April Musings

Hey everyone! Winter is having one last gasp in Colorado after several beautiful weeks of spring. I spent my lunchtime in Borders today drinking chai, eating a sandwich and reading (The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank - she wrote one of the first chicklit books, Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing which I did not much enjoy. Wonder Spot is much better). While there, I felt a surprising surge of nostalgia for winter as everyone rushed about in coats and hats and mittens. This feeling will certainly disappear this afternoon as I drive down to Denver for an appointment. I can already imagine myself cursing the skies and the roads. But I'm not alone in the cold. I heard from Creede this morning that it is snowing in Stillwater, OK - a rarity in April.

I feel like I've been super busy these past few weeks, but don't have a ton to show for it. We are in the midst of remodeling our dining room and thanks to Home Depot that's been a bit of a disaster. The install work is now set for the ominous date of Friday the 13th. How apros po. We've lived with most of our dining room furniture in our living room for a couple of weeks now, so what's one more?

In better news, I finally bought a new car! It's a 2007 silver crv exl. I adore it, though it does not arrive for a couple of weeks. It's currently enjoying a cruise from Japan, so hopefully it will arrive refreshed and ready for me. This car is much needed after my car was practically totalled on our drive to Ardmore at Christmas. The saab is still drivable, but not worth much. The honda dealer actually offered to take it off my hands for $100. There's something a bit liberating about driving a $100 car though. I have zero fear of curbs, door dings, scrapes, hail storms, cracked windshields, etc. Of course, I hope to find some saab enthusiast or parts trader to buy my car for more than that. We shall see...

I've seen a few good movies of late:

• Zodiac - Zodiac is just plain awesome as you can expect from David Fincher. I knew little about the Zodiac killer going in. The 70s was just a weird and scary time with serial killers preying on cities and bad clothing galore. The movie wasn't really scary, just creepy.
  

• The Lives of Others - This film won the Oscar this year for Best Foreign Picture. It's set in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin wall and tells the story of a captain in the Stasi, the German secret police, who's assigned to spy on a playwright and his actress girlfriend. This is a really great story and it makes East Germany seem like the most depressing place imaginable. Lives is yet another good film made by the Germans that puts an unsparing eye on a dreadful period of their history. Performances were excellent, particularly that of Sebastian Koch who played the charismatic playwright. My vote for best foreign film still goes to Pan's Labyrinth tho.

• Breach - Breach tells the true story of the most destructive spy in US history, Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who worked for the Soviets for 15 YEARS. Talk about despicable. Chris Cooper gives a mesmerizing performance as Hanssen, one truly weird dude. He was an uber-devout Catholic grandfather who aside from being a spy was also a perv. Ryan Phillippe and the always awesome Laura Linney work to bust him before he flies the coop. The story was very interesting, but I found the movie a bit on the slow, and once again depressing, side. Are there no shiny, happy movies to be found this spring?

And I've seen one insane movie:

• 300 - Thomas dragged me to this one. In fact, I'm certain this is the case for every girl that saw this movie. It was like watching a videogame. And boy did I get a history lesson. Little did I know that Xerxes, leader of the Persians, was a 7 foot tall drag queen complete with Lee Press-on Nails, that all of the Spartans had the exact same set of six pack abs, or that Xerxes' band of elite fighters, The Immortals, looked like monsters beneath their silver masks. 300 was so over the top I found it pretty amusing. It helped that we saw it on the imax screen. I must admit I was never bored and the fight scenes were pretty cool. But I would like to one day see a more realistic version of the battle of Thermoplyae. Something tells me with the huge, unexpected success of 300, that that isn't just a pipe dream.
  

This wkend we're going to see Grindhouse - the C movie double feature by Quentin Tarantino and Roberto Rodriguez. It looks BEYOND awesome and is currently getting a 90 on the tomameter. I am bound and determined to love it!

Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: Bush for Inmate
-sunday