Friday Strikes Again...

Not that I am complaining, but oh my, time flies by! Another week, and I still have six picture frame boxes in my garage waiting to give out their secrets, not to mention the step tonsu that needs to be dragged in and positioned carefully alongside the dining room wall. I already know the cats will love it. Whee!

In other news, G. R. R. Martin rocks! Thanks, Kashi, for recommending it to us. I am on the last pages of the second volume, planning on picking up the third one sometime this weekend...As a medievalist, I really appreciate his realism, and storyline. But that's another looong post...

Can I Have A Pirate's Life For Me Please?

At last! Yarrrr! Yes, we HAVE seen Pirates of the Caribbean last night!
What a blast! I don't even remember what was the last time I could be soooo entertained by a movie...when I was a kid, I guess, and seen those old swashbuckler movies, I guess. No, wait, Princess Bride was like this, kinda. Anyhow, I don't know what kind of people those critics are who said this was dull...I mean, this is a summer adventure movie with zombie pirates, for chrissakes! It is not, of course, a deep and meaningful meditation on the fate of mankind, or the nature of love, or the eternal battle versus good and evil, or the power of gold over...
Okay. It is, however, pure, unadulterated fun, in the grand old style. I kept having flasbacks to the old black-and-white Errol Flynn and Jean Marais flicks I grew up with, or the Italian adaptations of Emilio Salgari's pirate novels.
Ahh, and Johnny Depp, I must confess, was just so completely insane he almost stole my heart...just almost. He definitely would have back when I was an angsty teenager. His act was positively shining; and the rest of the cast danced along with him and the --again--wonderfully evil Geoffrey Rush (anyone remembers his Walsingham in the totally underappreciated Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett? Best LAWFUL evil character on screen for a long time...)
So...can I have that island, the Black Pearl, a big bonfire and Johnny Depp for a week, please?
Savvy?

Still Packing...

Well, we are _still_ have schtuff in the garage. Okay, a bunch of it is Jim's (like the huge drop-down leaf table, or The Bed and The Buffet From Hell), but we did not even touch the pictures yet.
On the other hand, the china situation has improved. I swapped out my Blue Willow china with the red Fitzhugh, and the white grapes set with the blue-and-green Pfalzgraff that I did not even know I was getting...thanks Chris! Both old sets of mine found good homes with friends who put them into good use, which is better than them sitting in the garage waiting for my once-to-be daughter to set up her own house.
I had some hard feelings parting those sets, which might sound weird, I realize; but having completely and utterly demolishing a household once and moving overseas with nothing else but a husband, two suitcases and a cat kinda made me appreciate the fact that I have matching china sets and such. :-)
In other news, we shall attempt to see Pirates again today. Rufel was sweet enough to offer to purchase the tickets in advance. Hah! Planning! Yeah, what's that?

A Movie Night

It was...interesting. We tried to go and see Pirates of the Carribbean last night (with Russ, Rufel and Jonathon), but...ehm, well...we got to the theater ten minutes before the start of the show at seven pm, and it was swarming with people. I mean, there was a loooong line, and we were at the tail end of it...Russ looked at it and said: 'OOps...we not gonna make it." We did not, indeed. Being a no-school weekday night, and having T3, Pirates, LXG and Legally Blonde 2 playing at the same time...no. So we hopped over to Barnes and Noble instead (one of the few reasons to go to Irving Mall these days, now that my favorite coffee shop and Up In Smoke is gone...), to sip some caffeinated beverage, have a cake, and look at books. Me, poor soul, Russ kindly directed towards the continuations of Tad Willams' trilogy, so I was doomed. Why fantasy authors tend to think in huge volumes of sweeping epic??His third part of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series is actually a two-volume hugeness, each as long as the first tow together, or nearly so...
Of course, who am I to speak? I have notes somewhere (which I must dig up from either my sister or from my dad's stroage room when I visit home this Christmas), in which I planned a trilogy for my Arthuriana book as well.

