( What Things Want )

The weather cleared for most of Tuesday, though we're having a thunderstorm tonight. I spent a lot of time reorganizing my jewelry box after having bought one of these for my beads (which are mostly cheap knockoffs of Brighton and Pandora). Then I went to meet twistedchick at the Silver Diner, where I had a very good egg-white-and-feta omelet that ended up earning me a coupon for a free meal because I hadn't ordered it with egg whites -- I had assumed maybe it came that way and I hadn't paid attention to the menu, since a lot of the items are heart-healthy, but a manager came over and gave me the coupon anyway.

After lunch we went to walk around Appalachian Spring and Tiara Galleries, but before we could go anywhere else, Adam called to tell me that after taking an A.P. exam and going to lunch with his friends, he'd arrived home and realized he'd forgotten his key. So I rushed back to let him in and did some work till apaulled got home. After all the rain, the woods were very green, and I saw several deer, a couple of bunnies, and a fox kit quickly followed by the mother -- that's two foxes in daylight this week, which is unusual around here. We watched the Glee two-parter, which was ridiculous in a number of ways but I loved the retro songs (more that, less Nicki Minaj please) and I loved Unique. Great Falls goslings:


( Baby Geese )

( England in 1819 )

Monday was a gloomy, rainy day, though that didn't stop me from anything but getting to take a walk in the woods. apaulled was working from home because his car was in for maintenance. Our power went out a bit after 11 a.m. and PEPCO said it would be more than an hour to restore for the neighborhood, so we went to the Indian place in the mall for lunch, then went to pick up his car. The power came back on just as we got home, so we worked for several hours, then watched Jane Eyre which we needed to record again because our old disc wouldn't close.

Adam brought a friend home to study for the A.P. exam on Tuesday after walking home in the rain -- they were drenched. We had leftover veggie meatballs for dinner, watched Sunday's Once Upon a Time -- cheesy special effects but satisfying season finale -- then watched Smash, which I almost just called Glee which in fact it what it deserves as many of the characters remind me of Rachel Berry and I don't mean because they have great singing voices. ( Spoilers. ) Here are photos of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Unit, the Civil War reenactors who were demonstrating last weekend at Great Falls what Union soldiers ate, how they kept themselves entertained, what their tents were like, and how they practiced medicine:


( Living History )

( One Year (Mother Psalm 9) )

I spent Mother's Day with much of my family, and it was really nice to be doing that for a happy occasion! Adam and my mother were working at Hebrew school in the morning, so I slept late and did some futzing around in the internet, then we drove with my parents to the College Park Aviation Museum, where we met Paul's parents. After visiting the museum, we went and picked up Daniel -- who is in the middle of finals, so he couldn't join us earlier -- for dinner at Plato's Diner, which has pretty Grecian garden decorations all around and where I had a very good feta cheese omelet with veggie sausage and home fries.

We all went back to Daniel's dorm room so he could show my in-laws his computer and we could pick up his winter clothes so we don't have to pack those to bring home later in the week. Then we came home for Harry's Law, whose main story was a nail-biter but whose second story, about a man whose brother desperately needed blood but wasn't allowed to give him blood because he was gay, was the really emotional one (the no-gay-men-ever restriction is pure bigotry, as the episode pointed out). My mother gave me a Brighton charm and my family gave me Pride and Prejudice on Blu-Ray, so I had a very nice day!


( Mother's Day )

( Back )

Quickie because I just stayed up too late talking about The Avengers with Adam, who planned to see it with his two best friends after dinner out, then ran into a bunch of other friends who worked on tech with him and they all went to the movie together. (They debated who is hotter, Loki or Thor, hahaha.) Earlier I had a nice, quiet Saturday morning, not doing a lot besides folding laundry, because son graciously shared his cold with me; he was studying for his AP exam, so we saw little of him till after lunch.

