All things Star Trek and a little bit of Star Wars

I'm so sorry I missed the Bluenose Ghosts yesterday and Thursday. This week was the first week back to school, and our kids were haywire on Thursday, and needed lots of attention to calm down. I ended up going to bed early, even though I looked longingly at the computer, I knew I was too tired to try to type.

Last night I watched a cool very funny movie I'd rented last weekend, so it had to be seen before it was due back, called Fanboys, about a group of friends who take a road trip to George Lucas' ranch to try to get a glimpse of the Phantom Menace - 6 months before it was released - because one of the young men is dying and won't make it to the movie premiere. Fanboys was released last year (it opened in Canada early this year). It is filled with Star Wars love, memoriabilia (I so want the huge poster one of the characters has on his wall!), and the war with Trekkers, which is hilarious. I'd have to admit to being a gal on the Trekker side, except I don't have a uniform or even a phaser gun! Fanboys was very funny, and I highly recommend it as a silly, fun, delightful movie homage to all things Star Wars.

Star Trek Weekend on Space Channel
I'm a Star Trek girl: At 1:50 this afternoon, I will be plunking myself down to watch on Canada's Space Channel on tv, one of my favourite movies of all time, The Wrath of Khan, followed by The Search For Spock, and The Voyage Home. The first 6 movies in the Star Trek cannon air today, the rest tomorrow. The link to Space Channel website is here. I only saw the ads last night while we were catching a very new episode of Smallville, so I had to hastily rearrange my plans for the weekend. Ok, I guess I qualify as a fangirl of Star Trek! Sheesh, I saw the movie twice this summer, and I can name the episodes/plot within seconds of seeing the opening scenes of any Star Trek episode. I own all the movies in VHS, but we still don't have a VHS player (stolen when our house was robbed a few years ago)- only a DVD player - so I haven't been able to see Wrath of Khan for at least two years, and lately I've been really wanting to see it again. So I am in heaven (Star Trek heaven, anyway!). Bring out the popcorn! At least I can eat that, as a diabetic!!

My daughter is very happy that she is old enough to watch Star Trek with me, as we'd been discussing that earlier seasons of Smallville is more suitable for her than the later seasons. All of the Star Trek tv series is good for kids, so she is planning on watching some of the episodes with me on Monday, which is when Space Channel is airing the top 10 episodes of the tv show as chosen by the viewers. I am so looking forward to showing her The Trouble with Tribbles!!

more TV: World Cup (soccer) qualifying.....
On top of all this Star Trek heaven, it's the World Cup qualifiers this weekend; we are fortunate to be getting Portugal vs Denmark on tv this afternoon, as well as Scotland vs Macedonia. We don't have to cheer for England since they aren't playing this weekend (ok they are playing a friendly, as my husband just pointed out reading over my shoulder; a friendly is a game that doesn't count for anything but practice!), so it's Scotland for us today, and we're debating on who to cheer for in the Denmark/Portugal match. As my husband just half-laughed, half cried, there is also a very good tennis match on this afternoon - now he's confessing he doesn't know who is playing, just that it's going to be good - so I think basically we are going to be using every tv in the house......

so how is your Labour Day weekend shaping up?

Today's Bluenose Ghosts Excerpts:
Time for some ghost stories - and oh, speaking of ghosts, I have just begun Duma Key, and so far I am enjoying it. It's a different start from King's other novels, and I can see how his accident shaped this book, but it also adds a real hint of desperation to the main character, whose life has changed so drastically from one moment to the next after a dreadful accident. In between Star Trek movies and running to see football (soccer to us in North America) moments, I will be reading my second horror book for Carl's challenge! Here is today's Bluenose Ghosts excerpt:

The ability to see ahead is not the prerogative of older people only. Peter Morrison was only twelve when he saw a coffin-shaped light pass him low to the ground and turn in at the cemetary just before a fatality at a mine, and the same thing happened to Mrs Allen Morrison and a friend when they were young girls. A boy at Point Edward heard digging in a graveyard when the ground was frozen too hard to be dug, and in all these cases a death followed within the week.

Because I missed Thursday and Friday, here is a long and very creepy true-life ghost story to make up for the days I missed:

Next we have a story from Marion Bridge......it was told by Mr Alex Morrison, son of the blacksmith who plays such an important part in it.
"A strange thing happened just before Sandy Munro fell over the bridge and got drowned. At that time Neil McPherson was just a lad and he was walking over the Marion Bridge one night with his mother. He stopped for a moment and said, 'Come here mother and look at the little boy lying on the bottom of the river.' His mother couldn't see anything and told him to come along home. It was just after this that Sandy was drowned, but that wasn't all that happened.
"About that time they were seeing a light on a boat up the river at Grand Mira. The owner wanted to sell the boat but nobody would buy it, being suspicious that something must be wrong with it on account of the light. My father wanted it, light or not, so he bought it.
"They always thought foul play had caused Sandy's death. The night before he died the irons in the smith were making a great racket. You could hear them in the forge and they seemed to be jumping around. Sandy and the blacksmith were friends and the boy often did errands for him. Just before he died the blacksmith had asked him to take an axe across the bridge for him. He was doing this when he must have met two boys who were known to be bad and whose mother was said to be a witch. Someone saw the boys having a tussle on the bride and, a while later, the body was discovered lying in the water as Neil McPherson had described him to his mother.
"They called on the blacksmith then to get the boy. The grappling irons he used to take him from the water were the ones that had jumped in the forge the night before, and the boat that he took to go out on the river was teh one that had shown the strange lights and that nobody would buy but my father. After the body was recovered Sandy's mother had a dream. She thought the boy came to her and pointed to the blacksmith's axe as it stood in its place at the forge, and said, 'That's the axe that killed me.' And when Sandy's body was laid out on the bridge of the boat my father had bought, there were alot of people from the village who came to look at him. One was the boy who was supposed to have murdered him. You know it's an old belief if a murderer passes by or touches the person he has murdered, that blood will issue from the wound, and that is exactly what happened. The wound that killed Sandy was in his temple and, as the suspected murderer walked past him, blood flowed from the wound and stopped as soon as he went by. The thing was hushed up and the boys and their mother moved away, but that's the way it all happened."

Enjoy your Labour Day weekend! Happy reading, everyone!