A one sentence review, after viewing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Why did we need another Forrest Gump in which Brad Pitt reprised his character from Meet Joe Black?

Should I take this job or not?

I'm thinking of doing this again, but I'm not sure of a theme or anything. Right now I'm pretty focused on trying to find a job, so maybe my dilemma du jour will entertain.

Here's the thing.

A friend has offered me a short-term, part-time job at his company doing stuff I'm about 10 years and a degree overqualified to do, for $15/hour. He thinks it will be about 20 hours a week but could be more hours. The company is located in Berkeley, which is about 90 miles and at least a 2 hour morning/evening commute each way. They are also expanding, though honestly they don't really do anything I'm interested in professionally.

Here is my pros/cons list. Please read and tell me what you think I should do in this situation.

Pros:
* It's a job. It's money coming in, though granted, not a whole lot of money
* I've been told that I can consolidate it into two weekdays and so I can just stay at a friend's house or my sister's house for the in-between night, saving myself 2 commutes. Or I could drive down on a Monday evening, work Tues/Wed, and drive back up Wed evening.
* There's a possibility of somehow finagling it into a full-time job for the company
* My friend is going out of his way to help me find work

Cons
* It's 90 miles and 2 hours each way. Even with an overnight stay or two during the week, that's still 180 miles or nearly half a tank of gas plus bridge toll and wear/tear on the car a week.
* An overnight stay or two means I'm away from home, Dan, and kitties for one or two nights a week for a job that's probably a dead end
* That's two fewer days a week I can spend looking for a full-time job that I want to be doing
* If I do get offered a full-time job, especially if soon, that means I'd be kind of screwing my friend over

Our ultimate plan is to move down to the Bay Area as soon as one of us gets a full-time job, but there's no way we could swing a move, let alone rent and everything else on $300/week, so the option of us moving for this job is not on the table.

Synchronicity

Sometimes I get a kick out of little things that other people might not notice.

The other day, I was at the gym, listening to my ipod, doing a cooldown crunches/leg lifts sort of deal after the cardio workout. On my ipod was a medley of Sublime songs. As I started my 100 crunches, I thought to myself how funny it would be if the song that were on, Jailhouse, happened to play the line "Had the '89 vision" when I did crunch #89 (I count them in my head). Then I forgot about it until I got to number 80, when I realized it might happen, and then it did. I did the 89th crunch just as that line played.

It's the little things in life that make me happy.

a moment

I have a friend that I met at the gym. Her name is also Emily, and we've made dates off and on over the past year to work out together. We walk on the treadmill or around the indoor track when the weather's bad, and we walk outside, from the gym to the park and back, when it's nice. She takes the same weights class, which is where we met.

My friend is a few years younger and in a slightly different place in her life. We come from different backgrounds and have a lot of dissimilarities, but when it's been a couple of weeks or more between workout sessions (usually because she's busy with work), I miss hanging out with her.

Today we went on a walk at lunch. The sun was out, the sky was a piercing blue. The air was cool, but we walked fast enough to stay warm and chatted about her recent trip to Tuscon and our Halloween activities and all sorts of other things. Halfway through our walk we were in the park when she looked up at a huge oak tree and said, "I've found it!"

"Found what?" I asked.

"It's my favorite tree," she said. "That is a beautiful tree."

And it was. It was still covered in giant leaves, and the colors ranged from a dark rust to orange to burnt gold to lemon to green, depending on which part of the tree you were looking at. The colors of the leaves sparkled in the sun, set off by the deep azure sky behind.

"I have a favorite tree at home," she told me. "My mom takes a photo of it this time every year and sends it to me." My friend is from Pennsylvania and usually only makes it home for Christmas each year. "I miss the colors," she said. "Colorado is great, but it's all aspens, evergreens, gold, dark green. I miss the red and orange."

I need to find myself a favorite tree.

Blop III: The Bloppening

It's November.

We have internet at home, and no plans to travel anywhere we won't have internet access. So I'll be writing at least one post every day in November. I'm actually pretty excited about it, since it'll force me to get out of my blogging rut.

I'll be writing about all sorts of things, continuing my scanned photo series, and taking/posting photos. It's going to be a good month, methinks.

Wish me luck!

The only year it didn't bother me was 2005 because we were in China

I hate the fall time change.

