Monday, November 26, 2007

My Thanksgiving

Sushi

Nah...just kidding. That was my Thanksgiving Eve dinner.

My Thanksgiving would have been better without all the family and the cooking and the loading and unloading of dishes.

How was yours?

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate.

Friday, November 16, 2007

No Country For Old Men

This had been on my reading list for some time but when the trailers for the movie came out, I bumped it up.

I started it two days ago and couldn't put it down. I had to get use to Cormac McCarthy's unusual way of writing. He's not a fan of punctuation and doesn't put quotations around the dialogue so I'd have to go back sometimes and reread something not realizing for a moment that a character was actually speaking.

He spelled things the way they were pronounced by his characters, all obviously huge Texas hicks.
Except. I live in Texas. And while it was cute and quaint at first, I noticed that all his Texas characters spoke that way. The problem is that I know many Texas characters (I'm related to a lot of them) and the majority of them can say "knew" instead of "knowed".
At first, I thought maybe it was a West Texas thing since it takes place out there but then a girl showed up from Port Arthur and she spoke the same way.

Ok...vernacular aside....

I loved this book in the beginning. I raced from page to page wondering how our main character was going to stay one step ahead of the bad guys.

Then...well I don't want to give anything away but I was disappointed.

Suddenly, the excitement ended without fanfare and without much explanation. Then the character of the Sheriff took over the end of the book and rambled on for pages and pages. Suddenly, I was uninterested and I felt cheated.

Maybe there is some symbolism or some shit that I'm not getting but No Country For Old Men was like one good book and one boring book bound together.

Friday, November 9, 2007

Midnight Serenade

Last night, I was looking forward to spending a little time out on my patio because the weather was wonderful. There was a light, cool breeze and virtually no humidity. Perfect patio weather.
I'll have to tell you my Patio Stalking story some other time....

Anyway, so I take my book out there, light some candles and kick back.
A few sentences in, I hear my neighbor's door open. I don't bother turning around or acknowledging her, I'm here to read, not socialize and besides...it's awkward because if I'm quiet and don't move around, it's hard to notice I'm on the patio through the 6 foot fence.
I continue to read as I hear the person close the door and shuffle their feet down the landing to the top of the stairs. Then a moment later, they shuffle back, open the door, but I don't hear the door close. Then I hear the sound of an acoustic guitar. It's a little loud but I am on the patio...it's not like I'm in my bed trying to sleep. Also, it's nice; a little reading music.

After a few minutes, I hear a man's voice speaking in my direction, "Is that too loud?" It wasn't my neighbor but someone apparently staying with her.

I said, "No. Actually it's kind of nice."

"Oh! Well let me get my pick, it'll sound better!"

Crap.

So he comes out and sits on the rail just on the other side of my patio fence and asks if I have any requests.

"You going inside," was my first thought but I'm mostly a nice girl so I kind of giggled and said "Oh I don't know."

"Well, I can play anything."

So, I told him I loved the Foo Fighters and he said "They are actually one of my favorite bands. Hold on..."
He looked down at the strings for a moment, then started playing Everlong.
It wasn't great but it was very cool.
After Everlong, he played a little Metallica Fade to Black. He then segued into something he wrote and it was VERY good.
But the whole thing was surreal. First I was sitting quietly on my patio and the next thing I know, I'm being serenaded through the fence by this complete stranger.

I worried about the noise. We're a very quiet apartment complex and I felt like I needed to tell him to be quiet.
I feel like that at work a lot. People never learned that you have to be quiet in a library and they walk in talking at the top of their lungs and I literally cringe, thinking about all those people being disturbed.

While he was playing, I kept thinking about this and then got mad at myself. It's one thing to expect people to be quiet at work but I'm not responsible for this guy. If the other tenants want to complain, let them. I actually had to give myself permission to enjoy the serenade and not worry about the other apartment dwellers.

I think I might be wound tighter than this guy's guitar strings!