23 July 2010
A couple of days ago, I heard a quick snippet on Minnesota Classical Radio about a special production the Minnesota Orchestra was going to present in October. It was real quick, in between music sets, and the DJ only mentioned it to segue into the overture of Don Giovanni. It was an awkward segue; he only mentioned it because he felt it typified ‘scary’ and he felt the Giovanni Overture sounded scary as well.
I meant to look it up online as soon as I got home, but whenever I arrive home, I’m immediately bombarded by a cat and a five year old…so it left my mind.
But today I remembered to look it up: I’d really like to attend this event. Who’s with me?
Also: a great thing about today: A coupon arrived, via email, for Borders Books. I have already mentioned my desire for a certain book, but that I wasn’t about to spend thirty bucks on it. A 15% coupon actually arrived in my inbox last week, but I didn’t feel that was good enough. I held out – and it paid off – today I received a 40% off coupon that’s good until Monday. So I am <72 hours away from being the proud owner of THIS BOOK.
Anyway, I’m incredibly tired today. I’ve been getting up especially early, and staying at work a little late, trying to accumulate a stash of overtime. The way I see it, when I’m on paternity leave, I’ll still be getting a paycheck, but I won’t be getting any overtime on those checks, so they’ll be smaller than usual. Since I’m not sure how many days I’ll be at work this coming week, I figured I’d rack up a whole bunch of overtime during the first half of the pay period. Oh yeah!
24 July 2010
Today we went to the theater to see the film Babies. It’s a documentary my wife had wanted to see for some time now, and to our surprise it was still playing in big screen here in the cinematic wasteland we live in.
The documentary shows the lives of four babies, roughly from birth to their first birthday. Apart from brief shots of their mom’s swollen bellies and a couple of scenes at the births, there’s not too much about how the babies actually came into the world. Instead, the film-makers seemed more interested in showing how the babies fare during their first year.
It was a fun film, and I suppose “cute” would be an appropriate word to throw in here, too. It was somewhat dry, however, offering little in the way of commentary. There was no voice-over, no subtitles the non-English families, and no words on the screen to explain what was going on. In this way, it was closer to Cinéma vérité than just about any other film I’ve ever seen. The only commentary, or ‘angle,’ if you prefer, was in the way the film-makers would cut from one scene to another, such as when we see one baby playing in the mud, then cut to another baby laying around while dad vacuums the play area and uses a lint brush on his daughter.
There were four babies being tracked: a boy from a nomadic family in Mongolia, a girl who lived with her parents in a high-rise in Tokyo, a girl living with her parents in San Fransisco, and a boy from Namibia. In fact, this is really the only complaint I had about the film: the Tokyo and San Fransisco stories were too similar. Both lived in very large, very modern cities, both lived in English-speaking households, and both girls were the only children their parents had (apparently). When going from one family to another, it sometimes took me a minute to determine if we were back in Japan or back in California. Instead of the San Fransisco family, I would’ve preferred, for example, to have seen a baby born into a large family in small-town Alaska, or perhaps somewhere in South America. All in all, though, a pretty good flick – and the perfect film to see so soon before we have another child.
I should comment on the theater, too: we ventured to Riverview Theater in Minneapolis, as it was one of only two theaters within 25 miles that was showing Babies. We’ve been to several of these hole-in-the-wall theaters in the Twin Cities (’cause they’re the only ones that play consistently decent films), but I’m pretty certain this was my first time at Riverview. Thankfully, we were able to get there without having to use a highway or enter the downtown. It’s swanky theater, having been maintained in its original 1950s trendy decor. The lounge area was fun to sit in – amidst retro chairs, couches, tables and decorations, and the prices even harked back to an earlier (if not 1950s) time – $2 per person for a ticket, and a pop-corn and root beer for $5.
In another note, this was Owen’s 7th time at the movie theater – his list includes four Pixars and, after today, two documentaries. Lucky kid.
25 July 2010
After I stepped out of the shower this morning, Owen said he wanted to get in. I tried talking him into taking off his clothes, but he argued that he was going to have to take them off to get dressed later anyways, so he might as well leave them on now.
He thoroughly enjoyed standing in the shower stall. I’m not sure he’s ever been in the shower in my bathroom before – he’s generally prefers baths – but he just couldn’t stop laughing and saying how much he loved it. He used to take showers when he and I would go to the community center’s pool, but we haven’t done that in over two years. Still, he remembered having done that way back when he was two years old. He kept saying: “This is like the pool place, isn’t it?”
After a while, I told him: “Okay, buddy, just five more minutes.” He whined “no,” and continued to go on about how much fun it was in the shower. He gave me a moment-by-moment commentary: “Oohh, it’s getting hot now – I love hot,” and “I could just stand here for like, twenty ten hours!”
He finally did get out of the shower – after I shut off the water, and he let out the most disappointing “awww” in the history of disappointments.
We had a pretty good day after that, too, by the way – we biked to Trader Joe’s, then to Mississippi Market. We paged through my new book that I purchased for 60% of the retail cost, we played Mrs. Pac-man, and, in the evening, we even managed to get 39+ week pregnant Jennifer to join us on a walk to the park.