There, I've said it. I love the spring one, because I see more daylight during my waking hours. I hate the fall one, because it's suddenly dark at 5 PM. This sucks. It usually takes me at least a week to get used to it, and both Dan and I are grumpy and crabby the whole time. I wish we could just stay on DST all year.

Here are some photos I took yesterday when we went for a walk a little after 4 PM, knowing we'd only have an hour left of daylight. We explored our street directly to the north for about 12 blocks, since neither of us had ever gone up that way. The biggest surprise was how many churches there were - and even a few that were no longer functional churches but that had either been turned or were in the process of being turned into expensive lofts.






This was the tallest hollyhock I've ever seen. It was at least 9 feet high. I couldn't get the entire thing in my camera frame. The sign on the church says "Slavery is wrong"



Also, I won't be officially blopping this year. We don't have internet at home and I'm just not willing to go to an internet cafe or something every weekend day of November. I do plan to post every day, plan to comment on the posts of people who are blopping, and plan to take lots of photos and put them up here for all to see. But posting all 30 days in November is just not feasible when the only reliable internet I have is at work.

100 more things about me, part the second

51. I really hate having my hair in my face. That, along with my 3.5 head, is why I haven't had bangs since age 6.
52. Another way to squick me out is to force me to stick my hands in dirty cold slimy dishwater. UGH!
53. I have only for a brief period of time ever lived in a place with a functional dishwasher (I'm not including the co-op here, which had an industrial dishwashing machine thingy).
54. Dark chocolate and red wine are two of my favorite things to consume together.
55. I've always liked the name Sam for a boy, but Dan doesn't like that name. Sniff.
56. My sleep is generally restless if I wear socks to bed. Which is unfortunate, because my feet are nearly always cold.
57. Sometimes it is difficult for me to determine my opinion on a controversial or political issue because I have a hard time not seeing both sides.
58. A very small part of me would like to get a tattoo, but I've never been able to think of anything that I would be OK having on my body permanently.
59. I think it would be really cool to get mehendi (henna tattoos) for the wedding but I wouldn't want anyone to feel like I was inappropriately co-opting someone else's cultural tradition.
60. After a bad bout of stomach flu in high school, the first solid food I felt like eating after two weeks of being sick and drinking soup was a grilled cheese sandwich with pepperoni in it.
61. I didn't like fish or most vegetables until college, when I had them prepared in different ways than my mom prepared them. Now, there are very few types of either that I dislike.
62. During the one taekwondo class I took in college, I advanced to yellow belt with green stripe.
63. Someday, I would love to pick and eat a ripe green fig again. I haven't tasted one of those since I was 10 years old.
64. Once, in seventh grade, I fleetingly wished to be 5'10 and thin with gorgeous skin so I could be a model. I got over that pretty quickly.
65. Also in seventh grade, I had a pretty high bowling average.
66. There used to be four moles on my neck, but one disappeared so now there are only three.
67. My toes are somewhat prehensile.
68. In middle school I won the geography bee, beating out a mean-ol' 8th grader. My prize was a globe. They gave me a test to see if I was good enough to compete on a more area-wide level, but I was not.
69. The next year, I lost the geography bee to a 6th grader. I am still somewhat ashamed.
70. Sometimes I wish I weren't so practical. You know those people who buy things on a whim, spur of the moment, hang the budget? Yeah, not me.
71. "Fart" was considered a bad word in my family (meaning, we weren't allowed to say it), and it's probably the only "bad" word I use on a daily basis.
72. I used to eat wild oats off the stalk. It's a lot of work for not very much food, but when they are ripe they're really tasty.
73. I also used to eat raw oatmeal with milk, sugar and cinnamon. Kind of like one might eat a bowl of cereal, only it was rolled oats.
74. Mostly now I just eat steel-cut oats.
75. Another fond childhood food: eating apricots fresh and ripe and sunny off the tree. MMMM.
76. One year I wore these friendship anklets someone made me at camp until they rotted off. Shaving around them was kind of difficult.
77. If I had to classify my religious beliefs/tenets/etc. I would probably put myself somewhere between agnostic and secular humanist.
78. Sometimes I miss going to church, just a little bit, for the community aspects. Not the God stuff.
79. I don't miss it enough to actually go.
80. The least sexy song (to me) is the Sesame Street theme song.
81. I used to meditate in high school, but I haven't done it in a really long time.
82. Overall, I consider myself to be a pretty well-adjusted person (aside from a few specific issues)
83. If given the choice, I prefer even numbers to odd. If odd, they have to be easily divisible by 3 or 5.
84. I cannot imagine thinking in pictures. I am words all the way.
85. If presented with written material or music with lyrics I will read the writing or listen to the lyrics. I am that drawn to language. I can't even study listening to music that has words I understand.
86. I dropped my little sister on her head when she was a baby. Yes, it was an accident. No, she doesn't have any lingering issues. I don't think.
87. Memorizing my times tables was probably the most difficult hurdle I had to overcome during my school career (not counting that awful chemistry class in college).
88. Someday, I would like to live in another country, even if just for a little while.
89. I skipped second grade, and while I don't regret it now, sometimes I think it would have been a lot less stressful for everyone if I hadn't. It took until I was about 16 or so to get past the social and emotional drama that created.
90. They say that having a lot of money can create more problems than it's worth, but I say let me have the opportunity first and I'll give you my opinion on that subject.
91. However, I'm really not interested in trying to become rich. If it happens, sweet. If not, oh well.
92. I really really wish I were more photogenic.
93. I also wish I had straight, white teeth.
94. My sister is both photogenic and has naturally straight, white teeth, but I don't wish I were my sister.
95. My best dreams are the ones where I am flying.
96. Once I spent an entire March 17 looking for a four-leaf clover in our backyard. I didn't find one.
97. I acquired a pen pal in high school by answering an ad in a Piers Anthony newsletter. We wrote letters for years but didn't meet until 2004, ten years after we started writing to one another. He and his girlfriend are coming to the wedding!
98. Of saunas and steam rooms, I am not really a fan.
99. My favorite class in college was about the brain and drugs.
100. Though I like the smell, lavendar makes me sneezy and wheezy and itchy.