Anyways, last night we watched Nightmare Before Christmas instead. :-)

Schtuff...

And lots of it. Our little home and garage looks like a furniture storage place. We put in the two glass cases with all the _very_ fragile knickknacks, they are hanging in the corridor, and look nifty, especially the one with all the Japanese sake-bottles, cups and chopstick holders in the form of kitties and moocows) :-); and Russ's secretary, but that's like a drop in the ocean. I am swimming in rearranging thoughts and in the 'who would like/would have need of some end tables/nightstands/etc. that we had of old, but no longer can keep?

Friday!

Here we go...Te Saga of the Road, Part X. They called from Knoxville, TN last night, from the middle of a deluge--Russ said they could not see the road at a point. Estimated Time of Arrival: Saturday afternoon. Truck is full, weather is not-so-good, and they'll be driving Arkansas roads for the second half of today and tomorrow. Ah, the memories...:-)
I am yearning for decent teas today. Madeline made some Lapsang Souchong for us while visiting SF, and here I am, planning on running an errand today to TNL, the wonderful Oriental store just around the corner, to see if I remember right and they stock Lapsang. And I need to check on the condition of my stock of Ti-Kuan-Yin as well. I know I still have Dragonwell, though...I am planning on bringing some to work, to drink instead of the Office Mud they offer here. Ya know: looks like coffee, smells like coffee, but...
In Budapest, there were two great tea stores I stocked up on a regular basis; there was Demmers, with its elegantly British feel and wonderful scented teas, and there was the other one on Vaci street, whose name escapes me, but I know they had a blue dotted teapot above their gate as their sign, and they had a totally Oriental feel to them, and you could sit in the courtyard and sip tea from the delicately tiny plain white porcelain cups, with the refill black teapot in front of you, and they served some good tea snacks too...Best Bai-Mu-Dan and Ti-Kuan-Yin I've ever tasted...and I am still searching for that Georgian tea Russ had there. It is harder to get that stuff here in the US than in a formed Soivet-block country. They also had a blend I think they called the caravan blend, if I remember right, and it was a pretty strong black blend too, dusky, with hints of smoke, conjuring glimpses of roads stretching far into the desert and mountains.

Comments are back...

this was weird. Eh bien, I guess it's a bug in the matrix or something.

Weird.

In one moment, my comments disappeared from the blogger page, while it shows up in the html of the template. How odd.

In other news, the two heroes of my life (that is, Rufel and Russ) are on their way with an U-Haul hauling stuff valiantly from Virginia to Texas. They sounded totally exhausted on the phone last night.

I wonder...

...as I am listening to the 'Oh Brother Where Art Thou?' soundtrack--what would the appropriate 'sister'-movie to this one be if the Coen brothers did a movie based on the Iliad? What would the setting be for that one? Hmmm... WW1...Gulf War...Russian-Tatar Wars...Siege of Constantinople...Burning of Atlanta?

San Francisco...

