Recovered
The trip was good. A photo page will be up sometime next week. The Christmas Contest went well. It was a challenge to us all and although I cursed William for suggesting it every year for the past 4 years or so until I relented I am glad we did it. I can now die saying "I wrote a sonnet and it wasn't half bad."
Here are a couple of pics to tide you over:
intense kitchen work............Austin is keeping Lenore from finding sharks teeth
there is a little crab in this picture............the christmas table
Graeme in the driver's seat
Driving Miss Laura
Lyla was our driver yesterday on the way down to SC. It was a great drive - no traffic, relatively speedy. I worked on jewelry, re-knotting a necklace for Lyla and making some bracelets. South of the Border is tacky but it is usually welcome site. It means that there are less than 3 hours remaining and the landscape turns from huge billboards and drab fields to tall pine forests and bridges over large bodies of water.
Pet Food Bunny
My sonnet is coming along but I am still finding it very hard. I've changed themes a couple of times. I heard rumors that Lenore finished hers while lounging in her chemotherapy comfy chair and that Paula has already written 2 sonnets.
A neighborhood picture:
Some more movie/DVD reviews
Good Bye
Lenin!
A nice little movie about a son trying to hide
the fact that the Berlin wall has fallen from his
mother after she wakes up from a coma. It is an
interesting portrayal of that time and place.
Hectic Times
Joe was at a mall recently and saw this for sale. The picture on the right is something recovering Catholics know well. This one though has lights and a garish clock attached. I kind of like the lights. The clock, not so much.
Art Appreciation
It reopened this year and they did a great job.
One of the galleries
This is a creepy installation. I did not want to get near. I was sure she was going to move.
Fun chandelier
Leafless trees on the Smithsonian Mall
I did a bit of Christmas shopping in the museum stores. My Smithsonian
membership discount card was very busy.
What Do You Think?
Neighborhood Picture: Twister Board in the Trees
Happy Thanksgiving
Cutthroat Competition
Lenore and Lynda are competing for the best scar from ovarian cancer surgery. Although Lenore's scar from her breast cancer surgery increases her total scarage, Lynda's stomach scar is longer and was cut into again for her second surgery. The prize is getting the most sympathy from the family. And you thought we only competed making puppets, writing sonnets and creating black velvet artwork. If you are squeamish, DO NOT GO HERE.
By the way, here is a list of our Christmas competitions:
- 1990 Write a Story based on a Edward Gorey drawing
- 1991 Make a 1992 Calendar
- 1992 Make pages for a Alphabet Book for Graeme
- 1993 Make a Mobile to hang in the Edisto house
- 1994 Karaoke Gilbert and Sullivan
- 1995 Puppets with a Purpose
- 1996 Touchy Feely Book for Little T
- 1997 Lawn Ornaments
- 1998 Poetry: A Limerick and then one other poetry form
- 1999 Mosaics
- 2000 Photography (Photography By The Numbers)
- 2001 Comic Strip
- 2002 White Trash Cooking Show
- 2003 Stuffed Toys
- 2004 Dioramas
- 2005 Black Velvet Art
Some more movie/DVD
reviews
Kilnieks
(Hostage) Lorella and I went to see this
Latvian movie directed by Laila Pakalnina that
was part of the European Union Film Festival. It
is a story of a hijacker who forces a plane to
land in Riga. He lets all the hostages go except
an 8 year old boy who asked to stay on the plane.
The story is about the hijacker and the boy's
friendship as well as about a number of
interconnected events that happen around the
airport involving racing cyclists, farmers,
detectives, biathletes, folk song choirs,
bunnies, dogs, cats, cows, bees. The director
manages to include many Latvian traditions and
favorite foods in the stories. It was quite
enjoyable although I am not really sure what
happened at the end. Even though we see the
hijacker and the boy sitting and talking in a
tree it is not clear if they got away clean,
died, or if they were just in the imagination of
some children playing in the sand. The film was
in English and Latvian. I recognized alot of
words but unfortunately my grasp of the language
has severely dwindled.
