Another year older...

Well, I did it. I turned 35. Have I moved on to a new demographic?

We had a family reunion this past weekend in Gatlinburg. It was cool; almost everyone from my mom's family was there. It was funny getting seating for "Baker, party of 38." On Saturday, my birthday, we had cake and went to Corky's. I enjoyed my meal, but frankly, I like our Corky's in Lexington much better. After we parted ways with the rest of the Baker clan on Sunday, my wife tried to kill me.

We decided to save money and not see any of the attractions (not to mention work off some calories from the weekend meals) and go hiking. Ellice picked a trail, Rainbow Trail, that was 2.7 miles long. We had hiked up natural bridge which was 1.5 miles, so we thought what the heck. Well this one was rock covered and root tangled and entirely uphill the whole way. An hour and 50 minutes later, we reach the falls. It was cool, about 75 feet tall, but I was drenched in sweat, and a little of the moment was lost. The return trip was a little easier, an hour and 10 minutes. After the hike, I wasn't feeling too good. I wasn't just worn out and physically tired, but I was shaky and kind of out of it. We dumped a bunch of water in me, some KFC, (we hadn't expected the hike to take so long and missed lunch) and eventually a milkshake. It was then that we saw a bank sign that said it was 101 degrees. So Ellice drove home, while I tried to recover. Ellice fared better than I did in the heat--probably her tropical upbringing. She was pretty sore though. But we did it.

Okay, so hiking was technically my idea, but she did pick the trail...

Anyway, on to the movie:

Transformers

Now I wasn't the biggest Transformers fan in the world, but I enjoyed them. The craze caught on while I was in middle school (I think) and I actually owned one (Thunderstriker, the blue decepticon airplane, not in the film.) I remember liking the cartoon movie and figured that was the end of the craze. I admit was not as excited as Ellice and several of my friends when I heard they were making a live action film. But now that I've seen it, I really liked it. Lotsa action, and I confess that I got goosebumps when we finally met Optimus Prime. I was worried, especially early on that the Transformers would be invulnerable and could only fight each other, but they weren't monolithic undefeatable foes. The plot was passable, at least what we expect. The visuals were stunning. I may be getting old, but I had trouble sometimes keeping up with the action, which sometimes went a little too fast for me to tell the different Transformers apart in the heat of battle. The spec ops team rocked, and we legitimately like the Autobots. One word of warning: this is not a kids' movie. There are adult themes; this is targetted at the adults who grew up watching Transformers. If you insist on bringing children, this is a movie for parental guidance. One last thing, Starscream rules. ***1/2 (Ellice gave it ****)