...is small town, compared to the metroplex. But it's surprisingly diverse. When I visited the first time, five years ago, I did not feel it so strongly; probably because it indeed was the first US city I've ever been in, and, frankly, was a bit overwhelmed. Now, even though I was there only for three days, was able to see different parts and feel that difference much better.
Jim lives in the Mission district--well, lively as it is, it's a bit too loud and polluted for my tastes...oddly it reminded me much of Budapest's 7th and 8th districts where my sister lives and where Russ and I lived for two years. OK, there is Borderlands, the coolest sci-fi and fantasy bookstore in the whole world there, just two blocks from Jim's apartment, run by his good friends...Now if only we could transplant that into Dallas...::sigh::
Madeline, on the other hand, has a tiny but cozy place in the Avenues part of town...the Avenues run north-south (I think, as opposed to east-west what Russ remembered when we tried to get to the beach on Saturday morning), and the sea breeze can be felt all the way though even if that particular avenue is not too close to the bay. It's quiet and clean (apart from moody Russian Jew 8-year-old boys who REALLY do not want to go to the synagogue on Saturday evening, and they scream really loud, voicing their unwillingness on the street below), and has (at least from what I've seen) a kind of sleepiness to it.
Then there is the city beach area--we finally got there on Saturday...I had memories of it from my first visit, especially the sand dunes, the crow on the beach, and the little surfers' cafe called Java Beach on Judah and Grand Avenue where the trams turn. I did NOT remember how cold the sea breeze was...big surprise. It was 11 o'clock and we had to turn and flee the beach it was so cold--we've seen natives walk their dogs down by the ocean in parkas. Lucky that we had our coffee and hot sandwich at the cafe before, so we did not freeze completely. There were two crows this time, and Russ got both of them interested for a brief time, by uttering his signature crow-cry.
Friday we spent mostly indoors--Russ had the long-overdue 6-hours Migraine From Hell attack, but after that, and Jim returning from helping a friend, we finally traveled to Stintson Beach, across the Bay, though windy, windy hill roads. I have this thing, you see, for the Pacific Ocean (or the Atlantic, it's the same water anyways...)--the Ocean if you will, which, given that I cannot swim, is a perilous fascination, but I have it, there is no doubt. I stood there on Stintson beach by the edge of the grey-green mass of water, surging forward with white foam-caps topping the waves, little blue-translucent jellyfish things washed ashore under my feet; I listened to the sound of the sea, and the cries of the seagulls ('Mine!Mine!' they cry, undoubtedly that movie 'Finding Nemo' is right in that regard)--and felt, strangely, home.
Now, given that I am from a totally landlocked country who had seen the ocean (the Atlantic) for the firs ttime in England in 1992, that is more than bizarre.
Yes, SF is a great place to visit, and it will always have a special place in my heart--it feels so European sometimes, it's eerie. But I would not, could not live there. It's amazing how that place attracts the looniest lot of this continent. And I got accustomed to courtesy and politeness here in Texas.
Oh, well, this post gets too long too fast; I wonder if anyone ever reads this blog anyway, or if I am just typing to myself. Either way, it was a great July 4th weekend...hope to repeat soon!

Tired...

Back from San Francisco...one of these days I'll post a long one on my impressions. Now: tired. I cannot even imagine how Russ must feel--my dear husband and Rufel are currently on a plane bound to DC to spend days with packing stuff into an U-Haul and drive it back to Dallas. It is at moments like this when I am really, really grateful for the great friends we have in Jonathon and Rufel.
Now if I could just wake up...

Cats and such...

It is always fun watching the four cats currently living in our household. This morning, after I returned from the bathroom (where I did my customary morning ablutions, of course), I found two of them around my husband, who desperately attempted to sleep , following last afternoon's unfortunate accident with 205 pounds of incorrectly lifted weight in the gym. Rudy, aka The Old Man, was sitting in the crook of his knees, as usual, with the smug expression on his face saying 'well, i am SOOO pleased with myself', while Marco Polo, aka Stares At Water, aka Pirate Kitty, the Hungarian implant brown tabby, was perching on the trunk at the foot of the bed, with the painful 'don't you understand I cannot stand that invasive red bastard who took my place on the bed?' look I learned to decipher the day after Rudy arrived to our household.
Spot, Jonathon's cat (and when I say Jonathon's cat, I mean it(, was already in the kitchen, demanding food (later we discovered she also tried to rouse Jonathon from sleep by scratching on the window glass at o'dark-thirty); while Harold, aka Mighty White Huntress, aka PermaKitten, Rufel's cat, was out and about...She spends more and more time outside, often overnighting...and frequently we happen to find the sad remains of her prey items (little lizards or bugs with heads removed) in the backyard or on the front porch. For some strange reason, Harold only eats the heads. Now who would have thought it, looking at her trembling between cushions when first time I've seen her in J+R's apartment back at Village Square that she'd one day not only dare the outdoors, but develop a strange fascination for headhunting??
Did I mention I like cats? :-)