Another Blog
Also exciting today was getting the latest version of Final Cut (video editing software), which has all sorts of add-ons for special effects. The box was at least 15 lbs, mostly manuals. We're watching a documentary about the CSC cycling team getting ready for the Tour so I am getting inspired. All I need to do is find 40G of disk space to install it
This week I was all "international" attending events (Dana's dance concert Tuesday night, an old movie Wednesday night) at the Embassy of Austria and one at the Organization of the American States (OAS). The OAS event was a silent auction benefiting Peruvian orphans. I went with Austin and William, their Panamanian friend Ralph, their neighbors, Shelly and Matthew and Matthews's father and his girlfriend Mary. It turns out Mary's father is Latvian. Like my mother his first impression of the US was the deep south. He landed in Tennesee, my mother in Mississippi. The OAS building is one of the most beautiful in the city. Here are some dark and fuzzy pics from the OAS event:
Wedding of the Century
Some memories:
- Helping to turn my parents' place into a mystical magical wedding place
- Making, drinking and sharing my beer - a
German Alt that turned out fairly well
- Goofing around with the family especially in my mom's great kitchen which was made for big cooking.
- Cooking while listening to Allison Krauss and other tunes on our iPods via William's cool portable speaker system
- Getting to know Tracy's family especially his grandkids who are as cute as buttons.
- Realizing that Lyla's wedding hairdo, which was lovely, was very much like her hairdo for her eigth grade graduation
- Graeme telling me I look like a rock star. Thanks to Tina for the great hair styling!
- Norm's many visits in his pajama pants to the house from two doors down to help out or just to see what was going on
- A beautiful female belted kingfisher flew
into my parents' living room window and died.
The kingfisher is one of my favorite birds and
I feel lucky whenever I see one. Her death may
have been an omen or a cosmic sacrifice or
maybe her time was just up. Dad gave her a
respectful funeral in the marsh. We took
pictures because
she was just so beautiful even in death.
Past Hauntings
So Lyla and Tracy's wedding went splendidly. Lots of hard work paid off. I will have pictures up soon. Austin went to Augusta GA for his 25th reunion and he took some pictures of my past (thanks, Austin!):
Work Happenings
- One of my ballet shoes spent the night in my work parking lot. I could not find it when I got to ballet class but the next morning there it was in the parking space I had parked in the previous day. It was nice that no one had parked there. It had a little goose feather attached to it but other than that it was OK.
- One of the scientists in my work division is sharing the Nobel Prize for his work studying cosmic microwave background radiation. His results increased support for the Big Bang Theory.
- I exchanged blog addresses with one of my co-workers. He makes model trains and describes his process in amazing detail. http://chaihobby.blogspot.com/
Some more movie/DVD
reviews
Kamikaze
Taxi A Japanese movie about a young mob
recruit whose girlfriend is killed by the
ruthless boss. He exacts revenge but the thugs go
after him. He hires a taxi driver to help him
escape. The taxi driver was born in Japan but
spent most of his life in Peru before immigrating
back to Japan. The Yakuza story mixed with a
message about acceptance of Japanese who have
grown up in different cultures and returned was
interesting. And the use of Peruvian music was
quite unusual for a japanese movie. However,
there were a couple of scenes that went on way
too long and had little to do with the story.
Jazzercise and War
Here's another neighborhood picture, this one of a diving shop window:
It is that time of year again to start not working on the McDonald Family Christmas Contest.
Local Color
Thursday my aunt Zita treated me to a dinner at a cool-looking restaurant called Pazo. They serve tapas and other small dishes. The mushrooms and the ciabatta bread were my favorite. As I waited for Zita, her neighbor Caroline and friend Steve to arrive I had a drink at the bar.
Today Joe and I went to the National Building Museum and saw a documentary on the architect John Lautner (a student of Frank Lloyd Wright) and an exhibit on environmentally "green" homes. It made me want to live in a beautiful house made of concrete and glass in the hills overlooking Los Angeles with cork and bamboo flooring, solar panels, and recycled glass tiling throughout.
Here's what we saw on our walk from the museum to have some lunch and then to the Metro.