In the mid-afternoon, we went to Great Falls, where we walked along the towpath toward Swain's Lock instead of climbing on the rocks. We saw four families of geese with goslings, the canal boat mules, herons, cormorants, and lots of other birds, insects, and some turtles. There was a Civil War camp set up by reenactors outside the Great Falls Tavern and we talked to some of them about medicine and goods carried by Union soldiers.


( Near the Canal )

In the evening while Adam was at the movie, we watched a recording of the David Tennant-Catherine Tate Much Ado About Nothing. It was fantastic -- hilarious, wonderfully acted, perfectly paced, and really well filmed considering that the action takes place on a revolving stage where it's impossible to see all the actors all of the time depending on one's perspective in the audience. We had thought about going to see The Taming of the Shrew at Olney, but I wasn't feeling great and we'd have had to leave hours early to get tickets, so I am just as glad we stayed in!

Three-week late fannish5: ( Great Speeches )
Two-week late fannish5: ( Deleted Scenes )
One-week late fannish5: ( Jossed To Death )

( Magdalen Walks )

Paul worked from home on Friday because of construction at his office, so we got to have breakfast and lunch together. Meanwhile I wrote a review of "Rivals" and did some editing and had cats meowing piteously because they took the fact that we were both home to mean that it must be time to eat. We chatted with Daniel about Mother's Day plans and with Adam about his weekend plans which apparently require us to drive him to the movies at a time when we expect to be at a play.

We had dinner with my parents, then watched Nikita, which had a plot so shark-jumpingly ridiculous that I stopped caring whether or not it got picked up for a third season just as the news arrived that it had. I am really bummed that, as expected, both Harry's Law and Awake have been canceled -- guess I won't be watching anything on NBC next season, not that they'll care since I am over 30. Don't the advertisers realize that my demographic has more money to spend on the cars they advertise than teenagers do?

Speaking of teenagers, we then watched The Social Network, which has finally appeared on Starz On Demand. I did not expect to like it but I did expect to be impressed with the directing, which lots of people went on about in their reviews. To them I say, WTF -- a lot of it looked like television cuts and except for the crew sequence there wasn't one really unique sequence in the film. The screenplay was all right but Sorkin's written much better. Timberlake was more memorable than Eisenberg but there wasn't one character I admired or rooted for at all. I won't be watching that again. Some animals from Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden:


( Birds and Bees )

( From Honey to Ashes )

I did a bunch of running around on Thursday and only got two out of three laundries folded, but son said his could wait, anyway. I had to return something at Target and pick up laundry detergent, I had to get a couple of other things on Rockville Pike. I stopped at my parents' house because I had asked my mother to dig out a children's book that I had thought of while discussing Maurice Sendak the other day (Miss Jaster's Garden by N.M. Bodecker) and we ended up looking at old photos that had belonged to Aunt Shirley, whose birthday would have been Friday. I inherited a gorgeous Native American eagle pin that we were guessing was probably bought at the Thunderbird Shop in Rehoboth Beach, where we used to stay with Shirley and Paul when I was little, so it's a wonderful souvenir.

Adam spent most of the evening practicing for the US government A.P. exam next week, though we all had ravioli together and discussed political idiocy. I had a great walk in the neighborhood and saw three deer, two bunnies, several chipmunks and one turkey vulture that flew off when it saw me. Evening TV involved a mediocre DS9 episode and a fantastic episode of Awake, which Zap2It says is definitely going to be canceled along with Harry's Law, which makes me very sad -- the former as much as the latter, I think, even though I don't like the procedural aspects much. Here is some more scenery from Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden in Richmond:


( Garden Greenery )

( Superstition )

I had another day mostly at home working and getting stuff done in the house. I decided it was finally time to file my kids' report cards and concert programs and honor roll certificates and AP score notifications -- I keep all these things in binders, not entirely trusting my kids to be able to find important documents on short notice should they be needed, and knowing they will lose all those third place and honorable mention certificates that they might want someday -- anyway, it took two hours to sort and file everything.

