The Blog With No Name

Charles took the kiddies up to see his parents yesterday. I spent the morning getting a great deal of the remaining kitchen painting done, thoroughly vacuumed my car, picked up a lot of junk from the yard, and worked a little on the disaster that is our basement. Wasn’t I a good girl.

So to reward myself, I saw the latest Batman movie last night with Cousin J and Kristin, who attends the church where I work, and who has three little boys under the age of 7. She seemed very excited to have a chance to get out of the house.

The Movie: Wow. Where has this Christian Bale guy been hiding? He’s certainly easy on the eyes. It was suspenseful, and the bad guys were bad without being gratuitously bad, which is an annoying trend these days (it started for me with “Gladiator.” I understood that the emperor was a bad guy ::without:: the burned corpses, and the extra info about the wife being raped, etc etc). Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Rutger Hauer as well – all well cast and also nice to look at! I hope Charles makes time to see it – I think he’ll like it a lot.

We were joined by my sister-in-law after the movie at a nearby restaurant, so that Cousin J could indulge her taste for margaritas. Yum.

I wish he hadn’t. He has nothing to be ashamed of. What have we come to, that the thugs running our government can swell with righteous indignation when asked to explain why they are behaving like madmen, and those people who have the guts to speak up are called traitors? Our actions define us, and right now we’re sharing a page in the dictionary with the dregs of humanity.
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I referred to this book earlier; I got it from the library and more or less inhaled it (I sat in the car one day for ten minutes after the kiddies had gone inside; I stayed up too late; I was almost late for work; etc etc). I can’t decide whether it’s a science fiction novel set in the present day, or a “straight” novel with a twist. I enjoyed reading about the characters (that’s the only thing that will hold my interest in any sort of fiction – flashy, ostentatious writing or masses of nasty characters put me off a book instantly), and the constraints of the time travel (couldn’t control when/where he traveled, and couldn’t take anything with him, including clothing!) certainly drove the story in interesting directions. I liked it a great deal, but I guess I don’t see the “great love story” that other readers have latched on to so fervently. Maybe that’s just me…

Today was the first day of the Northern Illinois Synod (ELCA) Assembly, held at a local Lutheran college. My employer is the host congregation, which means we stuff envelopes, help with registration, and drive people all over campus in little golf carts. I was in charge of enlisting all these volunteers. Coincidentally enough, I also happen to be driving a golf cart for six hours each day. I haven’t yet discussed with my boss whether today was a work day or a day off for me. I suspect I ought to pay my employer, actually. My boss took a photo of me, which I will attempt to extract from her and put here soon. My husband showed up with the kiddies at one point, and I gave them a bit of a joy ride, and then took them up the hill behind the library to the dormitory close to our house, where Charles hauled them away again. Probably not the most responsible use of the Synod’s resources, but fun anyway.
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Can someone, anyone, think of a way, short of confiscating his wallet every afternoon, to get my husband to give me his debit card receipts? It’s making me crazy!

I think it’s finally time to admit the truth and get the blasted Allegra prescription. This is awful. The moment the temperature shot up, my sinuses started trying to crawl out of my head via my eye sockets. I can’t spend the summer this way – it’s not fair to the kiddies, for starters, and I HATE HEADACHES! Ow ow ow…..

Green* bottle = good

Blue bottle = bad (“aftershave,” I’m fairly sure I heard someone use that term.)

And dammit, the boys beat the girls in Trivial Pursuit, with perhaps the EASIEST QUESTION EVER!!!!!!! as the final question.

Rematch!
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1.
My daughter’s teacher is from a very small town (with a nice pizza joint) in central Illinois, near Champaign, about four hours away from here. Oddly enough, it happens to be about ten miles down the state highway from the very small town where my mom grew up.
I, as a child, was eating pizza at Monacle’s while my future daughter’s future teacher was probably within a mile’s radius of me, playing with her dolls or picking on her brothers or zipping around on her bicycle.

2.
My son’s new first grade teacher is the daughter of my third grade teacher.

The Time Traveller’s Wife, reviewed at ThiaminTrek.

Doesn’t that sound interesting?

(This entry is a test of the JustBlogIt! Firefox extension.)

I just got an offer for a Senior Discount to the Smithsonian Magazine.

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