October, this year, felt more like summer than past years for northern Arizona. But by the last few days of the month, fall is finally making its presence known.

October is also both my wedding anniversary and the anniversary for when my wife and I started our relationship. As we're about to build a house, we kept things low-key this year, just celebrating with a nice dinner and doing something we'd wanted to do for a while.

FnB Resaurant

Taliesin West

Front side of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West

We've wanted to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Scottsdale house for a long time, but the hours for tours always tended to fall outside of our plans every time we were in the area. We finally made a point to make it. Really interesting, as I'm sure any of his designs would be. While built over 70–80 years ago, it still feels a bit futuristic but somehow retro all the same.

House Update

Speaking of homes. Our new house is still waiting on a county permit. It's on its final step, just waiting in someone's inbox to get to. Our builder was on vacation the past few weeks, and he's been eager to get started, so I don't expect him to be in the best of moods when he gets back to work.

Our property. I expect something to get started in the new few weeks.

Movies

The Wild Robot
  • The Wild Robot was a lovely film about a robot meant to serve humans accidentally dropped onto an island of nothing but animals, who becomes the accidental mom of a baby goose.
  • The Union wants to be another secret spy agency protecting the world franchise. Kind of like The Kingsmen, but with an attempt at a love story, I think. It was okay, mindless entertainment.
  • Salem's Lot (2024) was pretty decent up until a point in the middle where a jarringly abrupt scene seems to skip time and events to speed the story along to fit it into a less than two-hour runtime.
  • Terrifier 2 was actually not too bad. I wasn't a huge fan of the first, but this one, while long, felt like more of a film to me. At least made me interested in the third entry in the series which recently came out.
  • I Saw the TV Glow was one of those films I feel I would have liked more if I saw it in an art house theater where I went in with different expectations. I went into this thinking it was more of a horror film. It is a horror film for the main character, for sure.
Three of the different actors who portray Savlidor Dali in the film Daaaaaali!
  • Daaaaaali! stuck with me for a while after seeing it. I found it funny and absurd in the best way possible. You never know what you're looking at, and as the credits roll, and even as you leave the theater, you're not quite sure if the movie is over or not...
  • Haunt (2019) was a decent flick to watch on Halloween. I'm not huge haunted-house fan, but I definitely wouldn't go to one in a small group in the middle of nowhere.
  • Monster is mostly interesting because there's absolutely no dialog in the film. About two kids, brother and sister, who get kidnapped and need to escape their kidnapper before they get used for spare body parts. Sounds better than it was in execution as it has a short 84 minute run-time, but felt longer than that.