Just More Facts

I still don't really have time to be doing this, but this incommunicado phase is weighing heavily on me. I'll keep it brief with a partial list of what's been going on over the past, oh, month or so.

1. ICE Awards: awards for advertising. Yes, they really do give them. I went on the company's dime and ended up wishing I hadn't because the whole affair was sickeningly self-congratulatory. No one seemed to have an inkling that we were anything other than an auditorium full of people who do wonderful things for the planet and its denizens. Even the irony of the visible discomfort felt throughout the room whenever we were forced to watch sponsorship reels was lost on them. I walked home feeling like a self-loathing Satanist.

2. Softball: there were two rained-out weekends in there, bookended by games wherein our team was beaten soundly by another team of infuriatingly friendly people. In the first one, i.e. the lefthand bookend, I was hit very hard in the shin by a line drive. Luckily, the physical exertion of my loud swearing was not enough to prevent me from reaching down to pick up the still spinning ball and throw it to first, thereby getting the perpetrator out. The messy wound on my leg healed just in time for the righthand bookend this last weekend.
[Editor's note: I just realized this is the third time I've told you this story. Twice would be unforgivable, but I think three times is leaning back towards funny, in a bemusing kind of way. Besides which, I believe this is my best version so far, so it's staying on.]

3. Hockey: ultimately disappointing, but penultimately thrilling. I was pretty impressed with those Oilers, and especially with that young turk of a backup goalie, Maarkinen. They got real grit, those guys. Now that it's over, I can finally stop drinking beer during the week. Sometimes the price of being Canadian is almost too much.

4. Painting: still going, bit by bit. And, relatedly,

5. Moving: same status as above. The big finish comes on Sunday, when we rent a cube van for the big stuff and Buster.

6. Nosferatu the Vampyre: a remake of the first, silent Dracula movie, which was directed by F. W. Murnau. This one is by Werner Herzog and is not silent, but retains the super creepy atmosphere of the original. It also fits in perfectly with a lot of Herzog's other films, of which I'm a big fan, in that a) it moves very slowly and mystically, the actors sometimes seeming hypnotized, and b) Klaus Kinski takes on the title role. He's a scary looking dude any time, but you should see him doing the rat-and-plague-obsessed filmmaker's vision of the character. Yoiks! I'd bought this movie secondhand awhile back, but we didn't watch it until we were desperate for something to do besides paint one evening. Well worth the price and the wait.

7. Yoga: the spring session is over and the summer one doesn't start for another three weeks. I'm a little worried we might actually go insane from not standing on one foot and staring into space regularly. I realize this is an unorthodox version of what constitutes sanity. In the land of the blind...

8. Ali's birthday: was real nice. We went out for dinner and drinks with some friends. It WAS on the 7th. Thanks to everyone for cards, calls, and camaraderie. I got her a camera lens which I thought was pretty nice but which turned out to be just this side of crappy. Man, those things are expensive. So it's gone back, to be replaced by a better one soon.

And that's actually more than I have time for right now. I'm sorry for this blog abuse through negligence. Things should even out, keel-wise, fairly soon and then I'll be able to type your ear off much more regularly.

- Andrew