Yeah, so as I said in yesterday's afternoon update - no bonuses. Not for me or anyone else on the SCAMPI team. Just a plaque and a company-paid lunch. Thbpbpbpt.

So I blew the diet again yesterday, on cookies and cake.

Back to the straight and narrow today, I promise.

But it was a nice evening. Penny and Matt had the greatest time sitting on the guest bed and playing with an old cat puppet I'd made back in junior high school or so. Penny would offer a sock, squeal with glee while the puppet mangled the sock, and then laugh hysterically when the puppet spit the sock back out.

There'll be movies on the photo album later today, for those of you with high-speed connections, or a desperate need to hear a laughing baby.

Matt had flowers delivered to me at work for our anniversary, and got me a very pretty lapis and silver necklace. (It's a little snug, though, so I might need to get a 2-inch extender for it.) But it's just lovely. He also got me a very pretty flag for our house, with flowers and butterflies on it.

I got him some new music and t-shirts and movies, including The Incredibles, which, like the flag, is really kind of an "us" purchase. But Matt's mentioned several times lately, to various people, how much he loved the movie, so I figured I couldn't go wrong with it.

I know what we'll be watching soon.

But last night, after Penny went to bed, we watched Solaris. K.T. hated the movie, so I confess I went into it a little skeptical. But I thought it was well-paced and thoughtful and interesting, even if I could all but taste its Russian roots. (I'm glad someone mentioned before the movie started that this was a remake of a 1970s Russian movie. It helped me place and incorporate the weird feel it had from time to time.)

It was getting late when the movie ended, so I didn't ask K.T. why she'd hated it, but if I had to make a guess right now, without talking to her, I'd say she didn't like Solaris for the same reason I hated The Picture of Dorian Gray - it turned out to be a completely different genre than I was expecting, and so my mindset was completely wrong for it.

Solaris is a sci-fi movie, and on the surface, it looks like it should be action/adventure, or maybe even horror/thriller. It's not either of those. It's actually a chick-flick with sci-fi trappings. So if you went in thinking you were going to get a popcorn muncher, it was going to be actually pretty damn boring.

The only thing I really disliked about it was the sound. As it wasn't an action movie, there wasn't a lot of 'splodo, but it seemed like every time my ears adjusted to the sound, they pulled out a scene with everyone talking in the quietest whispers they could manage. I swear, I'd give a lot for a DVD player that auto-corrected volumes.

--Liz