I finally made yogurt.

And it was totally easy and turned out perfectly. At least, it was totally easy after I realized that 1 gallon is not the same thing as 2 liters and 180 degrees Fahrenheit does exist on my thermometer it's just the smaller inside numbers because this thermometer is primarily in Celsius. So yes. Once I got all of that sorted, it was easy. And I have been eating yogurt every day for the last three days. It is delicious. I like to add honey or maple syrup and blueberries which I splurged and bought from the store. I think they are from Chile or something.

I try, for the most part, to buy Texan produce. It isn't easy and where I can't buy Texan I try to buy organic. But it is fits and spurts. No one is perfect, I assume, which takes some of the pressure off.

This weekend D and I also experimented in making avocado fries with siracha lemon mayo dipping sauce. We were incredible proud of ourselves, though I was a little concerned that our home cooking is turning towards deep frying our foods in oils. We were successful. That is what matters.

We drove an hour south on Sunday to watch a filmed version of Stephen Sondheim's Company in the movie theaters. This version stars Stephen Colbert, Neil Patrick Harris, John Cryer, Patti Lupone, Christina Hendricks, and a bunch of others. Admittedly, we are not theater people. We didn't know anything about Company, nor could we name a single other Sondheim musical without looking it up on the internet (Sweeney Todd and Into the woods). We were going to see Stephen Colbert and Neil Patrick Harris sing and dance. We really, really enjoyed this. It was hilarious and well done and I liked it very much.

After Company, we drove up and met a friend for dinner at BJ's. BJ's is a restaurant that serves gluten free pizza. I think they serve other things too, but I wasn't particularly interested in those things. What I wanted was pizza. It was SO GOOD. Oh gracious. I now feel that we should make the 30 minute drive to BJ's often. I ate the left over half of my pizza for lunch yesterday and it was superb. I have eaten gluten free pizza in a restaurant before, just once, and it was fine. Not great, but fine. It almost made me miss pizza more. But this, this was something else entirely. This is magic.

Some friends of mine are getting married in a couple of weeks. I was looking at their registry the other day. They are using The Alternative Gift Registry. The alternative gift registry allows you to make a very specific gift registry, including items from smaller, local sellers, or in this case, they asked for people to gift 10 minutes of their time during the reception to wash dishes. I love this. I intend to try to remember to wash dishes during their wedding reception. Because that's the kind of gift I can afford right now.

I've also been spending quite a lot of time on pintrest.com. It is my new time waster, but I think it also stirs up a bit of rebellion in me. The majority of people on pintrest seem to be mom's, who want to be skinnier and feel the need to post their motivational pictures on the internet, as well as their crafts, their idea baby items, and their "style" goals. Essentially, it is all the photographs from every mommy blog ever. However, it is also a collection of the most bizarre shit on the internet. And I like it. You can look at my pins here.

Also, Attack the Block now has a US release date sometime in late July. I know you all were being driven absolutely batty by your inability to see it. Now you can. Probably. So long as your town has an arty theater of some kind. Look for it!

Oh my goodness, blogs are too much work. Half of the time I am convinced that I am wildly clever and quirky and every passing thought I have is hilarious and worth publishing for the world to see. The other half of the time I think that no matter what I do it will be less polished than 99% of the internet and anyone who wants to know anything about me can just Google things like, "lack of time management", "yellow", "sleep deficiency", "spider solitaire", and "do it (cut your hair, make your own (clothes, lotion, smoothies, laundry detergent)) yourself" and come up with a reasonable approximation of me. Good luck with that.

Otherwise, it is Spring and I am spending a large portion of my waking life trying to be healthy. For serious. Just when I think that I have kind of gotten a handle on something, something else crops up and I think, yeah, that probably is because I've been sick for X amount of years (the X might be a million), and my body is crapping out on me in any and every fashion available to it. It is kind of awesome. But not really.

