It’s Friday! (sort of)
A two day week. Gotta like that.
Sarah and I are heading off to Stratford tomorrow to see Troilus & Cressida. Surprisingly , this will be my first time to Stratford. I’m looking forward to it because 1) I’ve never been and it’s suppose to be very nice there and 2) I haven’t seen a play in a long time and 3) I won’t be at work!
It’s Monday
Well, I haven’t actually had much time off over the weekend. Friday I went straight from work to John and Kristen’s new house. It’s a very cute place and looks like they will be very happy there. Sarah and I helped them get the lower level in order – which meant pulling everything down, spackling and painting. The four of us worked really well together and got a lot done.
We returned on Sunday to help them move out of the apartment and into the house. The actually moving went very well and really quickly as they had about 12 people helping. We then hung out for a while and helped with more of the house. Sarah and others painted the kitchen while I helped Dave and others prep the upstairs. Unfortunately it was way to humid yesterday so everything was taking forever to dry. All in all, a good bit of work got done over the weekend. I also submitted the first blood to the new house. Thanks to John’s demon ladder, I now have the stigmata….
Between house sessions, Saturday was spent relaxing for a bit in the morning before heading off to a wedding. The groom is one of Sarah’s coworkers. The bride’s family is very Scottish so the wedding party was all done up in kilts. The groom agreed to all of this, and I must say all the guys looked great. There were a variety of tartans there, including the Scottish national (for the non-Scottish members of the wedding party), the Stewart, and the Spittal (the bride’s family tartan). Her dad was all decked out in his kit, including a very nice dirk at his side. It was rather fun.
Blog-work
Tonight I’m helping Sarah set up a blog account. She’s going to be using it in the upcoming school year as a homework portal. She and her teammates will be able to post homework assignments to the blog so students will always know whats due and when. I’m off now to set up the template for her.
Weekend
My weekend felt very long, due to me working at home on Friday. I actually got stuff done at home that I wouldn’t have gotten done at work, plus we got some stuff done around the house. Mostly though it was a people weekend.
Saturday we headed to Katie and Alex’s (Katie is Sarah’s cousin) for a BBQ. They had about 12 people over; a whole bunch of food; volleyball and bocchi ball. It was a good time.
Sunday we were going to head up to Lakeside Mall, but Kristen called just as we were thinking of leaving. So we diverted to The Collection to meet her and John for dinner and stuff. Bahama Breeze is an interesting restaurant, but way too cold and more expensive than we thought. Still, the four of us had fun talking about the upcoming Virgin Island trip and frittering around Marshal Fields looking at glassware for them. (Just look out for that display case, it’ll fool ya every time…)
Lastly, I meant to post this on Friday but never got to it. Here’s a picture of me at Nelson Ledges:
Race Car Updates
Last time I had the car out the tech inspectors noted a couple of bad welds on the roll cage. So, Monday I shuttled the car over to DJT Motorsports (right around the corner from Kevin’s house). They welded up the two areas on Tuesday and the car is back in my garage.
Tonight I fiddled a bit more with the on-going electrical gremlins. The overcharging problem that should have been solved isn’t. I changed the voltage regulator (bad again) and the connector that goes to it. Still overcharging. This is really annoying. I guess it’s back to looking at the alternator. This is the part I hate.
Finally, I really need new tires. I’m on my last four tires and last race weekend took its toll. Two are still in pretty good shape (though losing grip), one has definite cord showing and is done for, the fourth as a small blister on it. I think it will work on the right rear (the tire that doesn’t do anything) and I found one spare with some life in it. Looks like next year is tire investment year. For those interested, I’ll try to get a photo of one really screwed up tire and post it here.
The Weekend
Wow, I haven’t written since Wednesday.
Well, I worked on my short story a bit on Wednesday and Thursday, but have hit a bit of a wall. I have an outline of where it needs to go, it’s just getting there is hard. I did manage some progress on a couple of poems, I think two more can be classified as “done”.
Friday and Saturday was 8 hours of T’ai Chi Chuan with Yuan Wei-ming. My legs still hurt. His ability to turn at the waist is simply amazing. His hip joints are like two ball-bearing and can rotate in pretty much any direction. A very humbling and eye-opening weekend. It has givin me a couple of things to work on, and emphasises stuff I’ve already been working on. Maybe now, one of these days, I’ll actually get my torso to work as one unit.
Sarah was home on Saturday and there was much rejoicing. We didn’t do much for our 6th wedding anniversary (iron, for those that track these things), just dinner at Don Carlos and a modest gift exchange. Part of what she did for me leads us to . . .
