. The end result isn’t quite as striking as something that was produced from the beginning in 3D, but it was certainly better than I had thought. At least they didn’t mess up the movie. If you have a theater nearby that is showing it in 3D, it’s worth the effort to see it. Especially if you haven’t seen it before.

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I realized I haven’t given any updates on our pond. It’s been about two months since we put it in and have subsequently added a total of 31 fish (3 koi, 26 feeders, and 2 pacostamus) and the artificial grass on the side and back of it.

The only bad thing is the fact we have lost all three koi and one of the goldfish. Our fish supplier says that koi should be sufficiently ‘hearty’ and the feeders (other than the one) have been thriving. Now that it’s getting colder, we’ll probably let things alone for the winter and add a few new fish when it gets warmer.

I put a few additional pictures in the gallery so feel free to take a look.

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My wife, Becky, headed up North to visit her aunt Thursday morning, and to cover, I stayed home on Friday to play “mom.” It wasn’t too bad and I have done the general routine before (e.g., get the kids fed, dressed, packed, and set for school) but yesterday was a bit atypical. Becky has volunteered to help out in our kids’ classes and since the day she worked out was Friday, that meant I was the substitute.

Truly, it was a treat. I got to take the kids to school, hang out a bit before class, and then help in each of their classes to various degrees. In our son’s 1st grade class, I colated, traced, and cut-out several items. In our daughter’s 4th-grade class my responsibilities were increased to do actual testing on reading.

It really was a treat and I am envious of Becky and the fact she gets to do this every week.

Becky and I are fans of History Channel’s Digging for the Truth. The host, Josh Bernstein spends each episode researching and trying to answer historacal questions. The one we’re watching now is investigating the existance and location of Troy mentioned in Homer’s Iliad.

So far in this episode we found out that he can dive and is a competitive archer. In previous episodes, he’s gone rock climbing, researched the Ark of the Covenant, Easter Island, Stonehenge, and the Holy Grail.

I want his job.

I’ve been contemplating a new car for a few months as my current 1998 Toyota Corolla is quickly approaching 200,000 miles and while it is running just fine, part of me is concerned that my 500-mile-a-week commute may be asking for trouble. Normally, I drive a car until it stops working and then replace it but depending on the nature of a major failure, it might be more of a safety issue than that of convenience.

While I continued to debate that internally, I decided that we should at least be familiar with the available options in the case a purchase needs to be made without the gift of deliberation and research.

With that in mind, we decided to take advantage of the kids staying the night at Becky’s mother’s house and go looking at cars. I figured the short list due to experience and reputation was the Toyota Yaris or another Corolla, the Honda Civic, and for comparison, the Ford Focus.

We visited Toyota and Ford on Saturday and to varying degrees got the sterotypical car salesman treatment. The Yaris is quite a nice car, but as is expected, is an example of minimalist design and engineering. I have modest needs and requirements so was satisfied but not overly enchanted. The Focus made no real impression over the Yaris and the sales staff was quite annoying.

Sunday, we hit the local Honda dealer and looked at the 2006 Civic and took a quick test drive. Unlike our experience at the other dealers, the salesman was quite low key and caused us to feel no pressure. The way it came accross, he figured that if we were going to buy then good, but if not, nothing he could do would change that.

We looked and did see one that we would have gotten, but I still couldn’t get around the fact my Corolla was still working fine. If we get it now, then it will sure to be paid off when we need to replace the CR-V and if it is kept in good shape, should work out just nicely to be used as my daughter’s first car when she turns 16 in 7 years. Pro and con, pro and con.

After a few minutes, I finally decided that I could easly spend weeks and months deliberating and debating. Why bother?

My new black 2006 Civic is in the garage.