Yesterday my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew came to visit. They live about an hour north of me and rarely have time off or choose to leave their circle and life and home. I felt totally honored that they would choose to spend a day off with me.

I love this little man.

This is a busy month at work, with special events every weekend (not the least of which is Holy Week), and I feel busy. D's brother gets married in Little Rock, Arkansas this weekend so we will be driving there on Friday. I hope we get to hit up the Bill Clinton Museum. That would be amazing.

Also, we went to see both Hanna and Arthur this weekend and both were awesome. Way to go movies! AND, we finally are going to go see Jane Eyre on Thursday night when we drive up to Dallas. I am so excited I feel the need to write in bold.

In other news, since the passing of Brian Jacques I felt the need to read the Redwall books. I never read them as a child and our library helpfully carries all of them. I am loving these books. They are fabulous. They are deep, and gritty, wonderfully funny, full of community and hard work, accepting of all kinds, sizes, and types of animals. So worth reading. Especially if you are a seven year old boy.

Buh. The end!

Movie review Wednesday!

I know I have mentioned this before that D and I watch a lot of movies. We have a year (a literal year) full of Fridays at the movies to look forward to. I have made the mistake (twice now) of asking him what movie comes out this Friday. This starts him on reading The List. The List is a list of select movies opening every Friday from now through some time in August. This is D's year. D's year at the movies. I actually kind of wish he were here right now so that he could relay the list to you. That way you could fully understand. Regardless, Sucker Punch comes out this Friday, and Paul came out last Friday, and, slightly shockingly, Jane Eyre was the movie that made The List the Friday before that (Never mind that Jane Eyre didn't actually come out anywhere and still hasn't made it to our town. The fact that it made the list at all pacifies my heart).

We watch a lot of main stream, well attended films. However, we also watch a lot of incredibly great, tragically overlooked films. I am going to talk about two of them today.

Number One: Monsters.
Monsters is an alien movie. A wonderful, beautiful, socially conscious alien movie. It was filmed on location with a minimum amount of set creation, and with only two hired actors. Other than the films two leads, everyone in the film was found on location (though there are some U.S. soldiers in the film, so I am not sure this is 100% true) and are uncredited.

Monsters is set in present day. An alien infestation has contaminated most of Mexico and parts of South Texas. The movie centers around a photojournalist and the daughter of the man who owns the paper trying to make their way through the infected zone, back to the United States. The story focuses on effects of the infestation on the lives of the native peoples, and on the relationships that have developed/altered due to this new menace. They show very little of the actual monsters, and when they do the monsters are breathtakingly beautiful. This movie is not scary, but rather suspenseful. It is wonderfully filmed, and highlights some of the most beautiful parts of Central America. It also was shot, in part, in devastated Galveston, TX. My sister and I went to Galveston a couple of months after Hurricane Rita, and I recognized it in this film. Kudos to movie makers for utilizing existing devastation rather than spending millions to simulate it.

I suggest this movie for everyone. Whether you like sci-fi or not. It is a fabulous, epic, classy, glorious film.

Movie Number Two: Mic Macs.

For anyone who enjoyed Amelie, or City of Lost Children, or A Very Long Engagement, or any of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's wonderful films, Mic Macs is your new favorite movie. It is in French (because he is French and makes French movies) and, while I know foreign language films deter people often, I think that is silly.

It is a film about an unassuming man whose entire life has been shaped by two major weapons manufacturers in his town. He is adopted by a troupe of eccentrics living together in a garbage dump and, together, using their skills, they decide to wage war on the two men responsible for all these weapons.

If you have seen any of Jeunet's other films you know that he has a panache for gadgetry. He likes sight gags, jokes, and puns. He employs actors for their unusual abilities (or faces) and uses them in his films to the best possible outcome. This movie is silly, and hilarious, and moving, and wonderful.

So, there you are. Movies reviewed and suggested for your pleasure.

'Bout damn time.

