well, okay, i never got around to writing my book report. I did way more watching the television than I ever do, but this was sort of a lay-low, recovery-of-sanity weekend. i needed the downtime, so I watched a lotta movies...
Here's how i spent the weekend, riffing off Barry Brake's "Things I Did This Year" style:
1.Watched the film I am David. A great, great movie to see in Katrina's wake, for it tracks the plight of a refugee/alien, following his journey wherein he learns to trust the people around him. The son of a Bulgarian dissident finds his way back home. A moving and uncomplicated tale. It is rated PG-13. If not for some of the work camp violence, I'd feel fine with my fourth-grade son watching it. Please see this.
2. Watched The Wizard of Oz with my kids. A post-modern take on the same story: the girl who wants to find her way home.
3. Tried to deliver lasagna to Duane Cottrell's hurricane-displaced relatives. We're gonna try again tomorrow.
4. Watched Anchorman. Thanks for the recommendation, Syler.
5. Attended my last Sunday at Wayside Chapel. That deserves another post, so look for one maybe later tonight.6. Went swimming twice this weekend! Got rained out once; but today was a blast.Teaching Kate to swim. Flipping Jordan and Abi in the air (my back hurts a little)... I'll post a pool photo this week.
7. Ushered my parents into the digital age. My recently-retired parents just bought a Dell PC (sorry, I was rooting for a Macintosh as well), and I spent most of the day hooking it up, clicking past a million jicky offers, and setting them up with email and browsers, word processors and anti-virus, etc. It made me appreciate my parents, made me appreciate how much my generation takes for granted, and a day of working on Windows XP made me appreciate Mac OSX (or OS9, or Linux, or...) soooooo much.
8. Made garlic bread. Don't ask me why, but I almost never use the broiler. It always has seemed a little mysterious to me, so I just avoid it. But for some reason last night I was really craving garlic bread, so I took some bolillos (as well as an old school hot dog bun, which I actually favor), and slathered them with tablespoon after tablespoon of real butter, and firing up the broiler -- before long, the smell of garlic was wafting through the kitchen, and the salty crunch of the bread even caught Amy's attention. I skipped dinner last night in favor of several pieces of garlic bread.
9. Watched a whole hour of Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner. And laughed every minute. (Amy grabbed this VHS from the Public Library, thinking Jordan was gonna be the one to like this)... Legendary Warner Bros animation pioneer Chuck Jones, and Mel Blanc -- can you imagine a better pairing? Sheer, unadulterated cartoon nirvana. ACME products galore, sheered-off boulders, misfired rockets, over-sized magnets, springs, cartoon violence, faux latinate Linnaean taxonomic nomenclature, charred coyotes, and a lot of quirky modern musical scores. I gotta find more.
10. Watched Super 8mm home movies Mark and I made when we were in elementary school. (transferred to VHS) ... In the years following the original Star Wars, my twin brother and I decided to make not one but two amateur films (replete with special effects, flying ships, costumes, etc.). The first one was a silent movie with dialogue slates, and the second one, made a year later, reportedly had a companion cassette, now long-lost. But I got to show it to my kids, and it was pure gold watching them see uncle Mark (Zorak) save the world from the evil Clobios.
11. Had 2 friends (and their kids) over for dinner Friday night. It's strange to grill burgers for a guy who owns and operates an excellent restaurant where the hero of his menu is grilled burgers. I told him to tell me when to flip the burgers, and he said I did an okay job... whew. We don't have folks over enough, but now that our house is getting organized, we're trying to do so more often. I'm learning hospitality all over again. I feel like I was hospitable in my 20s, and then it kind of melted away in my early 30s. Multiple kids, messy house, tired from work, etc.
13. Watched my wedding video with my whole family. I laughed. I cried. No really, I did. Every married couple with the means to do so ought to tape their weddings and then watch the footage at least once a year. We have several versions of ours (long-form, distilled edited version, and extra-long including honey moon vacation), but one of the most interesting versions is from Amy's college bud Scott Thacker. He sent a tape to us a year after we were married, and it was a great gift to see our vows exchanged from a different POV. --- (hang on, I gotta go do number 14 on the list...) ---14. Picked up my friend from the airport JUST NOW. That's right: as I was writing this post, Waldemar called from the airport and my brain snapped back in gear and realized it was, in fact, 10:40 PM, and that his plane had arrived, and that I was supposed to be at the airport picking him up. Luckily, I live 5 minutes from SAT, so I zoomed over, and just had two really good hours with a really good friend, catching up over mediocre cups of Jim's decaf coffee, good, hot french fries (me) and strawberry pie (him). We had a lot to talk about, including most of the points above (especially #5), as well as how his crazy life is going. He's got a loving wife, new home and a passel'o'kids in Phoenix, a demanding job in San Antonio, and is commuting home every weekend or so. Talk about new-found respect.
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