100 more things about me, part 1

Last year for NaBloPoMo I did a "100 things about me" for the last two posts of the month. I'm going to do the same thing this year. Because it's my blog, and by definition kind of narcissistic.

1. I have a lot of scars, but I've never broken a bone.
2. I don't have any tonsils or adenoids. They got removed when I was five.
3. In Advanced Biology in high school, we had to dissect cats. My lab partner and I named our cat "it." I left the room when the jaw cracking part happened because I thought I might throw up.
4. Other than that, I liked all of the dissecting we did, both of cats and other critters.
5. The scariest movie I ever saw was the animated version of "The Hobbit." I think I was three when I saw this, and I had nightmares about Gollum for most of my childhood.
6. I miss being able to climb trees.
7. I lost a shoe one time in the American River. I was a little heartbroken.
8. I didn't learn anything from my high school physics/chemistry teacher.
9. I doubt anyone else did, either. He wasn't a good teacher at all.
10. Another one of my high school teachers was well known for giving out higher grades to girls who wore short skirts and flirted with him.
11. My As in that class were all merit-based.
12. Most scented things (candles, inscence, air fresheners, perfume, body products) give me headaches.
13. I'm allergic to every product Bath and Body Works makes. I have had to give away every gift of B&BW merchandise I've received.
14. I used to write really bad poetry. But then, I bet most people did.
15. The most amusing thing I ever wrote was a radio play about Barney, the Irish Purple Monkey. I still have it.
16. I helped to start both the Fine Arts Club and the speech/debate club at my high school.
17. The only time I ever went to Las Vegas, I did not enjoy myself. It sucks to be 18 in Vegas and unable to do anything.
18. Two different boys have called me from airplane phones.
19. Two other boys have sent me roses for Valentine's Day.
20. Our upstairs neighbors keep their money in a jar on a bookshelf, rather than in a bank. I feel this is unwise.
21. It really annoyed me when the boys with whom I was babysat could whip it out and pee on our walk home from the bus stop, but I couldn't.
22. One year I got three different necklaces and a Hello Kitty jewelry box for Christmas, and it was pretty much the best Christmas ever.
23. I still have one of the necklaces. It's an ivory pendant with a picture of a fawn painted on it.
24. In high school, I played a french maid, a girl who recites Shakespeare, a beauty shop assistant, and Puck in various productions. I did not play Wilbur the Pig, though I really wanted to.
25. Bad things happened to me on stage twice. Once, I cut my hand on a broken porcelain cat (one of the props for a play) and I bled all over the stage and had to clean it up during intermission. I still have a little scar. The other time, I got really sick during the run of the show and I lost my voice on stage.
26. I find genetics and reproductive technology to be fascinating subjects.
27. Somewhere in my mom's house is the stuffed rabbit I got from Victor Davis' Teddy Bear House in San Francisco.
28. I used to be allergic to citrus fruit and coconut/palm products, but I grew out of those allergies.
29. I am still allergic to eggplant.
30. There might be a flask strapped to my leg with a garter under my wedding dress.
31. Then again, there might not be. I haven't decided yet.
32. I used to have all the lyrics to Ice Ice Baby memorized. Don't even ask why.
33. In college, I discovered a really good dessert could be concocted in the dining commons by putting some marshmallows on top of a bowl of rice krispies (or similar puffed cereal), nuking it for 20 seconds, and stirring it around. Instant nonfat rice krispie treat! It wasn't until later, when I made it at my co-op, that I realized what a bitch it was to clean up. Sorry, dining commons dishwasher people.