The Seven Samurai. Sunday we met John and Kristen at the Michigan Theatre for the Kurosowa 3 1/2 hour samurai flick. Sarah, bless her, took me for our anniversary. She was not too into the movie. Me, I enjoyed it. Yes it is a long movie, but it works because the story is continuous. It doesn’t suffer from the problem that modern long movies have – you know, an hour and a bit of story stuffed into two and half (or more) hours of screen time. Classic example: Titanic. It was really three movies rolled into one. Pick a story, tell it well, that’s what I say. It can be a simply story (Pirates of the Caribbean for example), just stick to it and follow its natural course. As for The Seven Samurai, Kurosowa took his time to tell the story in detail.
Well, I’ve pretty much run out of stuff to write for the moment. (I really need to get into the habit of doing this at home instead of work, don’t I?)
Heave To!
Go see Pirates of the Caribbean.
I’ll not give anything away here. Suffice it to say, it is a fun movie. I actually found myself going “Woowhoo! Oops, hope no one heard that” during the show. Here’s my review:
Ships, cool.
Swashbuckling, cool.
Costumes, cool.
Visual effects, cool.
Music and other sounds, cool.
Actors, cool.
Story, cool.
Canons, cool.
[The above are presented in no other order than the order I thought of them. No special ranking or preference involved.]
This is a perfect summer movie. It’s what we wanted from Cut Throat Island; it’s what I wanted from Hulk. I was expecting a campy, silly, enjoyable movie. Drop the campy and silly. Sure it has those moments, but overall it is just downright enjoyable.
Update: Remember when you were 13 (or whatever) and saw Raiders of the Lost Arc for the first time? It’s that kind of movie.
‘ere be pirates
OK, it’s been decided. Some of us are leaving work early to catch the 2:55 showing of Pirates of the Caribbean. I probably shouldn’t, but I’ll live. More to come…
Nac Mac Feegle
Terry Pratchett has a new book out – The Wee Free Men. I noticed a funny thing while reading it yesterday: it’s Amber parallels. When Tiffany is talking to the kelda (leader of the Feegle), the kelda tells her that “all worlds are real and they touch one another. All you need to do is believe that and look for the connections between worlds” [I've paraphrased a bit].
Later, Tiffany tries to get to the Queen’s world. She’s got a good idea of where the connection is, but can’t figure out how to cross – her eyes keep deceiving her. Finally, she more or less, sees what she knows to be there (or wants to be there), walks forward and crosses to the other land. It struck me a lot like someone walking Shadow. You can walk around here all day long and not see anything new, but if you try to see what is just an inch there you can be there. You just need to see it (in your mind’s eye anyway) and believe that it is true.
Anyway, just my wee thought for the day.
The Return
We are back, and had a wonderful weekend. The getting to the cabin wasn’t too bad, except for the actually finding the cabin part. You see, it is fairly secluded. That’s not to say there aren’t others around, but the Fullington cabin is, well, secluded. It’s like this: turn onto road, head down a mile to ‘driveway’ – marked by several mailboxes (for the 1/2 dozen other cabins) and red and white pillars – follow driveway till end. You will see the other cabins, and trees. See that bit of grass between that cabin and that shed that heads down that hill into the trees? Drive down there.
Eegads it’s hidden. But we found it. You litterally drive across a yard, in front of you it looks like you are going to drive right onto the cabin roof, and voila! a bit of hill, a bit of car path and you are there.
We hiked a bit in the woods – and these are serious woods. Ain’t no mantained park trails here, just some deer tracks to follow through the pine, birch and ferns. In front of the house, continuing down the little hill, is the Thunder Bay River. We canoed up-stream a couple of times (mucho fun paddling up rapids (albeit small ones)). We read. We played cribbage. I did my t’ai chi down by the river. And I began writting. Something powerful up there stirred my creative juices and I began a short story. I wrote everynight for a little while (I’m a painfully slow writer so I didn’t get far). I also managed two decent poems. I just hope I can continue the writing. (Part of the reason for this blog is to get me to write on a more regular basis.)
We also spotted a lot of birds. Including:
I also spotted a 10″ snapping turtle in the river, Sarah got to meet the bunny one morning, and I saw a huge-ass bass leap a foot out of the water about a dozen times eating bugs. It’s the little things I find fun.
Surprisingly the trip home wasn’t as bad as we anticipated. I was expecting backed up traffic on I-75 from about top to bottom, but it didn’t happen. We were backed up north of Flint, but then it all cleared out and we made it back home in 4 1/2 hours. Surprise, surprise.
Today has been spent doing a million and one loads of laundry, a couple of phone calls, some minor bills and this.
Time now to eat and then to work on my short story some more.
