4/28: What I Accomplished Today

1. Puzzle day was for dinner today instead of brunch; people were traveling. Looks like we're not meeting at all next week. We came in 2nd; the Fellas missed 1, and we missed 2.

The Fellas had redone their back yard. It is now really lovely. They have some unspecified number of chihuahuas (might be four or five or six or seven; sometimes it feels like 20), and it was neat to see them running around and playing.

2. Read a little in a magazine and the book about Paul. Not a big reading day.

3. Watched Bill Moyers' Journal; he interviewed Jon Stewart and the bloggers who helped break the U.S. Attorney-firing story. This was really good.

We also watched this week's episode of The Riches. This is a really fascinating show with a breathtakingly dark sense of humor. Tonight's episode has the family returning home for the funeral of Dahlia's uncle, the leader of their group of Travelers. In one really astonishing sequence, Dahlia had her murdering cousin Dale at gunpoint, Wayne was being held at gunpoint by clowns Dale had hired to kill him, and Didi was trying to prevent her own wedding to a half-wit with an evil sister. I don't know where the three actors who play the children come from, but they're remarkable. (They also all manage to look like children Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver could have together.)

I'm not good at watching television. I don't mean that I don't "read" television well, or that I don't get nuance, because I do. But I can't just sit and watch without doing something else; I lack the gene. My mother never used to be able to; she used to grade papers. I don't bring papers home, but I usually play Pogo or read magazines or do sudoku or find something to do; for me, just sitting and watching television is difficult. It makes me feel lazy and useless. (I can do it if I'm sick or if I think I deserve some special treat, but it's a guilty pleasure.)

Before we started watching The Whales of August the other night, the Co-Vivant said, "You'll probably just want to watch this one; it's very visual." Yes, it was very visual--but I'd have done just fine doing something else. I felt very restless throughout. At the end, she asked me if I didn't agree, and I said, "I didn't do anything else because you asked me not to, but I could have. I have never, ever seen a movie in which I had to see every single frame."

Yesterday after she'd read this blog, she said, "Now you yourself said that the style was reminiscent of silents; how can you say you don't have to watch every frame?"

"I don't have to watch every frame of silent movies. You can tell from the music when you need to look up."

She doesn't quite buy this, and she may be right, but I just can't do it. I can do it in a movie theater because it's too dark to do anything else, but we don't do that very often.

Have I mentioned that I'm not very visual?

4. Worked a little on my Pogo badges. The Co-Vivant worked a long time today and got me halfway towards the dumb Pool badge, which I think is definitely non-shrew-like behavior.

5. Got my Human Paladin to Level 24.

6. The BigFishGame for today looks like Tetris with Power-ups. I have to be up early tomorrow, so the game'll have to do better than that for me to download and play it.

6. Carried the perma-presses (hereinafter referred to as "permies") to the laundry area. The Co-Vivant washed three loads (she does something with vinegar I don't understand, so she's in charge of the washer). I took two of the three loads from the washer to the dryer and then restarted the dryer until they were dry. Cleared the lint tray each time, making sure the lint went into the trash can and not onto the little shelf beside the trash can. Hung up the permies. Put all laundry away.

Slow news day; I have to go to bed now for a stupidly early meeting.