Anne Lamott and Donald Miller came to Baylor last night. They sat on the stage in this big, beautiful room and answered questions about faith and writing and how the two converge. I love Anne. This is the second time we have been in the same room, and my favorite. The first time, in Chicago, I went to see her read from Plan B, her second book on faith and faith-like thoughts. Reading from a book is different from answering questions, and she is so neurotic and honest and strange.

Also, incredibly, there were protesters. What the cabbage? Anyone who has actually read Anne Lamott should know so much better than to protest. Which makes me think they hadn't actually read her, but were just a part of a campus pro-life club. Narrow.

Anne has just come out with a new novel, the third Rosie book. In it, apparently, Rosie is a teenager and hooked on drugs. No! Rosie!

Drew reminded me that I don't love Anne's fiction (which is a ridiculous thing to remind someone of when they are in the the throes of despair over the wrong choices of a character they think they love), which made me determined to reread it. I used to have several of her novels, though I have no idea where they've gone.

After the Q&A in the beautiful room we went to the Mayborn Museum to watch an exciting pre-screening of Blue Like Jazz: The Movie. Only, they didn't actually have to movie there so we just watched clips of Steve Taylor's lap top while Don Miller explained making a movie out of a book with no narrative. This was hilarious. And the movie looks better than it has any right to be. I hope it gets shown in your town. I hope you go see it.

Other things:
Yesterday, I got a package in the mail. My parents bought me a yogurt maker. This is AWESOME. I'm going to make all the yogurt! And then eat it all.

I watched the original Planet of the Apes movie for the first time last week.

I found a newer Mary Doria Russell novel in a half price books in Austin. I am a little more than half way through and I think it is astonishingly good. So very, very good. It is set during the latter part of World War II, and revolves around the Italian underground, which is beautiful. Before reading this I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which is also about World War II and comic books. I need a book not about World War II after this, please.

A lot of the time I can't remember my own zip code. This can't be normal.

Movie Monday!

Monday.

For all of my life up until this year I have worked erratic and ridiculous jobs. These jobs sort of, kind of destroyed the idea of weekends and, with weekends, the idea of a "case of the Muuuundays" kind of Monday. If your weekends aren't too good-to-be-true, hold-on-to-every-last-drop kind of days, Mondays seem kind of okay in comparison. Especially if sometimes you get them off. Which I did.

However, now I work a very mundane 9-5 (or 8:20-ish to 4 if we're honest), which makes weekends simple shine. Which, in turn, makes Mondays just that much bleaker. I don't love Mondays. I do not.

D and I watch movies. More movies than you do, trust me. And we are better at it. Probably. For the sake of being superior I am going to pretend that we only watch movies on the weekends because we live well balanced and structured lives. Then, on Mondays, I am going to talk about the movies we watched over the weekend. If it sounds like we watched more movies than could fit in a weekend and you want to start having sneaky thoughts about how I might be lying to you about when we watch movies (like all the time, maybe), you are probably wrong and, actually, kind of nosy for being so interested in our movie watching habits. So. Without further adieu, here are some movie thoughts.

So we borrow movies from the library mostly. When I say "we" I mean Drew. We watch movies at his house because it is currently much warmer, bigger, and better outfitted. This means we watch movies he picks/owns, unless I have been very clever/employed a lot of forethought. We instigated a trade-off system where he picks one and then I pick one, which sometimes works. Like when we watched the 2007 version of Persuasion staring Sally Hawkins, and the actress who plays Lady Russell also plays the Queen of the Borg in the 1996 film "Star Trek: First Contact", inspiring us to watch that as well. So yes. See? It works.

Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes films have sequels. Sometimes netflix movies overlap with library movies and we have to watch certain films quickly in order to get them all back on time. Sometimes it is October and all we are allowed to watch, apparently, are Evil Dead, Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead versions. Which is really, really not fine. Sometimes I've been wanting to see a certain film but, because it is scary, don't want to watch it by myself and then, because I request it, it becomes my pick. Usually this results in me making Drew watch five hours of something British when my turn does roll around again. Systems. The key to peace.


