just be.

i am easily entertained.

i offer this as a preface, as i am about to review a movie for you, and i want you to have some context. before i met smartboy, i dated a guy who told me that i had an easy laugh. he meant this as a compliment. and more than one person has echoed the remark, so i figure it's probably true. i've also been told that i'm easily entertained or amused, most recently yesterday by anna. it could mean that i'm simple, or it could mean that my movie reviews aren't really that useful because any old movie would make me happy. i do love me a movie.

but i promise that i am not being simple when i say that "up" went from never seen to in my top five favorite movies of all time when i saw it yesterday. not immediately—immediately, i knew i liked it, as i love all things pixar. just minutes into it, i knew that i loved it more than most pixar movies, which is to say more than most movies; i was crying and laughing and so in love with the main characters that i was already sad that the movie would end—in two hours. and the longer i watched, the more i loved it. by two-thirds of the way through, i knew it was stuck. stuck in the list of top fives forever. my number 1 favorite movie cannot be budged ("it's a wonderful life"), probably never will be. but "up" has displaced "monsters, inc." in spot 2 and joins it and "the princess bride" in the list that i think will persist for a long time. spot 5 isn't fixed, but top 4 doesn't sound as important. ironically.

so i'm saying: get thee to see "up," preferably in the theater. and if you need a buddy to see it with you, consider yourself buddied. and see whether you can pick yourself out among the characters.

woof,

dug.

what?

you have got to be f-ing kidding me.

check this out.

alllll the futuristic progress. the gleaming towers. the sleek clothing. the sleek hair. the *flying cars.* but what do i see 00:41 in? **an underwire bra.** WITH SEAMS. so you're telling me that we can get vehicles flying through an apocalyptic universe, shining glass towers in the desert, but we are still going to be wearing *those*? wtf.

ack! i forgot!

i cannot believe that i forgot two of my all-time favorite movies that are also christmas movies: elf and scrooged! i love these so much that smartboy had a t-shirt made for me that says "smiling is my favorite" :)

tempting 2.2

so, if i knit one round in 10 minutes (which feels agonizingly slow, but i timed a row knitted while watching guiding light--not particularly fast, but not particularly slow, either), and i have nine inches left to knit, and i'm knitting six rows per inch, that's 540 minutes, or nine hours, of knitting left, correct? well, more than that--that's nine hours left of body before i make the sleeves, join them to the body, finish the yoke, and make the neck band, which is another few hours. so call it 12 hours of work left. holy crap i'm not going to finish this in two weeks--there's no way i'll have that many knitting hours free between now and time to ship this to its intended. that really sucks.

i did get a little knitting done while waiting for cars to start and watching previews. a few animation previews--the most thrilling for ratatouille, in which the lead voice appears to have been my college classmate, patton oswalt!! i am so happy for him. i have followed his career since, well, as long as i can remember; he was on the newspaper staff, so i knew him through my best friend, who also worked for the paper. we see him whenever and wherever we can, though he now boycotts pennsylvania, making it a lot harder to see him (usually this means doing it in dc). his standup is absolutely fricking hilarious--like, go to the bathroom before the show, because otherwise, you'll pee yourself. and always take tissues, because you will laugh until you can't breathe, let alone cry. i cannot wait until this movie comes out.

the other joy of the afternoon: the sign declaring that this fall will bring a costco to the waterfront. no more schlepping to the opposite end of town to get the huge quantities smartboy so loves to buy.

on the down side, we continue to bicker about whether to move or stay and about where we would move if we did move, and it continues to be hot and cramped and, well, smelly (thank you, old crappy carpeting we can't replace until we level the floors, which we won't do until we make a decision) in our current quarters. unfortunately, this is pretty much standard life lately. i hate that. especially given what's going on with karen and joe these days. speaking of karen and joe, i'm looking into a bone marrow donation registry drive. stay tuned.

oh--i almost forgot: i created a picasa album of house pictures. nothing of the top two floors yet, but it's a start.

because two memes just weren't enough silliness for one day.

and now for more down-to-earth things

while i wait for smartboy to wake up and the rest of my day to start.

looks like he wants to stay in this house for another couple of years (well, late 2007 or early 2008, anyway). sigh. i'm weary of feeling cramped, but he doesn't care as much as i do about this, and has other financial priorities. this is smart, but a couple of years is just long enough to need to do things to this house that will cost money, but not so long that we're going to feel good about spending it. ugh. so more difficult conversations to follow. me no likey difficult conversations. we have lots of these these days.

but it's good to have him home.

his parents are in town this weekend. i made a yummy dinner friday night (if i do say so myself, which apparently i do). filet mignon, pan seared au poivre with a tarragon-shallot reduction sauce; mashed fingerling potatoes with cream cheese and scallions (and a touch a soy milk for creaminess and nuttiness); radicchio, endive, and escarole salad topped with edible flowers, toasted pine nuts, and a sesame-ginger dressing; and lemon-infused steamed baby pattypan squash, baby zucchini, baby carrots, and baby snap peas. for dessert, vanilla ice cream with a choice of chocolate macaroons, chewy chocolate chocolate chip cookies, or southern pecan pie. all gluten-free, all organic, and so easy and fast. a favorite meal of mine to prepare and serve for company, definitely my favorite thing to eat in restaurants. this way, we could eat whenever we were all ready (with all three of them arriving in town at unpredictable times, this was important), and on little notice. i stopped at whole foods on the way home from work on friday for the goods (including some two-bunches-for-$6 red dutch tulips so perfect that they still look fake two days later) and unloaded, cleaned a bit, then worked till i knew when everyone was coming. about 45 minutes before they arrived, i started setting the table, and when i finished that, i started doing my mise en place for things that could stand room temperature, putting out pots and pans, and figuring out serving platters and utensils. when they arrived, i rinsed potatoes and started boiling the water. we ate maybe 30 minutes after they got there, and everything was ready at the same time. i love when that happens with a menu.

yesterday we all went to see thank you for smoking. such a very, very excellent movie. movies like this just don't come out often enough. they really don't. even if you don't feel strongly about tobacco politics (which i don't, particularly), it's a great satire--so well done, so well written, so well directed. witty, first-person unapologetically told from the point of view of someone you're sure needs to apologize, while also not compromising on any message. just great. i'm glad we saw it before it left the theatres (as happens to us far too often). and clever. i almost forgot to say clever. (all i can say is, don't ruin your movie surprise experience by watching anything or listening to anything on the web site before you go.)

and today i go to a baby shower for my friend anna. it hasn't been an easy pregnancy for her. but then, i guess that's sort of a silly thing to say--what pregnancy is easy? it's a wonder, really, that the species continues. that any species does. i'm not signing up for that gig. i'm proud of my accomplishments when i knit, for instance, a sweater for little baby o. (said sweater needs remedial work, incidentally, as the front panels don't come down the same amount--i need to pick up stitches on one side--nor do they really meet in the middle; how embarrassing, as anna works in my local yarn shop.) i can't imagine how i'd ever carry a human being inside me for nine months. yow. props to those of you who have. or are. or want to. that isn't the only reason--or even the main reason--i don't want to have children. but gracious, what a good deterrent.

oh. but back to the baby shower. it should be nice to meet more of anna's friends. i get nervous meeting new people, but i'll try to be brave. i wonder why that's so scary?