Sunday, February 4, 2007

Today started with such promise... :)

Today, I got up early (but not earlier than 8:30AM - that is the rule for the weekend) and went to do a little painting. Once upon a time, I used to be a painter. Not a exterior painter, or someone who does portraits, but an interior painter and finisher. Summers between high school and college terms I would work with a neighbor, doing painting, staining, refinishing, varnishing - you name it, we did it. So I like to paint. However, unlike my previous employer, I enjoy painting with colors (he was, sadly, from the school of "white is best.") As my brother is going to be moving into my great-uncle's old house, we have been doing quite a bit of remodeling and redecorating. I'm going to try my first attempt at attaching pictures in the blog:




It's not much to look at yet, but progress is being made:



The final product will be a retro mix of red, black, grey and chrome, complete with chrome Formica kitchen set.

The transformation of the house has been a fun project, but a long, drawn out one. My step-mother and I first started cleaning out the house in late August/early September, sorting, cleaning, and cataloging 40+ years of accumulation. So finally being able to GET to painting is a huge step, and it makes us realize how far we've actually come...

However, the downside of painting is the waiting between coats. So after 4-5 hours, most of what we were able to do today was done. I decided to come home for lunch, and in the mean time ended up becoming an absolute bum, all because of our local library.

I love the library. I was an English major (British Literature Emphasis) in college, and I still can spend hours in the bibliotheque. Well, it just so happened that I did spend about an hour there last Wednesday, and came home with four movies and four books. This afternoon, the allure of the movies scattered on my countertop became too overpowering, and I succumbed to an afternoon of cinematic laziness.

Last night's feature was Elizabethtown, with Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom. THIS MOVIE WAS TERRIBLY UNDERRATED! Also has a great soundtrack - it is on my list of things to pick up from bn.com one of these days. The greatness of Elizabethtown had me stoked for today's showings, and they didn't disappoint.

First off was a bit of a frou-frou movie: Mean Girls with Lindsay Lohan and Tina Fey. Not really a big fan of either, but had heard the movie was funny. It was okay, but it was one of those movies you watch because you KNEW people like that in high school, and you can totally identify with the characters.

Next came one of my new favorites: The Seagull's Laughter. Laughter is an Icelandic film about how women in a small post-WWII fishing village band together to protect themselves from love, life, and the opposite sex. It is so very funny, and terribly dark, but the actress who plays the main character of Freya (Margret Vilhjalmsdottir) is spectacular - one of the most expressive faces I've seen in a movie in a long time. They characterize it as a romantic comedy on IMDB, but it is nothing like the drivel synonymous with most American movies of that category. Freya is paralleled by her younger cousin Agga. The way they both manipulate the males in the storyline suggests that Agga is following the same path that Freya did before her.

But enough of my amateur criticisms - Good Luck and Good Night calls to me from the DVD player!

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