I am tired of talking about movies. We got a great gift of a cook book this weekend. We are making soups. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.

I watch a lot of movies. It isn't the most intellectual hobby, nor is it the most productive, and more often than not I am a little ashamed of it, but I love it. I find the need to defend it. I have come up with a lot of pretty good reasons in my defensiveness, though I hadn't stopped to really examine it until recently. With the introduction of hulu and netflix watch instantly to my life, I have been given access to more movies of dubious quality than ever before. And I watch them. I will watch almost anything, it seems, if it is free and streaming over the Internet. It has been interesting to see, in this overload of stories, which moments stand out. I have found some beautiful, poignant, haunting moments nestled in some of the worst, most incoherent, and wandering of movies.
I like to collect stories. I love to read and will read almost anything (lately especially), and I think that same concept of story telling, of life-truth represented through myth, through the tale, is here in these terrible films.

For example: I watched a movie called Birds of America which came out sometime last year, with Matthew Perry. It is a confusing, somewhat angry story. However, there is this subplot with his sister, who is beautiful, promiscuous and flighty, her ex-boyfriend, who is in a wheelchair after an accident he had while driving drunk because she left him, and his new fiance, who is a kind, bubbly, overweight person who you only meet really briefly. For some reason this story line, a minor one in the movie, stuck with me and was all I could think about for a couple of days.

There was another movie, And Then She Found Me, with Helen Hunt, in which a woman who was adopted as a baby loses her mother and is left by her husband within twenty four hours. It's a sort of convoluted, slightly unbelievable story as she finds love, of sorts, and is reunited with her birth mother, and then single mindedly attempts to have a baby. However, the movie revolves really strongly around the Judaism of its main character, building to a scene where she is prompted by her birth mother to pray before they attempt to artificially inseminated her. She refuses, saying something about being angry with God. She changes her mind in the last minute, and proceeds to pray beautifully. "Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad." The Lord our God is one. She then explains it to her birth mother. "The God of hope. The God of fear. The Lord our God is one." Which made me weep.

Things I think about.

We are moving soon. There is a certain delicious stress to moving. It is a sense of unknowing, of hoping, of stretching and planting and beginning again. You get to unmake what it is you do not like and make anew things which bring you joy. I do not enjoy the sorting, cleaning, and throwing away that of necessity accompanies this, but it is as everything else in life. The good comes with the bad. I am stock piling boxes.

The Fall

There are a lot of things going on.
Since I last posted:
Starbucks transitioned to Christmas (or half transitioned. We're brewing "thanksgiving blend". Christmas blend comes in about twenty days.).
I was sick for five days.
I got over being sick just in time to watch us get a new President. I cried a little and got laughed at a little. I am thrilled.

Now comes the decision about what to do with my HOPE posters. I always intended to take them down if Obama was elected because I am not one to have pictures of a government figure up in my house. Unless it is in jest, I suppose. I would definitely have pictures of government figures up in my house in jest. I am that kind. I suppose he was always a government figure as well, albeit a minor one. But now! Now he is a major government figure and I should take the posters down. However, the posters have morphed a little and one now boasts the head of Samuel L. Jackson, and this is hilarious and a glorious display of my own cleverness. If I take down the other two, this third does not make sense. But if I leave up the other two I look like a fanatic. I've always liked the posters a lot. That may be understating it. I harbor a secret love for these posters, but not necessarily because of who they are representing. Many people have not liked them so much, saying they looked like communist leader posters, which is unnerving for some reason, or that its audacious to attach the word "hope" to someone other than Christ. I would be thrilled if they looked slightly more like communist propaganda, and especially if they had some sort of non sequiter face attached. Like Paul Bunyan. Or Kierkegaard. Or Dame Maggie Smith. I think I would absolutely, with no reservations or secrets, love those posters. Hence the transition to Samuel L. I used to tell people that I wished they had three different faces on them; Barack Obama, Samuel L. Jackson, and Morgan Freeman. That would make them perfect in my eyes.