Another Sighting
Some more movie/DVD
reviews
Anchorman:
The Legend of Ron Burgundy I think Will
Ferrell can be funny but for the most part this
was not a funny nor a well-made film. There were
a couple of funny concepts but for the most part
the jokes were juvenile which would have been
fine if it had been marketed to juveniles. I hope
this isn't the best he can do.
Morvern
Callar A Scottish
movie about a woman played by decent actress
Samantha Morton who claims she wrote the book
written by her boyfriend wrote before he killed
himself.
She is not a nice person and not really that
interesting. She just takes advantage of her
change in luck and does not think twice about her
dead boyfriend. It was a pretty movie but that
did not make up for my complete lack of interest
in what happens to her.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou I have liked all of Wes Anderson's movies and although this was messy and certainly not his best I still enjoyed it. Bill Murray is fun as a sarcastic and sour Jacques Cousteau type character with a crew of strange misfits and a bunch of interns trying to get class college credit. The dialogue and some of the situations are quite funny.
The Wire Excellent HBO series we are watching on DVD. The first season is about a group of Baltimore drug dealers and the cops who are trying to solve a series of murders that some of the dealers may have something to do with. The characters are all extremely interesting and the plot is complicated but rewards your attention. I am obsessed.
Mimobot
Thursday my aunt Zita treated me to a dinner at a cool-looking restaurant called Pazo. They serve tapas and other small dishes. The mushrooms and the ciabatta bread were my favorite. As I waited for Zita, her neighbor Caroline and friend Steve to arrive I had a drink at the bar.
Today Joe and I went to the National Building Museum and saw a documentary on the architect John Lautner (a student of Frank Lloyd Wright) and an exhibit on environmentally "green" homes. It made me want to live in a beautiful house made of concrete and glass in the hills overlooking Los Angeles with cork and bamboo flooring, solar panels, and recycled glass tiling throughout.
Here's what we saw on our walk from the museum to have some lunch and then to the Metro.
OK, you're right, I bought it because it is cute but I am sure that someday soon I will find it very useful. I also could not resist the little outfit that has a clasp for easy accessorizing.
Thursday evening I went to my aunt Zita's house to help her install AOL broadband. It should have taken an hour or so but it ended up taking 4 hours. We had to run to Apple store to get the lastest version of Mac OS X and install it. That took about an hour and a half. The rest of the time was dealing with Verizon's crappy install software and annoying technical support. When I finally reached someone who knew Macs it was so much less annoying.
AOL tech support was fairly decent. I talked
to a guy in India and he admitted he did not know
Macs that well but he obviously had good step by
step instructions. As we were finishing the call
Zita asked me to find out his name and where he
was. His name was Arun and he spelled it for me:
A as in apple, R as in rock, U as in unicorn... I
found the unicorn part to be quite entertaining
so when he said he was in India I told him I
might be visiting India at the end of the year.
He invited me to come visit hime in Bangalore and
told me how many kilometers and how many miles
Bangalore is from Chennai (the only city I know
we might visit). Anyway it all ended on a nice
note and Zita can now have her email open all day
without worrying about paying for every second
she is online.
Camp DC 2006
Vacation video
So we drove back across Rockville Pike to the Chinese restaurant right next to the pizza place. Luckily this worked out for us and it was cool because two ladies speaking Latvian sat down at the table next to us. I had a nice little conversation with them in English. As Joe and I ate I tried to come up with the Latvian words to tell them I was in Latvia last year but I could not remember the past tense of the word "to be" so I gave up. I did say "See you later" in Latvian as we left. As we were eating I also realized that I had unconsciously ordered a Chinese radish pancake-like thing because it reminded me of Latvian food.
Here are two Quicktime videos from the Edisto trip. I am using a Quicktime conversion that may not work on PCs so please let me know if there is a problem and I will try a different conversion method. You gotta see these videos.
Paddling with the Dragon Boat team (4.5MB Quicktime) |
Crab Collecting (3.3MB Quicktime) |
Vacation, All I Ever Wanted.....