34. Sometimes I crave the chocolate Costco muffins, cut up into pieces, warmed in the microwave and spread with margarine. Yes, sometimes I ate this in high school. No, I haven't eaten it since then.
35. I think brussels sprouts taste and smell like feet.
36. Two of my favorite words are bromadrosis and phantasmagoria.
37. Two of my least favorite words are moist and panties.
38. The highest fever I ever had (105.5F) was due to cutting 6-year molars.
39. My favorite kind of snow is the big ploofy kind.
40. If you want me to get grossed out and have chills down my spine, make me clean the scales off fish, or rub a bunch of cotton balls on my skin. Eeeegh!
41. I would love the challenge of being plunked down in a strange city where I didn't know the language and be forced to navigate my way around. Kind of like that guy on Man vs. Wild, only it would be Girl vs. City.
42. Dan and I have talked about trying out for the Amazing Race, but we know we're not pretty enough to get on TV.
43. Sometimes I'm still a little afraid of the dark. This is never the case when Dan is in the bed with me.
44. I had a huge crush on one boy for most of middle school. And maybe a little bit of high school. Then, the other girl with my name dated him so I completely lost interest.
45. Having not painted my toenails since September, I believe it is the longest I have gone without polish on them in at least seven years.
46. There aren't any dimples on my face, but there are two on my lower back.
47. When I was 14 I figured that I would never find someone who loved me. Turns out I was wrong.
48. When I give blood, sometimes I try to imagine who might end up with my donation. I also wonder what it feels like to have someone else's blood in your body.
49. My favorite gelato flavors are rose and tiramisu.
50. One of the things I am most looking forward to about our trip to Italy is eating gelato. Yes, even though it's going to be cold outside. I don't care!

Friday fitness 3: I am woe out

Well, I didn't meet my goal for this week: I didn't take any new classes.

But!

Monday I did 55 minutes of cardio (elliptical, bike) and then took an hour long Power Pump class.
Tuesday I took an hour of vinyasa yoga.
Wednesday I did 35 elliptical and my normal cruch/leg lift routine.
Thursday I took a hardcore pilates class at 1 and a spinning class at 5:30 (all classes at my gym are an hour long).

Today, I need to rest my weary bones. I figure 6 hours of working out in 4 days is enough. I was pretty out of it last night after I got home from the spinning class. Also, my everything is a little bit sore. I like every one of the classes I took, which is good because maybe I will be able to get into a routine that mixes things up, so my body gets challenged, rather than doing the same things every day. I like that taking these classes, and seeing how I do in them, makes me feel good about myself and my abilities. I must be in pretty good shape if I can keep up with some of them, right? Despite the soreness, today I feel good, like my body really needed a week of ass-kicking to make up for all the traveling where I didn't have a chance to work out. I feel good, my mood is good, it's Friday and NaBloPoMo is more than halfway over. I think I'm doing OK, overall.

Fall = Domesticity

I did two hours worth of workout yesterday and came home about to pass out, so I promised Dan I'd just do a yoga class today (I took Vinyasa Yoga at lunch; it was a good class). I had the chance to take a new class after work (Yoga for Athletes) but decided I'd rather walk home while there was still some semblance of daylight and work on some projects.

