St. Louis-Olathe-Kansas City-Manhattan

Movies, wine and dessert - a quiety weekend

This was a quiety weekend. 

With spring cleaning, one generally thinks of a house. For me though, it was my car - my car saw its first car wash in 5 months, relying on snow and rain since the dry deserts of the southwest.

With my own washer dryer, I was able to get two loads done. But this also meant, I am getting clothes out of the dryer only to wear them! Laziness finds a new high, or low however it makes more sense.

Getting a bottle of wine was quiet something though. Researching them took all morning, but priceless was the realisation on holding a 2007 wine that it wasn't the current year it was bottled in, and that the year now was 2009.

Most of it was the movies and I'm glad I love movies.

The Freedom Writers - An interesting movie with Hilary Swank in it. It about how an English teacher inspires a bunch of 'special' kids to get into literature/shool. What makes it interesting is that, its based on a true story. 

The Lucky Ones - Seeing Tim Robbins in the cast of a movie sets the expectations from the movie rather high and this one did live up. A mixed up and messed up story about 3 soldiers coming home for a month before returning to active duty. Isn't one of the spectacular ones, but is fairly grounded and makes for a decent watch.

The Cadillac Man - Robin Williams and Tim Robbins star in this comedy which of course is silly, but does have its moments.

Angels & Demons - I wasn't too sure about this one - I never did see the Da Vinci code. I read the book and thought it was pretty interesting, but that is where it sat for me. The concept/theme just didn't do much for me. I dragged my knee out to watch this one for lack of doing anything better. I remained disinterested for the most part and thought it got a little predictable, too predictable perhaps. I would not have missed this movie.

Sore knee, a sore thought

I have now been nursing a sore knee for a little over a week. A slight pain crops up when putting my weight on my right knee while bent, and that has kept me from doing the things I indulge myself with on a daily basis - tennis, cycling, running, rock climbing, swimming, racket ball and squash. Pain in not more than a square inch of my body has altered my lifestyle this week. All this is just a discomfort - I can walk about perfectly well and still do those things if I ignore the pain. This is still hard!

I was watching this show -think it was "I shouldn't be alive" on the Discovery - a wildlife ennthusiast spotting rhinos in an African desert crashed his plane, shattering his legs and his pelvis. His feet were swollen inside his boots and he struggled for two and half hours just to get them off; he believed that if he didn't his legs would need to be amputated; he said his life would be not be worth living if he survived. That didn't sit well with me though.

I can relate to the feeling of being so passionate about something that losing it makes life feel worthless. This past week comes close; admittedly though I have a good chance of bouncing back in a week or two. But still I asked myself this - if were to be that I could not do any of the things I so love and am accustomed to, would I want myself dead?

From this side of the shore, it sure is hard to tell how that would change the philosophy of things - but I hope there would be more to life - to keep going, with new purpose  and new meaning.

Geocaching!

My newest of things to do is Geocaching. This is a decent intro to geocaching for the uninitiated.

I think its a great way to get people outdoors, giving some purpose for those who need one. The first one was pretty simple, but the feeling of having found the log was special.

I am curious to see how many from this list of 31 places, I can knock down before November!

Also see: Geocaching - The Official Global GPS Cache Hunt Site