Some things that made me happy:
- Being able to watch the entire final stage of the Tour de France with Lynda and Mom and sometimes Dad.
- Morning walks with Dad and then with the gang.
- Renting a two person kayak and toodling around the tidal basin. It was so cool being low in the marsh with the herons and jumping fish and shrimp.
- Watching our Assassin Film Festival - The Bourne Supremecy, Grosse Pointe Blank, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, The Professional (AKA Leon).
- Having Andrea and Lane join me as guest paddlers on Lynda's Dragon Boat team practice. And knowing the rest of the gang were supporting us on land.
- My philosophical discussion on the humor of comedienne Sarah Silverman with Lane and Andrea
- Dinner at the restaurant Coast with Lynda after paddling. Great drinks, great food.
- Watching old reruns of the TV game show The Match Game with Hunter and Andrea
- Catching up and talking music with everyone
- Hiking at the ACE Basin with David and Andrea. The mosquitos were unrelenting but we saw a beautifully vivid redheaded woodpecker, an unusual squirrel (maybe a fox squirrel), large lizards, wild pigs and white-tailed deer.
- Bartering with Mom: I changed and calibrated the battery in her iBook in exchange for her doing the gross and brutal initial cleaning of the crabs we caught in the traps.
- Cooking and eating and drinking.
- Shopping the local Edisto tourist shops with Lynda, Lutz and Sandy and actually finding some linen pants that fit.
- Lynda and I trying to get Lutz, Andrea and Hunter addicted to shark teeth hunting. We may have succeeded.
- The perfect ocean water temperature
Some pictures present and past:
Scenes from Edisto Beach 2006 | Scenes from Ocean Isle 2004 | Scenes from Ocean Isle 2003 |
Heat Wave
There was some sort of incident at work and we have been cut off from any system outside of the gsfc.gov domain since yesterday and it may continue through the week. It has been so hard for both work and play. Whenever I have a computer code syntax question or get some sort of error message I go to Google. I usually get my "home" email at work and that's not happening. And during the Tour de France I check the day's outcome in late afternoon. I still am not sure what happened today on the Tour's toughest mountain day ending with the legendary L'Alpe d'Huez.
We rented season 1 of Project Runway. It's a reality show like other reality shows but it seems to be more about the fashion and less about the bickering. I've been enjoying it. Season 3 has just started and it is being shown on NBC as well as cable which is great except for the commercials and the inconvenience of not being able to go on to the next episode right away.
More neighborhood pictures:
Spending Other People's Money
The Tour de France is going on and without Lance Armstrong (due to retirement) and other big names (due to suspician of doping) the race is very interesting.
A recent picture I took:
Ice Cream Update
The bread machine has been put away and the ice
cream machine is out. We've made two delicious
batches so far - vanilla and cinnamon.
To The Limit
Joe and I took a longer than usual (for me) bike ride this morning. It was great. The weather was nice and the trails were fairly uncrowded for holiday weekend (well, holiday for some. I have to work on Monday). We rode from National Airport to Mount Vernon, through marshes, under the Wilson Bridge, through Old Town Alexandria to the RV parking lot at the home of George Washington. Here are some pics.
Some more movie/DVD
reviews
Initial
D This is a nice Hong Kong movie about car
racing based on a Japanese comic book series. It
is a story about a tofu delivery boy who gets
involved with professional and street racers. It
is also a story about friendship, fathers and
sons and first love. There is no
testosterone-fueled violence, only
testosterone-fueled car racing.
Highway Warning
Some more movie/DVD
reviews
Dilwale
Dulhania Le Jayenge A good Bollywood movie
starring Shah Rukh Khan. It has just the right
amount of melodrama and silliness and only a
small amount of self-righteous gratuitous
violence. Raj and Simran live in England and fall
in love but Simran's father has promised her to
the son of an old friend in India. When the
father finds out Simran loves Raj he immediately
moves the family to India to start the wedding
preparations. Raj follows Simran to India and
tells her that he knows they could run away
together and elope but he wants to win the heart
of her father and get his permission - a true
challenge. The music and dancing are quite
nice.