The first thing I did was to pull out some yarn for a project, but then I realized what a horrible mess my knitting bag was (I had about 15 different yarns in various stages of knottedness, all tangled up and with some needles poked in here and there). The cats watched in fascination as I spent nearly an hour untangling everything. Now I have a pile of a variety of yarns used in a plethora of projects over the past year, and I went through the rest of my yarn stash and mentally started checking planned projects off the list as I inventoried. I proceeded to plop down on the couch in front of a movie I've seen many, many times and start working on one of said projects - even though there are wedding things to be worked on and a sweater for Dan that needs some TLC (and only has a couple of inches so far - it's going to take a while, I think).

For dinner tonight I made a soup from scratch (it was a butternut squash soup with shrimp, ingredients: butternut squash, vegetable broth, crushed red pepper. Cook squash/pepper in broth until squash is tender; puree. Return to pot, add peeled uncooked shrimp and cook on low until shrimp is done. Add some grated fresh parmesan; eat with crusty bread). The fall always has me feeling more domestic - knitting projects because the weather's getting colder and I still haven't replaced all my scarves/hats etc. from last year's storage debacle, cooking soups and stews, baking. On Sunday I baked pumpkin chocolate chip cookies from my own made-up recipe (takes very little butter because the pumpkin is so moist, so the cookies aren't terribly bad for you as cookies go) and I bought another sugar pumpkin to process and use in pie for Thanksgiving. Dan and I are cooking the bulk of Thanksgiving dinner for his family and we've already started discussing recipes and logistics and prepwork and it just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside to think about cooking and baking projects. I'm not ready for Christmas yet (certainly not; we haven't finished planning our Italy trip, the invitations aren't done and I have about 3908409384 knitting projects to do before that) but the deeper we get into autumn the more domestic I seem to feel.

Saturday Potpourri: I'm done!

Most of the year, I spend eight hours a day stuck in my dark basement cube, listening to the copy machine and pushing paper around. However, for about 6 weeks in the fall I get to travel all over the place (this year, it was Minneapolis and 6 locations around Colorado, oh, and Wyoming, but that wasn't work-related). While it's my favorite part of my job, since I get to meet people face-to-face and do something I'm good at, it's also rather exhausting. I am so glad that I will be sleeping in my own bed (with the exception of Thanksgiving) until we go to California for Christmas (and then Italy! woo!). I always forget how much better I sleep in my own bed with my own pillow and my own person (and kitty) than in a strange hotel room, no matter how fancy it is or how nice the pillows are.

Speaking of Italy, we figured out most of our accomodations today (scored a deal on hotels.com for Rome, and are going to do 6 nights in hostel dorm beds in Florence). Even though it is our "honeymoon" (though we won't be married yet), neither of us is willing to spend a lot of extra money on lodging; we'd rather spend it on gelato and museum admissions and presents. It was shocking to me how much prices have changed since my trip in 2000 - for one thing, they weren't using the Euro back then (except for banks) and the dollar was really high against all the European currencies. Italy was the cheapest country in Western Europe - I think my friend and I paid an average of $20/night (total) for hostels and one-star hotels, and that was in July during high tourist season. After our research today, Dan and I decided we got a really good deal on our average of $50ish/night (that's both for the hotel and the hostel, total not each). This trip isn't going to be nearly as cheap as the China trip, but we'll still eat most of our food from grocery stores and travel as backpackers, for the most part. I guess we'd rather spend money on experiences rather than have cushy hotel rooms.

Also wedding-related, we went to the gem show today at the Merchandise Mart and I found the stones I wanted for my wedding ring. It will be worn with my engagement ring and I had this idea in my head, but didn't know how it would play out until I found the right stones (a blue-green sapphire and some small dark emerald green tourmalines). Not only did I find some awesome stones that I think will look fabulous, but I also found a gorgeous tsavorite and two padparasha sapphires (these particular ones are a deep reddish-orange) to be made into another ring (for my right hand) or maybe into a necklace. For about 15 total stones (sapphires, tourmalines, and the fantastic tsavorite) I paid $150. Woot!

As for the awesomest thing I experienced this week, it was the dinner I had on Monday night at the resort restaurant in Stepford Springs. I had a phenomenal butternut squash bisque and a crab-avocado-portobella mushroom-veggie napoleon. It may have been the best combination of flavors I ever had in my mouth at one time from a restaurant meal. Both went very well with my glass of Geyser Peak sauvignon blanc. I don't usually consider myself a foodie, but damn, that was an exquisite meal.

