The home stretch

Moving time is approaching. This week is going to be unfun. We hope to have everything pretty much packed and done in the next seven or eight days or so.

I read No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy last week. Damn. Breezed through it in about two days. If you thought the movie was good, read the book. And I thought the movie was superb. But the book is even better (though they are pretty much true to the original in the movie, but you can't get it all on film). McCarthy has a way of expressing profound things without being preachy or one-sided. I mean, in general, it's pretty bleak with him (the novels set in the American West at least--I haven't gotten to his earlier works yet), but he always gives you a taste of hope somewhere along the line. But really, I think McCarthy is gifted like few others. You can read him and, if you have a bit of patience, you will find something that strikes you deeply, no matter your worldview. He's a living master.

In other news, packing sucks. I went through a box of stuff filled with crap from my youth and beyond. Bad poetry, old letters, random trinkets with vague significance. Funny: I found a high school report that I wrote on a typewriter. Damn, does that make me old, or what? Well, not really, and no offense to anyone else. But it's a revelation to me. A typewriter. I still remember typing on that thing, using those shitty little whiteout tabs to erase mistyped letters. Oh, delete key, how I love thee. But despite the shittyness of the stuff I found, I had a real hard time getting rid of most of it. The sentimental value of some things still holds strong. Even some of the garbage poetry: it reminds me of my disposition during those years of angst, and helps me remember how I got from there to here--which has some interest to me, though a significant part of me doubts it has any real personal value. But here it is, going back into the box, and I likely won't see it again until the next substantial move, which will be who knows when. Do I really need to recall the terrible poetry written in my freshman year of high school or even the terrible poetry written post-high school? Do I need to keep the letters I received from my first serious girlfriend? I don't know if I do. But I'm keeping them for now.

Moving makes you think; at least it's got that going for it.

Always a challenge

The warmth is dissipating.

In other news, I pulled my spark plugs today and one of them was just doused in oil. "Not good," I thought to myself. From what I gather, I have to replace the valve cover gasket. This will be a new project for me. Let's hope it goes well and solves my problem. But this discovery stopped me from changing the plugs, which in turn stopped me from changing the oil, rotating my tires, and performing other vehicle maintenance. However, I did replace our broke-ass toilet seat and put new wipers on my car. At least something got done.

Saw the movie W. this evening. Wasn't really impressed. I guess I'd call it so-so. The Washington Post (I think it was last year) did a much more interesting job with their fabulous reporting of the ins and outs of the Bush administration. And PBS had something similar (and equally as riveting) to the Post. Stone seemed really afraid to show us the finer details of Bush's early life in this movie, which is understandable, but it really made the film drag. Perhaps the movie industry should have waited about 10 or 20 years before tackling this project; then it could have been a bit more bold and confident in its final product.

Well, bed calls. Wish me luck so that I don't permanently damage my car tomorrow.

The weather and other random crap

It hit the 40s here today. It's a frickin heat wave. How awesome. I like talking about the weather for some reason (anybody who ends up reading this blog regularly will probably see what I mean, so let me apologize ahead of time). What's funny is that as a teenager I absolutely hated talking about it: I thought it was the smallest of the small talk. Now, I don't know what has happened to me, but I'll gladly carry on a hearty conversation about jet streams and convection and Alberta clippers and thunder snow. Well, I'm kind of lying, because nobody in their right mind, aside from meteorologists, wants to talk about those things. (Which reminds me, if you like meteorology and have access to WGN over the air or on your cable/satellite provider--and if provider carries the feed of WGN that shows the Chicago news--tune in to the noon and nine p.m. broadcasts, Central time of course, to see the best weather forecast breakdown I've ever witnessed on TV.) Anyway, Neil from the Up Series of documentaries makes a good point in 28 Up. He says that people who live most of their lives outdoors don't talk about the weather much because they live in it; everybody thus intimately knows what's going on in their environment and they have few reasons to discuss it further. Makes sense to me. So, we'll see what happens when Spring finally rolls around and I get my ass out on the hiking trails. Will I blog less about the weather? One can only hope.

Other stuff of interest (maybe):

~Spring your time ahead this Sunday morning. It'll be nice to have some extra light during waking hours.

~Did ye know Geoffrey Chaucer hath a blog? That's right. He and a few of his merry friends make witty posts in all their Middle English glory. And don't miss the occasional Old English (must be late OE) post by guest blogger Tremulus Aescgar, who reminds us what it was like "bifore the Frenssh cam to Engelonde." Represent!

~Wikipedia has a list of unusual articles. Trust me, this page is hours of fun.

~One of those articles is about Uncyclopedia, Wikipedia's alter-ego. Again, hours of fun.