Hard Labor
I like this picture. There seems to be so many compartments of construction activity. The blue-roofed buldings are the workers' living quarters. |
Statue Contest
My parents also have a small collection of outdoor sculptures and statues and, again, for the most part I like them. But there's this one statue of a little girl that is cloying. It obviously means a lot to them so I try to keep my mouth shut. Well, they bought another outdoor statue and, guess what, I felt it was of dubious or non-existent artistic value. But hey now I really like it because I won the contest that my father orchestrated to name the statue. Here is a picture. I'll let you judge for yourself.
Some more movie/DVD
reviews
Better Off
Dead A much more light-hearted view of a
suicidal young man than Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself.
John Cusack plays a high-school student who has
been dumped by his girlfriend for a expert skier.
He tries to become a better skier but eventually
decides she's not worth it. Luckily there is a
cute French exchange student across the street.
This 1980s movie really set a standard when it
came out back in 1980 something. It has all these
quirky comic-book like characters and quirky
situations like the two vietnamese brothers, one
of whom speaks like Howard Cosel, who constantly
want to drag race.
A Week In May
Wednesday Ben and Dennis came down from Secaucus, NJ to attend the reception of their artist friend Chakaia Booker. She is a very interesting person to look at and she does very interesting work with rubber tires. Her pieces are huge and amazingly graceful. Lyla, Tracy, Austin, William and I attended the reception and then went to dinner with Ben and Dennis at Tabaq in the U Street neighborhood.
This past Saturday Marcia, Brooke and I drove
up to Baltimore for a cookout with friends I met
through Brooke. The cookout was at the house of
Jill and David who live in a beautiful 1950s
house. It was a nice night. There were stories of
celebrity encounters. Tanya met Paul McCartney
and his now estranged wife Heather at an animal
rights event in Canada. But even more intriguing
to me was Jill and David's story of being at
Hunter S. Thompson's memorial party and meeting
Johnny Depp. He offered them cigarettes. Someone
also knew someone who dated James Gandolfini
(Tony Soprano) in school. Apparently he was very
nice.
Family News (where it's not all about
me):
- Lenore who was diagnosed with and treated
for breast cancer this past month will be
starting chemotherapy soon. She'll be sporting
that Melissa Ethridge look for a time. Maybe
she'll take up the guitar.
- Lynda finished her chemotherapy and is back
at work. During her time off she learned
Dreamweaver and became a web mistress. I think
there's even an outfit that she wears.
- Lyla and Tracy are getting married,
sometime in the fall, somewhere in the US.
- My parents have started their Spoleto
marathon where they try to cram in as much
culture as possible in a two week period. It's
like a city-wide smorgasbord.
- Tommy and Sandy will receive a grant to
renovate their house with equipment that will
help Little T get around
- Austin made fajitas last weekend.
Here are three slide shows of pictures from my
week. I experimented with some new formats. If
you have an opinion on them let me know.
Some more movie/DVD
reviews
Curse of
the Were Rabbit Wallace and Gromit are now
inventing for their new pest control business and
making some money. There is a monster out there
eating all the vegetables that may or may not win
the Giant Vegetable Competition and they intend
to find it and stop it. Very clever and funny.
Wilbur
Wants to Kill Himself
This movie is a little funny, a little sweet, a
little sad. The look and feel is mostly bleak (it
is filmed in rainy, cold Scotland) but there are
wonderful moments in the film when color is used
to highlight an event. And there's this German
doctor that has a great face. Another good movie.
Tags: dvd reviews, family, art
New Mexico
- The mountains and mesas on the highway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe
- Bright shiny colorful lowriders on the highway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe
- Talking to and buying jewelry from the Navajo and Pueblo Indians in Santa Fe. Learning about Pueblo pottery at the Penfield Gallery in Old Town Albuquerque.
- Discovering sopaipillas and eating a frito pie for the first time
- Spending Lyla's money on turquoise jewelry
- The bunny family in Anna and Joe's yard
- A 5 minute rain, hail, wind storm followed by an afternoon of beautiful sunshine
- The exhibits on sleep (pillows, beds, quilts, sleep rugs through the ages) and dichos on trucks at the Museum for International Folk Art.
