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Apr. 5th, 2004 12:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikMy heavens. I had to go back over a hundred posts before I started recognizing things. Was I really offline that much this weekend?
Good weekend, anyway. Nice to get back to teaching. Party on Saturday, and errands and yard work and talking and new neighbors... class and hanging out with K and compline last night...
A few random notes...
On the Sammamish Valley River trail, a little north of downtown Redmond, someone has built a beach. A river rock beach and a hillside covered with native plants and erosion control baffling, and begging-but-not-mugging ducks, and piles of fallen trees, with loose lumpy roots washed clean of soil...
And then you look closer, and these piles of "driftwood" are actually bolted and chained together and bolted to the beach. The whole thing is set to look very natural and unmanicured (or at least, you can tell that it should look that way when the plants are grown)... and yet it seems to be carefully constructed. Surreal.
I have an unnatural fondness for backpacking gear. This has been true since I was at least eight...
Saw the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". I'd heard good reviews (from NPR something along the lines of "Possibly the best mindbender since Momento, and, well, the best romantic comedy ever...") but I guess I wasn't sure what to expect -- romantic comedies are often pretty lame, even when they're superficially enjoyable. Momento was amusing... but... kind of shallow, I guess.
Not lame. The central charactes are quirky and strange and not particularly pretty, in a way that makes them believable (and sometimes makes one wince). No perfect, fated lovers, just people coming to finding and losing things of value amidst the chaos and complications of their lives. And a kind of rawness that really did feel more like life, than what life is *supposed* to be like. (Of one scene K said "Was that a date, or a mugging?") And coming to some kind of emotional maturity... which at the end of the movie they may or may not have completely lost ;-)
Good weekend, anyway. Nice to get back to teaching. Party on Saturday, and errands and yard work and talking and new neighbors... class and hanging out with K and compline last night...
A few random notes...
On the Sammamish Valley River trail, a little north of downtown Redmond, someone has built a beach. A river rock beach and a hillside covered with native plants and erosion control baffling, and begging-but-not-mugging ducks, and piles of fallen trees, with loose lumpy roots washed clean of soil...
And then you look closer, and these piles of "driftwood" are actually bolted and chained together and bolted to the beach. The whole thing is set to look very natural and unmanicured (or at least, you can tell that it should look that way when the plants are grown)... and yet it seems to be carefully constructed. Surreal.
I have an unnatural fondness for backpacking gear. This has been true since I was at least eight...
Saw the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". I'd heard good reviews (from NPR something along the lines of "Possibly the best mindbender since Momento, and, well, the best romantic comedy ever...") but I guess I wasn't sure what to expect -- romantic comedies are often pretty lame, even when they're superficially enjoyable. Momento was amusing... but... kind of shallow, I guess.
Not lame. The central charactes are quirky and strange and not particularly pretty, in a way that makes them believable (and sometimes makes one wince). No perfect, fated lovers, just people coming to finding and losing things of value amidst the chaos and complications of their lives. And a kind of rawness that really did feel more like life, than what life is *supposed* to be like. (Of one scene K said "Was that a date, or a mugging?") And coming to some kind of emotional maturity... which at the end of the movie they may or may not have completely lost ;-)
