Twilight, the Movie!

I got to go see Twilight last night and I actually liked it! :) In fact, I can't wait until I can go and see it again! Sort of lower-budget than I had expected, but what can you expect from a newer director and a smaller production company? I think they did a pretty good job considering that they were trying to fit 498 pages worth of content into a 2-hour time slot. The wierdest thing for me was not hearing Bella's thoughts and instead watching things happen without the narration that you get in the book--so it seemed a little lacking to me because of that. All in all, I recommend it. The baseball game is really cool, and of course the ballet studio scene is pretty realistic. I even will applaud them for the job they did when Edward shows Bella what he looks like in the sunlight. Rob Pattinson as Edward wasn't as bad as some people made him out to be, and I think he and Kristen Stewart did quite well portraying our favorite characters. Some stuff was downright corny (like Carlisle's make-up job and some flashbacks we see), but I guess you even get some of that in the book when I really think about it. I definitely got a lot of laughs out of it, but there were also times where I was on the edge of my seat. Not all that I had hoped for, but I went into it knowing it could never be as good as the book, and I really wasn't disappointed!


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Selfishness...and what would YOU do about it?

I was talking to a friend of mine tonight who has this sister that is a representative of a company that does in-home parties. So this friend's sister did this in-home party for my friend a few weeks ago. Anyway, I went to the party and decided that since my friend doesn't have a lot of money to be spending on luxury items and consequently has so little of the type of merchandise being sold at said party, I decided to put all of my own savings ($260+) towards merchandise from this friend's party so that my friend could get more stuff. I'll admit that I was having selfish thoughts beforehand about placing my own order through this friend's sister outside the party so that I could get the hostess benefits myself, but knew that was selfish and changed my mind. I'm no angel and I'm not trying to sound like one. I'm just saying that selfishness is not a good thing and it certainly doesn't help anyone--especially not the one being selfish. And it feels good to know that instead of helping myself, I actually helped someone else that has a greater need than I. :)

So anyway, this friend's party total was $50 away from her being able to get 2 free hostess items rather than just one, but was already at a level that qualified for an additional free item for hosting a show that met a certain sales amount. Her sister presented her with the following offer that went something like this:
"If I buy $50 worth of stuff so that you can reach the next hostess level, can I have the additional free item that is only available to hostesses with a $350 show? (which this friend already qualified for even before her sister pitched in the $50) You probably wouldn't like any of the items they have and there is one that I really want." Well, being the sweet and somewhat intimidated little sister that she is, my friend didn't know what to say and didn't feel like standing up for herself in this situation because her own sister is asking her and expecting her to say, "Oh sure, you can have the free item" like it's no loss for my friend, who, like I said before, is kind of in short supply as it is when it comes to these specific items. My poor friend unfortunately gave in to this request although she did NOT want to and so her sister took advantage of my friend and got a free item for herself. Now, if this sister was in financial hardship and had a short supply of these types of items (which by the way, she is NOT) I could maybe sympathize with the sister. But in reality, I think greed reared it's ugly head and my poor friend (no pun intended) is now at a loss. My friend later learned which free items she could have picked from (her sister did not make these items available to her to decide before she gave up her opportunity to get a free item) and found that some of them were actually really cute and that she would have liked to have had one of them. She could have had a very cute $32 item for FREE if her sister had not been thinking of herself in this situation. I just have to say that greed and selfishness can do a lot of damage to a person's soul, but they are also very damaging when they are used in a way that creates a disadvantage for someone else. If I had more guts, I would call the in-home party company and report this friend's sister's activity, as I think she displayed very poor business ethics. She would not have requested such a sacrifice of another hostess/customer. Taking advantage of family relationships is just plain wrong and I'm sorry to voice that opinion, but I feel that I must. Enough said.

Amber
P.S. By the way, the free item that the sister picked for herself is probably the ugliest I've seen. Too bad--because my friend could have had something really cute! :(