a slow week in lake woebegon

With apologies to Garrison Keillor… It’s a been a slow week. I’m about to get over my cold — better living through chemicals, I guess. It iced up Wednesday, and our power’s been going out occasionally since. Luckily, it warmed up today, so most of the ice is gone. Read a good book, Thomas Fox Averill’s Secrets of the Tsil Cafe: a Novel With Recipes. If you like Southwest cooking and/or good fiction, read it. I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend for the first time in a month or so.

Thanksgiving Trip, part 2

While Thanksgiving Day wasn’t too bad, I started getting sick again that night, and it just kept getting worse through Monday. We drove home Sunday, and the usual 8 hour trip took 12 hours due to construction delays in Arkansas. It took 9 hours to drive from Memphis to Fayetteville, which usually takes about 5.5 hours. It sucked. I stayed home today (Monday) and slept all day. I’m going to work tomorrow, but I’m not real fired up about it. But, I’m running out of vacation days, and I need three days for our Christmas trip. As Bill the Cat would say, “Ack.”

Thanksgiving Excursion

I’m in Alabama visiting family for Thanksgiving. I’m not as sick as I was, but I’m not well, either. At one point during the nearly 10 hour drive, it took us two hours to drive 70 miles. The lovely but often backwards state of Arkansas is making massive upgrades to I-40 (which runs across the state — and the nation), causing massive delays. If we had a REAL highway finance system of doing incremental upgrades and repairs, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen.

I played disc golf today on two of Huntsville’s four courses. I lost a brand new disc on the second one (after wading into a creek to retrieve it on the first course), and on the other, I was threatened by a crazy guy on a bicycle. I threw past him (my shot went NOWHERE near him). When I was about 50 feet past him, walking after my disc, I heard him say, “You want a piece of me, punk?” I didn’t turn around, pretending I didn’t hear him. He then said, “This here’s my knife.” I swear I could hear the banjo music. But, I didn’t even look at him. I guess he pedaled off. There were other people on the course (and not far away), so I could have gotten help if I’d needed it, but I was never very concerned, even with the knife comment. I’m generally a pacifist (by nature and philosophy), and I’ll walk away from just about any confrontation. Still, I almost wish I’d had a big pistol so I could have turned around and showed it to him, saying, “Gee… that’s a nice knife, sir. *This* is my gun. Move along.” However, I’m more pissed off about losing the disc, especially since my feet were still wet from wading in after it on the first course and the fact that I just bought it Sunday to replace one I lost at last week’s mini.

Ugh.

I’m sick. Apparently, there’s a bug going around that gives you an intermittent sore throat and head and body aches. I know of three other people who’ve had it, and those are my symptoms. I just hope it’s better before tomorrow, when I have to drive eight hours for Thanksgiving. At least when I get to Alabama, I can sleep for a few days before I have to drive back. I was planning to play disc golf while down there, as Huntsville has four nice courses, but if I still feel like this, I’ll be lucky to make it down there, much less get out to golf. Ack.

Harry Potter

So, Saturday night, we went to see the Harry Potter movie. I’ve been waiting impatiently for over a year now, following all the news, watching the trailers. I wasn’t disappointed. I have a tendency to over-analyze movies (and everything else, too), but I’m not going to do too much of that here. The movie was good, probably the best possible adaptation of the book. The actors were all excellent (especially Rupert Grint at Ron Weasley and Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid). The set and costume design was beautiful (maybe an Oscar contender), but the CGI was a little fakey in places (esp. the centaur). Overall, I’d say it was a good job. Now, we just need the fifth book to come out!