- Watching lightning across the prairie while sipping beer with Dana in his parents' back yard
- The mariachi band playing in Old Town Albuquerque
- Here are some pictures
Vintage Blue
heading down the hill to the park but after we got on flatter terrain and the sun warmed me up a bit it was perfect.
Joe took this picture when we got back so I am still somewhat red in the face and Cardassian headed.
The other picture is of me with my new laundry cart which has changed my life. The cart seems to also fit in with the new interior design of our building which is better than what was there before but it resembles a prison. It seems like laundry always plays an important part in movies and TV shows that involve prisons.
Cozy
This weekend Lyla, Tracy, Austin and I went to Baltimore to attend a birthday dinner party for my aunt Zita. It was a nice evening and it was nice to visit a new Baltimore neighborhood. The hosts live in a beautiful old row house in the Bolton Hill area.
Another highlight of the weekend was finishing a project. Joe asked me to make a cozy for our scanner so that it doesn't collect so much dust. Here is what I did:
If you think it looks familiar you are right. It is the same material that I used for Running With Scissors Man.
More Spring Things
On the way home I stopped at the carwash near my house to clean my very dirty car. I was the last car to be washed for the day and as some of the guys were wiping down my car the others were all taking off their red carwash tshirts and changing into other shirts. That was an odd sight but then after I adjusted my seat forward and started driving down the alley about 10 of the carwash guys had jumped on their bikes and were riding down the alley with me. I felt as if I was swimming with the dolphins. Or maybe it was the white wine and Italian grappa at dinner that made the scene seem so surreal.
Here are two signs of spring - a bunny found behind the garden nursery at the National Cathedral and our algae-tinted pool which I will be swimming in one and a half months from now.
Some more movie/DVD
reviews
13
Going On 30 and Hellboy:
Two movies dealing with the supernatural and in
which the heros must overcome true evil - a bunch
of hellhounds and an evil russian and nazi in the
case of Hellboy and a back-biting fashion
magazine editor in 13 Going on 30. Both are
enjoyable movies.
Spring and Cherry Blossoms
Last weekend Lenore and Paula visited from Chicagoland. They saw the cherry blossoms without me because it is just too much walking for my sprained ankle. We did all go to Eastern Market together though and to the National Cathedral.
Lyla, Tracy and my parents recently took a trip to Egypt and brought me back some great gifts - beads, jewelry, a beautiful Egyptian cotton towel and a small statue of the god Horus. Here is a little movie (Quicktime 3.7MB) of Horus in action:
TV Season Update
Sons & Daughters: This new show is as
quirky as Arrested Development but a bit
more real. It is a totally dysfunctional extended
family comedy dealing with teenage isolation,
stepparents, inter-faith marriage,
single-motherhood, parents dabbling in community
theater, marriage problems and fun loser
ex-husbands. The dialogue is sometimes improvised
which I did not think I would like but it fits
with the comedy. The young 3 and 4 year olds have
some of the funniest lines and the characters are
all great. I am sure it will be canceled soon.
Injured!
Last weekend I went to Dana's house for a baby shower for my friend Amy who is on Dana's board and with whom I shared a hotel room in Latvia. We drank wine and champagne and Aaron made wonderful tea sandwiches and salads. Other than baby names Aaron's homemade mayonnaise was the most popular conversation topic.
A couple weeks ago Joe and I went down the the Hirshhorn Art Museum to see a video exhibit we had read about in the paper. It was very interesting. A Japanese artist made these quiet little films when he was studying art in London. They are mostly films of animated objects or shadows in his apartment. In one had planes taking off from tables, going in and out of rooms, circling light fixtures. Another had shadows of camels and elephants roaming the corners and windows and staircases.
Some more movie/DVD
reviews
The
Returner This is a Japanese science fiction
gangster movie starring one of my favorite Hong
Kong action movie stars Takeshi Kaneshiro. He
plays an assasin who must work with a woman who
has come back from the future to prevent an alien
invasion and drops into his life. They find that
their jobs are intertwined and a lot of action
ensues. It was quite good.