A movie meme, courtesy my stylish friend Sara

I was maybe going to do a new blog review or maybe tell you about my trip to Colorado Springs, but instead I read Sara's blog and decided to do my own movie meme. I'll italicize the ones I've seen and red the ones I couldn't make it through because I don't know how to do the cross-through. I'll also star the ones I didn't see until I started dating Dan, who is a huge film buff in addition to his other nerditude. I didn't go to film school like Sara did, but I do like movies, so I've seen quite a few of these.

AFI Top 100 Films
1. Citizen Kane (1941)*
2. The Godfather (1972)*
3. Casablanca (1942)
4. Raging Bull(1980)
5. Singin’ in the Rain (1952) I'm a sucker for musicals
6. Gone with the Wind (1939) I always wondered what Scarlett saw in Ashley. He was so old!
7. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) I had to watch a scene or two of this in school one time and I think I fell asleep.
8. Schindler’s List (1993) Saw it in the theater, will never watch again. Too sad.
9. Vertigo (1958)* For a while there, we had a bunch of Hitchcock movies on our queue
10. The Wizard of Oz (1939) Family tradition, watched it every year on TV.
11. City Lights (1931)
12. The Searchers (1956)
13. Star Wars (1977) Um, duh. How could I possibly be marrying a big nerd and not see this movie? But I first saw it as a kid.
14. Psycho (1960)
15. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
16. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) I know I've seen the whole thing at one point (probably sometime when I was younger) but I specifically had to watch the really famous scene during one of my college classes.
17. The Graduate (1967)
18. The General (1927)
19. On the Waterfront (1954)
20. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
21. Chinatown (1974)
22. Some Like It Hot (1959)
23. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
24. E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982) My very first movie memory; got to go to the movies for my 4th birthday (early 1983, so ET stayed around for a while in the theaters)
25. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)* I think I saw this before I was with Dan, but I only remembered a scene or two, so I'm going to star this one because I *know* I saw it with him.
26. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
27. High Noon (1952)
28. All About Eve (1950)
29. Double Indemnity (1944)
30. Apocalypse Now (1979) I've probably seen a little bit of this but never had the chance to see the whole thing.
31. The Maltese Falcon (1941) My parents must have rented this or else it was on TV because I remember seeing it as a kid.
32. The Godfather Part II (1974)
33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
34. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
35. Annie Hall (1977)
36. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
37. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
38. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
39. Dr. Strangelove (1964) I did take one class in college where there was a film assigned every week, so I saw this during that class
40. The Sound of Music (1965) At one point I could recite the whole movie and sing every song.
41. King Kong (1933)
42. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
43. Midnight Cowboy (1969) This movie made me kind of sad.
44. The Philadelphia Story (1940)*
45. Shane (1953)
46. It Happened One Night (1934)
47.A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) A few scenes but not the whole movie.
48. Rear Window (1954) This and The Birds may have been the only Hitchcock films I saw before I was with Dan.
49. Intolerance (1916)
50. Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) * Superduh.
51. West Side Story (1961) Every time I watch this I hope and pray that it'll end differently. Every time. (me too, Sara. :( )
52. Taxi Driver(1976) This movie was studied during a class in college but we never watched it. I probably should someday.
53. Deer Hunter, The (1978)
54. M*A*S*H (1970)
55. North by Northwest (1959)* This might be my favorite Hitchcock.
56. Jaws (1975)* We watched this one time but I think we may not have WATCHED the whole thing. It was one time when we were still long distance.
57. Rocky (1976) * See above, but I know I watched the whole thing a different time.
58. The Gold Rush (1925)
59. Nashville (1975)
60. Duck Soup (1933)* Freedonia!
61. Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
62. American Graffiti (1973) Cut my teeth on the soundtrack to this movie.
63. Cabaret (1972) Cut my other teeth on the soundtrack to this one. My mom was a huge musical buff. Great show live; movie was pretty good.
64. Network (1976)
65. The African Queen (1951) I've seen most of it. It did not hold my attention.
66. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) *
67. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Hit way too close to home.
68. Unforgiven (1992) I may have seen this, but can't remember for sure.
69. Tootsie (1982) On Comedy Central one time in high school.
70. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
71. Saving Private Ryan (1998) It was way too loud in the theater.
72. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) One of the good Stephen King movies. Stand by Me is my favorite.
73. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) * We saw most of the movie at my grandma's house one time, so I'm counting it because Dan told me what the ending was.
74. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
75. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
76. Forrest Gump (1994)
77. All the President’s Men (1976)
78. Modern Times (1936)
79. The Wild Bunch (1969) Can't remember if Dan was there or not.
80. The Apartment (1960)
81. Spartacus (1960) Watched this for 6th grade history class.
82. Sunrise (1927)
83. Titanic (1997) I know it's all overblown and cliche, but I like it.
84. Easy Rider (1969)
85. A Night at the Opera (1935)
86. Platoon (1986) Pretty sure my parents rented this too. Don't remember much about it.
87. 12 Angry Men (1957)
88. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
89. The Sixth Sense (1999) But when I saw it, we were 5 minutes late to the movie, so it wasn't until years later and I saw it again that everything made sense.
90. Swing Time (1936)
91. Sophie’s Choice (1982)
92. Goodfellas (1990)
93. The French Connection (1971)
94. Pulp Fiction (1994) I successfully earned an A on a paper for a chemistry class in high school by using the "restart her heart with adrenaline" scene from this movie because the teacher was in love with Uma Thurman.
95. The Last Picture Show (1971)
96. Do the Right Thing (1989) Saw it for a college class, didn't like it as much as I wanted to.
97. Blade Runner (1982) Late night with friends in college. Too much to drink, couldn't stay awake. I should really see it.
98. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
99. Toy Story (1995)
100. Ben-Hur (1959)