That is not what I wanted to talk about. Not it at all.

What I wanted to talk about was a movie.
When I was sick this last week my friend Justin graciously loaned me his copy of season one of Pushing Daisies. It pretty much saved my sanity. I would suggest Pushing Daisies to pretty much any and everyone. If you like pretty, fanciful, Witty, amusing, heartwarming television full of whimsy this is the show for you. Its fantastic. Rarely do I suggest television as there are so many other lovely and constructive ways to spend your time and interact with the world but in this case I make a suggestion.
To get to the point, Pushing Daisies stars the incredibly talented Lee Pace. In searching through his career I discovered a reference to the film "The Fall" which came out this past summer but which nobody ever heard about. I was intrigued. We rented "The Fall" and watched it two evenings ago. I will try to explain.

Quite simply, there are things in life that encourage you simply because the exist. Leaves that change colors and swirl; hot oatmeal on cold mornings, Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, laughter, when you can see your breath, etc. These are things that, though small and seemingly insignificant, you live for; things that make life worth it. I would argue, and please do not think me over dramatic, that The Fall belongs on this list. The very fact of its existence makes life slightly more worthwhile.
It is a huge, sweeping film in which the lines between fantasy and reality are very clearly drawn but in which the story wavers back and forth. Its beautiful, sad, glorious, hilarious, and intense.

There are a lot of things that I want to say about it, but wont because I want you to watch it and love it on your own. Please do. Its rated R for some undisclosed reason. Absolutely undeserved.

After we were done watching it my roommate (who has been trying to get me to watch The Rock for a while now) looked at me and said,
"Well, if you loved this you'll love The Rock. Its all about stunts too."
"Stunts!?" I said incredulously, "You think this movie was about stunts?!?"
"Lots of them, yes." He said.
"Were we watching the same film? It was about love," I said. "And courage, and self knowledge!"
"Love and stunts are like two sides of the same coin." TJ offered.
"Yeah," Said Kris, "Toss it up, catch it when it comes down. Whats it going to be? Love? Cool. Stunts? Awesome."
"Two sides of the same coin." TJ said.

The Hours

TJ and I watched the hours last night, a movie we had both been wanting to see. We made cazones and had tea with honey that was harvested by all those lovely farmies that very morning (best cup of tea I think I have ever had). And then we settled down to our movie.

Two things.

There is a conversation that Clarissa has with her daughter Julie where she talks about the one moment of happiness in her life. Not that she had only been happy that once (I don't think) but that that one moment was the happiness. She thought it was the beginning of a life full of it, but, she reiterates, it was it. It is a memory that you never get to see but that they reference over and over, Clarissa and Richard on the porch, early in the morning, and, to me, this happiness was understood and understandable. I don't know if you can understand, but it was very important to me. I think maybe I live in the opposite expectation from young Clarissa. Always I expect this to be the last happiness. A frantic grabbing for the current happiness because I know there cant possibly be more.

This makes me think of what C.S Lewis says in Perelandra about how rejecting the happiness that comes in favor of the happiness you have is a form of sin. To hold onto the previous happiness shows your contempt for the gifts God brings.

Secondly, there is a scene between the afore mentioned Clarissa and Richard which is their last together. He is on a lot of drugs and acting crazy and she is finally willing to see his life as he wants it and let go of her control over him. I want you to have seen this movie but am a little afraid that you didn't react like I did. I usually cry in movies. Its true, I do. I don't usually feel like I have been kicked in the stomach. (I once actually was, which is a long and different story). I don't really have all that much to say, I just wanted to mention it.

In reference to the current happiness, TJ is outside listening to Neutral Milk Hotel while staining some tables that he built for our house. Jessica is sitting at her piano playing Ben Kweller and Damien Rice songs. Kris is playing his guitar in the living room. We all watered the garden this morning.