Yes, it's several years later than it should have been, and yes, I wish he'd said it before the North Carolina vote instead of afterward -- not that it would have made a difference -- but President Obama made me and many other people happy today declaring unequivocally his support for same sex marriage. I doubt it will make much difference in November either way -- I can't imagine any gay rights activist voting for Romney out of anger at Obama for taking too long, and I doubt any passionate anti-gay bigots were supporting Obama in the first place.

We watched this week's The Borgias, which was much, much too bloody for my taste -- not even hot Medici women nor gay sex in a graveyard could make up for that, even if one of the people who died really deserved what he got -- and two episodes of Wild Australia, which is my proof that either intelligent design is ridiculous or God had developed an insane sense of humor by the time he got around to antipodean marsupials. Here are some flowers from Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden in Richmond:


( Virginia Blooming )

( Chicken Soup With Rice )

Oh please don't go -- we'll eat you up -- we love you so! R.I.P. Maurice Sendak. I worked all day; I got a huge amount done, but as a result I have absolutely nothing of interest to report. Watched Glee, rolled eyes, Rachel and Finn are not mature enough to graduate from high school let alone get married. Watched this week's Once Upon a Time, want more Rumpelstiltskin, less Regina.

A numerical majority of North Carolina voters are idiots as well as bigots. Do people really want to deny health benefits to elderly widows to punish gay people, or did they simply not read the entire bill? Please, Marylanders, turn out to keep gay marriage legal here in November -- don't make our state another haven for prejudice and embarrassment for civil rights. A few more sheep from the festival:


( Sheep on Show )

( Travelling )

dementordelta had to work all weekend and I had a funeral, so we decided that we both needed a day to decompress. Our original plan was to go see The Avengers, but the timing of the shows wasn't great (we'd have had to skip lunch) and I discovered as she was driving up here that W.E., Madonna's Wallis-and-Edward movie, was on Amazon Instant Video as of last week, which we figured meant we were destined to watch it. It's not great, but it's not nearly as heinous as the reviews made it out to be; as Delta said, it's not even the worst movie about Wallis and Edward out there. Abbie Cornish looks uncannily like young Meg Tilly with dark hair and it's impossible for me to look at Katie McGrath as Thelma Furness and not see Morgana, but the costumes and interiors are lovely and we just ignored things we knew to be factually wrong.

We went to Lebanese Taverna for lunch, then stopped in Tuesday Morning to see whether they had any new half-price Barbies or awesome stationery (they had both, so we both now own the Grace Kelly To Catch a Thief doll and some cards). Then we came back to my house because we had also discovered that the BBC Romeo and Juliet from 1978 -- with young Alan Rickman as Tybalt and younger Anthony Andrews as Mercutio -- was streaming for free on Amazon Instant Video. It wasn't the best production of R&J, but the tights and codpieces alone made it worth watching. Paul took Adam to Glen Echo to see about internng there over the summer. After Delta had to go home, my family had tofu dogs and watched Smash, which these days makes me roll my eyes except when someone is singing. Here are some of non-sheep photos from the Sheep and Wool Festival:


( Fiber Fest )

( Requiescat )

My family spent the morning at Aunt Shirley's funeral, which was lovely but sad -- Stephanie and Debbie had arranged for everyone to participate in the readings and there were flowers and birds all around. Then we went to Jane and Bob's house for lunch and to share more memories of Aunt Shirley. Nicole had gone back to New York with her young daughters but Uncle Mickey was still in town along with several cousins who had traveled for the memorial service.

In the afternoon we drove Daniel back to the University of Maryland after watching a couple of episodes of Deep Space Nine and having an early pizza dinner (apparently there is no really good pizza in College Park). Then we watched this week's Harry's Law and Upstairs Downstairs (in which Edward VIII abdicated and the servants declared their approval of George VI). Here are some sheep from the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival:


( Baaaaa )