Hey, that was fun! I've seen 47 out of 100, and 12 of those not until Dan and I were together. Of course, LOTR came out the year we got together, so I guess that doesn't count toward my cultural education.

Thursday travels 1: Glenwood Springs

Sunday afternoon I got back in my state car and headed west on I-70 again, through the Eisenhower Tunnel and over Vail Pass, zooming at 75 MPH where allowed by law and slowing to a 50 MPH crawl about 15 miles outside of Glenwood Springs. I arrived just after dark, checking into the Hotel Colorado, home of many ghosts. My room was on the first floor (something I wasn't entirely thrilled about) but I didn't feel like quibbling. The room had a 12-foot ceiling (I know this because the wardrobe was 6 feet high and another could have fit on top of it) and a mysteriously locked door, the bed about 15 feet away and across the room from the TV perched somewhat anachronistically on the period bureau. It was kind of a weird room, but I got two wireless signals between which to choose when I attempted to steal internets so that was OK.


Dan had given me a book to read (more on that in another post) so I headed across the pedestrian bridge (you can't hurtle yourself to your death onto the freeway or the train tracks, but you can jump in the river), book tucked under my arm, to a restaurant we'd eaten in last year called Italian Underground. The nice thing about this place (aside from good food and good service) is that you can kind of customize the menu (I asked for spinach lasagne, no extra serving of pasta in marinara, and it came with a small salad, bread, and spumoni ice cream for dessert). After I was finished, I headed back to my room and read some more, because despite having about 80 channels between which to choose, there wasn't a damn thing on the television.



Another drawback to my room was the lack of a functional alarm clock, which I discovered upon waking 20 minutes later than I'd intended on Monday morning. Luckily, I still had plenty of time to get ready, head across the bridge again to eat breakfast, and was setting up my workshop by 9:30. The training went well, and after everyone left I cleaned up the room and changed into jeans and a t-shirt. It was gorgeous outside, so I went out to wander around town, take some pictures, and look halfheartedly for a gift for my mom. I wasn't disappointed; it was about 70 degrees and the mid-afternoon sun started to cause all kinds of illumination of gorgeous fall color. The town of Glenwood Springs is filled with oldish houses, deciduous trees that turn lovely shades of gold and russet and purple, and the perfect fall atmosphere to make a great place to celebrate Halloween. It almost makes me think of a New England sleepy little town, and there is more than one ghost story to go along with the picture-perfectness. For instance, the hotel where I stayed was once a sanitarium for rich people recuperating from tuberculosis (apparently the hot springs in the area were considered to be beneficial to said condition). During World War 2, it was converted into a hospital for returning injured troops. Each time I've stayed there, I've had staff talk to me about experiencing the ghost who likes to wander between the kitchen and the service elevator, and this was the first year where I didn't hear all kinds of weird noises in the night. I guess the ghosts are all up on the 2nd - 4th floors.

