26 June 2010
Owen and I were supposed to go camping today. With the Happy Trails Nature Club, we were gonna spend the night at a regional park in Bloomington. We’d reserved our spot and paid the deposit. I invited my friend David to join us, along with his daughter. Jennifer and Owen went to the store yesterday and bought us trail mix, drinks, burgers, and other food to bring. Last night, I pulled out all the camping supplies: flashlight, sleeping bags, tent, cooler, and picnic chairs. This was even the ideal weekend – wedged, as it is, midway between finishing the semester and having another baby.
Alas, nature wasn’t so conciliatory. At 8:45 this morning, I received an email from the Club’s leader saying she was going to cancel the event. I called my friend and invited him and his daughter over (since both of our wives had made other plans), so that kind of made up for it.
We were supposed to leave at 2:00 to get to the campground by 3:00. At 3:00, the weather still seemed fine to me. Granted, it was hot and humid, but certainly nothing that barred outdoor activities. By 5:00, I was beginning to wonder if maybe the campout had been canceled prematurely.
However, by 9:00, there were high winds and precipitation. David said the tornado sirens sounded during his drive home. I went to bed around midnight, and the rain was still pouring.
Disappointed as I was, I guess the cancellation was justified after all. Too bad.
27 June 2010
Since this day was suddenly free for us, we decided to get some work done around the house in preparing for the baby. Jennifer and I thoroughly organized our bedroom. We set some stuff by the front door to take to goodwill, we threw some stuff out, and we organized the storage arrangement in our walk-in closet.
Later, we went to the Goodwill to drop off some things and to look for a few more items we will need. When we went to check out, a woman jumped right ahead of us in line. Granted, we were just kind of getting into the line ourselves, but we were clearly ahead of her. She seemed oblivious to what she had done. We simply walked over to another line and, from our new vantage point, we could see that that woman had a live dog sitting in her purse. I though dogs were banned from public stores like this (not sure…?), so it appears this woman seems to pay no mind to any sort of social rules. Or maybe she just didn’t care, but that seems unlikely since we were at the Goodwill, and since there are hardly ever any rich people at the Goodwill, we don’t expect to come across assholes while we are there.
28 June 2010
This evening Jennifer and I watched the mockumentary For Your Consideration. I try to watch all these Christopher Guest improv-vehicles, each time hoping it will be funnier than the last one. But, well, this one just didn’t do it for me. I mean, it was fun – I laughed a few times. But I just couldn’t get into it. The story didn’t seem very clever, and the troupe of actors were essentially just doing what they do every time. This isn’t necessarily bad, but in this case, it certainly didn’t make up for the boring plot.
In a way, this makes Guest a lot like Scorsese and Burton: I make sure to see each of their films, and I have a decent time each time I do, but I’m almost never totally blown away. Perhaps I like them because they’re safe: I know their films aren’t gonna suck. It’s like they consistently do B quality work, and I keep waiting for an A. Actually, as I mentioned to someone this weekend, I believe Burton achieved an A quality film with Ed Wood. Scorsese’s best film, in my opinion, was The Departed, though I have not seen Shutter Island yet. And, to be fair, my favorite Christopher Guest film was Best in Show. Maybe that’s because it was the first of his mockumentaries I saw…? – and now I compare each subsequent one to that one…? So hard to be objective sometimes.
29 June 2010
So, I keep wondering if I’m going to be able to keep up with the whole blog-a-day thing during the time immediately after descendant #2 is born. As I was explaining to a friend today, I think what I’ll do is this: let’s say the baby is born on August first (come on, let’s just say it, alright?). Okay, so then I’ll probably be too tired/busy to care about this blog for a while. But I’m sure at some point I’ll post junior’s info (time of birth, gender, weight) on here, so maybe on, say, August 8th, I’ll make a post that begins with the header “01 August – 08 August 2010.” Sound good?
Option two is to just make very truncated posts. So, for example, August first’s would simply say: “Baby born today.” And August second’s would say: “Baby still here.” Or something like that.
Of course, option three is to just not even care, and just post when I damn well please. I’ll see how it goes.
In other news, I turned the page on the wall calendar this evening and peaked ahead at the looming month of July. Unlike June, in which we had something written down on every day of the month except the 12th and 25th, July is rather sparse. My wife pointed out that it’s sure to fill up more as the days approach, but in the meantime, I was pleased to see only four or five things written down – and nothing at all written down after the 11th, except for the week of July 25th – 31st, on which I wrote (with one letter in each day): B A B Y D U E!