I just returned from viewing #2 of Attack of the Clones and I'm happy to report that I *LOVED* it the second time. Schedule permitting I will see it as much as possible as long as it remains on big screen. I won't do any spoilers except one microscopic one. I'm sure this wasn't intended, but did anyone else ever do CPR where the CPR dummy [is that considered un-PC? you can never be sure these days] was called Annie and you were supposed to run up to the unconscious victim and rub your knuckles on her sternum and say "Annie! Annie! Are you all right?" Well during the "meadow romp" scene of ATOC Ani falls off some bovine-ish Naboo beast and Padme runs to him and says: "Ani! Ani! Are you all right?" I thought it was hilarious.

I have started out what is going to be a very relaxed yet wildly productive day by catching up on email which has been collecting since I returned from Orleans. In my email was an update announcement and I offer for your great amusement The Mike Und Pat Reader. Next I need to tidy up the kitchen and check on the progress of the outside freezer I'm defrosting. Then I'm off to run a couple of errands and see Attack of the Clones again so I can give a better review.

I still haven't fully gotten my act together yet. I have no excuse. I just don't feel like sitting at the computer long enough to organize my thoughts. Tonight I was sitting out in the backyard and looking at the rhodies. The purple one is starting to fade and the pink one never did much -- I think the ivy is choking it out. I guess I'll hack back some ivy this weekend as a project. But ivy is so yicky and you never know what's taken up residence in there. The thing is, I thought rhodies were close to indestructible. After the nuclear war there'd be cockroaches and rhodies. I have another rhodie in front -- this was the one trying to bloom in October. It practically collapsed under the blooms so I guess it's still among the living. I'm going to deadhead and give it a good hack this weekend.

I have a lot of ideas for projects this weekend, I'm going to have to prioritize otherwise I'm going to do that thing where I have so many things to do that I can't start anything and end up in the house eating cheese and crackers and watching movies.

I just back from Orleans yesterday and I'm still trying to get my act together. It's that post-out of town frazzle/ ungrounded feeling. I don't think there's a cure except getting back into the routine.

I'm on this quest to make my yard look better -- but I'm not really making the time commitment. I'm on the half-assed quest to make my yard look better. I call myself "the 15 minute gardener" and see an infomercial on this sometime soon. On Friday I went and bought some more plants and various support materials. I put it all in except for one plant that I wanted to put in the backyard and sort of forgot about. (I was emphasizing front yard this weekend.) So at the end of the day yesterday I put the last plant in and during XFiles I realized I didn't splash any water on the poor thing and even though I heard it was going to rain, you never know what that forecast means around here, so I ran out in the dark and watered it. About 1/2 hour later I heard the sky open up and it started pouring. The entire yard was swimming downstream.

All my shows are winding down for the season. I watched the XFiles finale last night and while I won't ask for 2 hours of my life back, I'm not sure I was left satisfied. They supposedly explained everything and I couldn't follow it to save my life. And I know they want to do movies, so I knew the end would have to leave the door at least halfway open. I have Angel tonight and Buffy tomorrow and then I'm done. I like having the summer off although usually I'm glad again in the fall when my shows come back. I think I'll use summer for catching up on movies and HBO shows.

Last week when I was checking out of the Quinault Beach Resort I noticed they had flat screen terminals and it occurred to me that this is going to be one of those things someday very soon where we say, "remember when computer screens and TV screens used to be fat and gigantic?" Bob and talked about other things that are almost completely gone like black and white TV and record players. I can already talk like an old timer.

Attack of the Clones
I bought my ticket for the Thursday 10 am show the weekend before and Wednesday night I had this dream that I woke up and it was 11 am. I was SO BUMMED. I was walking around going, "I can't believe I missed the movie." I was trying to figure out if I should just take the whole day off and see an afternoon show or maybe go to an evening show. I was relieved when I woke up even though it was like, 4 am and a wee bit too early to get up.

Here are some Star Wars cartoons. Some of them are funny.

I got to the theater a little less than an hour early and there was a line but nothing crazy. The guy in front of me had already seen the midnight show. I thought about it but that's way past my bed time and I can't sit in the dark in the middle of the night and not think about sleeping -- even for Star Wars. Inside, the theater was full but not packed. For the most part, everyone looked like completely normal people, about my age, and a few brought kids. The guy sitting next to me did have his light saber and I wished I'd brought mine.

I was going to do a review with spoilers but I changed my mind. I have avoided everything -- I saw a couple of trailers but that's it. I didn't read anything or watch anything discussing the movie and I'm glad because there are some cool surprises and afterwards when I read the reviews they talk about a lot of that stuff.

From a fan perspective I loved it or even LOVED it but I didn't *LOVE* it. The Star Wars geeks online say it gets better when you've seen it a few times and I plan to test this theory. I did *LOVE* the entire last half battle scenes and left the movie pretty amped.

I thought about seeing the movie again today but I have a soccer game (US v. Holland) starting in a little while and have 2 hours of XFiles tonight so my watching day is completely filled up. But soon, very soon.