Anyhow, I had lots of fun taking photos and then remembered something Dan had done last year. One of the two bars on the little touristy strip is called Doc Holiday's Saloon, after THE Doc Holiday who came to Glenwood to recover from TB and ended up dying there. Apparently, he's buried somewhere up on Cemetary Hill. Last year, Dan came with me to this particular training and he made the trip to see Doc Holiday's grave during the day when I was working. I asked a couple of locals, who pointed me in the direction I needed to go. Dan had said it was "up a little hill" but I'm telling you that hill was not little. It was up a BIG hill, and despite being in good shape I considered the climb to be a good workout. Partway up I stopped to admire the view, noting the splotches of color both in town and on the hillsides all around.


The cemetary itself was one of the more interesting I've been in. Once upon a time it was privately owned, so only very important or wealthy people got buried there (I'm sure the whole hassle of carting a body up the damn hill factored into it). The city of Glenwood Springs bought it in the 1930s, but I didn't see anyone who had been buried later than the 1950s (though I didn't look at every stone). The most interesting grave marker to me was one that had two men's names and "Brothers who died together in a mining accident", leading me to think some about how common that used to be and how the mining accident just a few months ago was such an anomaly these days. There was also a family site where Mom, Dad, and Kid all died within a few months of each other in the late 1800s, Dad being the oldest at 32. It didn't say how they died, but I expect there had to be some sort of disease involved.

Anyhow, I'd come to see Doc Holiday's memorial site. Nobody knows where he is actually buried (apparently, there's some sort of strangeness surrounding the burial) and for a while there was a memorial headstone that apparently had some misinformation on it. It was replaced by the city in 2002, so Doc Holiday (who died in 1880-something) has, by far, the most recent headstone. Even though he isn't actually buried underneath it. I wasn't the only one in the cemetary; it seems the trail to get up the hill is a multi-use trail (bikes, hikers, dog walkers) and I'm not the only one who found it to be a great workout getting up there. Two parents with a toddler had made it up the hill, and the toddler had no interest in anything other than practicing her running skills. Little trails had formed within the cemetary, so I explored a bit before heading back down.

My hike down the hill was shared with two off-leash exploring dogs and their person, and when I got downtown I decided I'd had a good enough workout for the day. I took some more pictures and headed back to the hotel to wait for my cousin who now lives in Vail. She got there around 7:30 and we went out for mediocre Chinese food (next time, I'm going back to the brewpub because I know that place is good). Afterward, we had a few drinks at Doc Holiday's Tavern. Just after our discussion about how I never get picked up in bars or have people buy me drinks (really, it's OK, I don't need skeevy guys to buy me drinks), this guy came over and offered to buy us some drinks. It must have been because she was with me. The guy, one of the many oil workers in the area, was actually pretty nice and it turned out we had similar taste in music. But later his skeevy friend who claimed to be in his 30s and looked at least 50 joined us, so my cousin and I excused ourselves soon afterward and headed back to the haunted hotel to have more cousin chats.

Tuesday morning I'd intended to get up and avail myself of the hotel's nearly adequate gym facilities, but we'd stayed up late so I slept in until 8:30, showered and had breakfast at my favorite breakfast place in town (Daily Bread cafe, not open on Mondays). It was delicious. I had a bit of time to relax before presenting the material for day 2 of my training (all bad news, unfortunately), which wasn't as well attended as it was supposed to be, but everyone there asked a lot of questions and that was what I was hoping for. After lunch, several of us took the suggestion of one of the attendees to take a short walk over to where he had seen a herd of bighorn sheep the previous day, and we were rewarded with a herd of about 20 sheep of various ages, including two rams with enormous balls.

After the training was over, I changed and packed up the car, making it home in 2.5 hours. The drive home was uneventful and I amused myself by seeing how efficient I could make the Prius by judicious acceleration on the mountains. I arrived totally exhausted and thoroughly glad to be home with my kitties, getting to sleep in my own bed with Dan beside me. I do like the traveling bit, but I do get tired of being away from home so much in such a short period of time. Overall, I enjoyed my trip to Glenwood, and kind of wished I lived there as a kid so I could trick-or-treat through the old spooky neighborhoods, dry leaves blowing in the wind, making myself shiver deliciously with thoughts of the ghosts floating down from Cemetary Hill to oversee the night's activities. Some kids have all the luck.