Reservoir
Dogs A classic I have never seen, mostly
because I heard it was so violent. After seeing
Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill I figured I could
handle the violence. I kept waiting for it to be
funny like his other films but it really wasn't.
But what it lacked in humor it made up in style.
And of course I had to see it after meeting
Michael Madsen's father and uncle. `
The Reviews Are In
So when we were growing up we had things we were identified with and that was what we got as gifts. Lenore's thing was pigs, lynda's was mushrooms, mine was owls but that somehow changed into frogs. So I still get frog-theme gifts and sometimes I buy them for myself especially cards. One morning this week I noticed, somewhat to my horror, a "gift" deposited next to my car. I have no idea how it got there. It seems to be made of plastic.
Something New For The Resume
The process was interesting. The piece was partly inspired by a world war II love story by Marguerite Duras. I searched the National Archives web site for images of war and death and planes. I video-taped the dancers at one point and did a lot of Google image searches. I put together a lot of little videos for Dana to look at and eventually we decided to use the still images from the National Archives, images of telegrams I found on Google, and some film clips of war planes flying in formation and of typewriters being typed on. The images appeared at the beginning and then towards the end of the piece totalling about 7 minutes. The whole piece was about 75 minutes long.
A highlight of the process was going to the National Archives storage facility to scan and print the original photos. I am now an official reseacher and I have a picture ID that is good for 2 years to prove it.
Here are some fuzzy pictures of the performance with some of my images in the background. I took these during dress rehearsal.
Bittersweet Reunion
Highlights:
- Seeing Dianne, Brian, Kaitlin and Anna again and meeting cute little Emma Skye.
- Meeting all of Mary Anne's friends
- Meeting the family of Dale, Mary Anne's late husband
- Minor celebrity elbow rubbings. Mary Anne's good friend Len is the brother of Cal who is the father of Michael Madsen (Kill Bill, Reservior Dogs) and Virginia Madsen (Sideways). We met Len and Cal, who are both very funny. Brian's friend John considered us celebrities because we went to school with his guitar hero Steve Morse.
- Snow!
- Friday night after dinner we passed a knitting store where some sort of after hours meeting/knitting circle was taking place. Austin had to meet the ladies and talk fabrics and quilts.
- Having Hoops, the Wake-Up cat, visit me in my bedroom at Paula's
- Good beer tastings at Emmett's and at Lenore's
- Great breakfast at Benedict's in East Dundee with Susie and Jeff. Great potato pancakes!
- Paula's mom's tour of her needlepoint. Amazing!
- Shopping in Geneva - beads, housewares, chocolate.
Two little movies:
Memorial
Events
Quicktime, 2.6MB, 3 min |
Romping
Around East and West Dundee
Quicktime, 1.8MB, 1-1/2 min |
Happy New Year
I have mentioned before that Joe gets to see artwork by talented children on the sidewalks on his way to work everyday. As I drive to work I rarely have anything new to look at although once I did see a milk tank truck driving next to a Dunkin' Donuts truck. Well luckily there is now a little girl exhibiting her art work on a 3rd floor apartment that I walk past every morning on the way to the garage. She celebrated the New Year with a glitter snowman on a paper plate. This week she changed her artwork and I had to take a picture. It is both cute and creepy, my favorite combination.
Visitors
The Limey
This thriller is about an ex-con who travels from England to Los Angeles to find out more about his estranged daughter's death. It has a very interesting look to it and the editing is unusual without being too gimicky. The story is not complicated so it is more about the characters involved. Terrance Stamp and Peter Fonda do a great job with the characters. I thought this was much better than some Soderbergh's more ambitious movies like Full Frontal and Traffic. As I was just now looking over Soderbergh's film list I saw King of the Hill, a bittersweet movie that spawned my interest in vintage Hamilton watches. I had forgotten he had done that. Another excellent film that seems to have slipped through the cracks. It is not on out on DVD.