I keep getting these direct mail things about my domain registration and I am completely clueless as to how I should proceed. I wanted to send a query to my webhosting but they've managed to create a system for support so as to completely discourage anyone asking any questions. I had to register for the support desk (another username and password, yay!) then check the knowledge base to see if my questions could be answered that way (my search pulled up completely unintelligible items) and then I was supposed to fill out another online form with a full blown bio -- all this to ask a stupid question about my domain. I'll do something about it later.

Well, here's the news on Salinger. There isn't as much as I thought there would be and that's because Mr. Salinger hasn't given the world much to work with - and not that I didn't know that beforehand -- I just didn't understand how meager it was. Salinger.org is pretty good as is this one except for the popup ads.

I also found a Salinger piece on neumu.net [art + music + words] which I'd never seen before and has some other good stuff on it.

Having a slow day here -- catching up on odds and ends. I think we're going to dinner and a movie tonight. Oh -- yesterday I saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding which was hilarious and had a happy ending which was what I needed yesterday. While I was at the theater, I bought my ticket for Thursday morning: 10am. Be thinking of me then.

I've just returned from a couple of days in Ocean Shores at the Quinault Beach Resort & Casino (and I hesitate to even type that URL due to a long story which I don't want to go into right now) which turned out to be very fabulous but with some David Lynch movie moments. The sun shone the whole time I was there -- Kimberlee told me that the sun only shines there about 3 days a year (she grew up around there) but luckily, I was there those three days. I was there to do some training related to work which I don't really need to go into here but it was all perfectly tolerable and it turns out it was nice to get out of the office and out of the house for a few days and break my routine and learn new things and talk to new people.

J.D.SALINGER
You're not going to believe this but, I just read for the first time, Salinger's Nine Stories. I stole my Mom's copy about 100 years ago and have carried it around with me to Sherman Oaks, up to Sacramento, to West Linn, to Lake Oswego and two moves in Vancouver -- all these many years and I never read it. I think it was because I thought it would be so fabulous that I would gobble it up and then never have it to read for the first time again OR I was worried that it would be drudgery to get through. It turns out #1 -- I gobbled it up. I am completely infatuated with Salinger at the moment. As soon as I finish the blog I'm going to troll all over the Internet and see what I can find and I bet it's voluminous. I thought my favorite story was The Laughing Man until I got to De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period and that until I got to Teddy. And for some reason I remember the title: Teddy attracting my attention when it was still my Mom's book and I was very young. If I had to pick, I'd pick De Daumier. This is a truly fabulous book and if you've never read it I'd recommend: run, don't walk.

THE LATEST REVELATION
I spent most of the first 35 years of my life thinking everyone else was smarter than me. I've gotten a clue since then. I'm understanding that just because a person is standing in front of a room talking to me doesn't mean he has the slightest clue what he's talking about.

LATEST REVELATION #2
When a woman is in her 20's sometimes she notices, to her great horror, that she's acting like her mother, something she's always sworn would never happen to her. But now I'm getting fairly close to 40 and I'm realizing that I do things like my Mother and I'm pretty proud of that.

FOOD HORROR
Something I don't understand, even though I am determined to be understanding of all people to be who they are: butter on pasteries. ew!

ohmy. I just had a blogging disaster because I completely screwed up the way I put in the Panda link in such a way that I could not edit it and have just been going through a gigantic headache to try to fix. Turns out blogger anticipates such stupidity and has a "safe mode" for precisely these types of incidents. yay.

I can't fall asleep after watching television. Don't most people fall asleep while watching tv? I have two shows that go from 9-10pm (Alias and Angel) and I can never fall asleep afterwards. TV season is almost over so I won't have to worry about it again until September.

How about this item? You can't see the National Zoo's Pandas' medical records. The Smithsonian Institution's National Zoo has taken the position that viewing animal medical records would violate the animal's right to privacy and be an intrusion into the zookeeper-animal relationship.

I am crabby this week and wishing that buying a one way plane ticket to some tropical paradise was a valid way of dealing with problems, real or imagined. I just took the How Long To Live quiz -- 95 years old for me, isn't that good news? (sarcasm) I can make it to 103 with dietary modifications. What do they base this on? I'm sure they're optimistic so people will visit their site and not get bummed out. I only want to live to be 80 (well, I say that now) and have planned my retirement saving accordingly. I think 80 is long enough.

"Part of the whole point" -- can you even say that?

I don't know what's happening with the blog -- I think the archives are goofed up again. As usual, standby until I can get into problem solving mode.

Yesterday I "finished" a story I've been working on for I think a couple of years at least. I felt good about finishing it -- except it's not really finished finished. The ending is tacked on and cheezy and I am waiting for the brilliant moment of insight that will help me write that last critical sentence that pulls the whole story together. Not sure how long I will be waiting. This brings up a whole issue of how do you know when something is finished? Or is this the part of the whole point?