Yesterday, Becky and I went on a Duck Tour with Kevin and Susie, Marcia, Beth, Hugo, and Elliott. One big happy crowd on a DUKW named “Beacon Hilda” 🙂 Our ConDUCKtor’s moniker was Johnny Baggadonitz, and he narrated our tour of Boston’s streets and waterways with his own unique blend of historic fact and, well… Italian family street smarts. While I am already familiar with much of Boston’s history and culture, I did learn a few new things:

* The Museum of Science sits on land leased from the Metropolitan District Commission for $1 per year. They have a 99 year lease, with an automatic 99 year renewal. Pretty sweet deal.
* MIT was originally located in Boston, but was later moved to Cambridge.
* The JFK Federal Building in Boston sits on top of the site of Alexander Graham Bell’s laboratory – the one in which he invented the telephone.

It was quite an enjoyable experience, and while we were at the Museum of Science, we got to see some of the outside of the Lord of the Rings exhibit. We’d definitely love to go some time before it leaves on October 24, but at $19 per person…. hmm. We’ll see.

Photos from yesterday are in our gallery – including some photos I took in the morning while Becky was working a short shift at the Otis House, and a couple of photos we took on the way in to the city at Krispy Kreme. We stopped in there for some hot, fresh donuts right off of the line. Mmmmmm…..

We also rented a couple of movies from Blockbuster this weekend. Blockbuster is currently very desperate for customers, and they sent three coupons for 99 cent movie rentals. Hey, why not? So on Saturday night we rented 50 First Dates and today we rented Hidalgo. We enjoyed both films overall, but did have a few complaints.

At its heart, 50 First Dates was a very sweet, funny movie. There were some incredibly sad parts, and I thought all of the actors did very well in their roles. Lord of the Rings vet Sean Astin as the steroid-pumping, fitness-crazed, lisp-encumbered brother was very entertaining. However, this was an Adam Sandler franchise film, and as such, was peppered with an unfortunate amount of scatological humor. We had to wince when the moronic, sophomoric jokes came up – they just didn’t fit in with the rest of the movie.

Hidalgo was great, with a good performance by another Lord of the Rings veteran, Viggo Mortenson. The action and adventure elements of the film were excellent, but our complaint was that there was simply too much violence. There were many heads lopped off, many spear impalings, and more than enough gun shots – all packed in to a PG-13 rating.

But hey, for 99 cents each… you can’t go wrong. 🙂

All of this, and there is still one day left in our weekend!