2006-12-05 - 8:46 p.m.

yeah, yeah, yeah, the usual - it’s been a long time, whatever

i’m currently sitting in my overstuffed chair, which was recently moved to make room for the christmas tree

i just looked up and saw a kind of round orangey ornament sitting on top of one of the branches

while i was thinking to myself that i don’t remember that ornament, i cocked my head just a tad to get a better look at it and realized that what i was really looking at was an unobstructed full moon out over the bay

the tree is placed in front of the living room windows (which are floor to ceiling) and i’m sitting about 7 feet from the tree looking out the windows, and the moon was at an exact spot that when i looked up quickly it looked as if it was sitting on one of the branches

this is the same full moon i saw yesterday at 6:30am when my co-worker and i took off for our walk around the dish (satellite area at work with several miles of walking paths)

as we started up the steep first section, the moon was hanging just to our right in it’s full glory - it was a pretty spectacular sight - i don’t usually think about seeing it so big and bright in the morning, but i actually do see it a lot in the mornings when i’m out before the sun shows up

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i’m sitting in the living room with about 3 layers of clothes on - trying to keep warm and keep the gas and electric bill down

the gas bill is sitting in the kitchen and i’m afraid to open it - though it needs to be paid soon, so i should attend to it

this house is wide open, which is a nice feeling when you live it, but a pain in the patoot to keep warm

there is no such thing as double windows in the house, all of them are casement windows and you can feel a slight breeze if you run your hands around the edges

and, the doors don’t fit the door frames so well either - the house was built in 1956 and things tend to move out here, so tight fits aren’t a given

i bought a swively space heater yesterday - the idea is to use it in the bedroom, we’ll close the door and use that to heat the room at night and keep the furnace heat turned off in the house - this should save some funds

of course, we could go live in the basement-garage, that seems to be warmer than the house - i guess the garage door has a tight fit - i thought heat was suppose to rise - hmmm

i saw the swively space heater at j&t on saturday evening - they have 2 (that i saw) and use them because they don’t have any heat at all since they pulled the duct work out to make room for their wonderfully beautiful new kitchen (think magazine kitchen and your there)

j&t bought our christmas tree this year as our christmas present - i thought that was very appropriate

i had made a decision (for the both of us) to not have a tree this year - we are going to chicago for christmas and trees are pricey - it didn’t seem to be a good use of funds

art guy was sad about this - god, it’s a good thing i never had kids, cuz i’m not too good at saying no to someone i love when they really want something

and, it’s not a material want for him - he just really loves the whole christmas season thingy and loves to have the tree - i know he’ll come home from work at 11pm and sit with all the lamps out and just enjoy the tree being lit up (which is kind of what i’m doing now)

i’m not saying i don’t love it - cuz, i do - but, i couldn’t justify buying it and he agreed with my assessment, but was kind of sad about it - but, when jc offered it as the christmas present, i thought it was a great idea and we all went to get it last saturday

art guy and i did the lights sunday morning before he went to work and then finished it up with the hanging of the ornaments sunday evening

it’s a purty tree - very purty

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and, while i’m on the finance thing, i’ve been thinking about my dad a lot lately

i think he would be laughing mightily if he saw me now and my having to deal with paying for water usage

i’m the kid, who grew up to be the adult, who uses a ton of water

if i could stand in a hot shower for the rest of my life, i would be happy

i love me a shower that leaves my skin looking like a red apple

you start with it moderately hot, so that you can get in the shower and then you keep turning it up hotter and hotter and hotter until it’s scorching

i’ve done this since i was a kid, first with baths, then with showers

and, not only do i like to have hot showers, but i could stand in there forever

actually, i can be very quick with a shower when need be and that’s most of the time, but, there are some days when standing under that hard hot water is pure wonderful

when i was a kid, my father used to ask me if i was going to use all the hot water in the house - i don’t think he was asking in a joking manner, more like what the heck are you doing, do you have any idea that water cost money

and, up to know, i haven’t had to deal with it

but, now in the new place, we get the dreaded water bill and the first one was something like 5,000+ gallons - the cost wasn’t too bad, but 5,000 gallons tossed me for a loop

granted, we do have to pay to water the landscaping around the house and the system was set to water for 10 minutes every morning - art guy has turned that off and does the watering himself when it needs it - during the wet season we’re going to let nature take care of it

but, i’m sure dad would see the humor in it - the girl that loved to use all the hot water in the house is now double checking herself whenever she turns on a faucet - and, she is trying to calculate how much water is being used and how much she is wasting

i see the humor in it - everything comes back to you at some point

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most of my christmas shopping is done and art guy is working on making some things in the studio for gifts

i’ve decided not to make soda bread this year for my friends in chicago - i hate to say it, but the cost of shipping it is just too high and it has to be shipped either via 2 day or overnight since it’s bread and it would go bad if i sent it via ground mail

so, this is the year when the bread shipments stop - sorry

the other problem is that the oven in the new place is tiny, tiny, tiny

i can only bake two loafs at a time - before i could bake four

usually i bake 40+ loafs, which would now mean 20 hours of cooking time, instead of the usual 10 hours

i used to be able to do this in two days - the bread for the folks in chicago and the bread for the group here - now it would take 4-5 days and i don’t have the time

but, mainly, it’s the price of shipping it to chicago

i plan to still make some for the family, but i’ll do that when i get to chicago and can use my sister’s kitchen - no shipping involved (well, except for the cost of the airline tickets)

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well, i just re-read this journal and it sounds like the budget woe journal

i guess it’s just about moving into a house, living with someone else and trying to figure out the budget and how to make it work - there are just some new gives and takes

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so, rather than ending on that note, let’s think of some fun things to write about

movies we have recently see at talkcinema:

borat (you know the rest of this title)

i thought this movie was a piece of crap, one big piece of crap

if i could have walked out of the movie i would have, but art guy couldn’t go that morning to talkcinema, so we asked someone else from the art center to use his ticket - i was sitting next to this guy and i felt if i decided to leave, he might feel he had to do so to - as it turns out, i think he would have been happy to leave

i know this movie got total raves from everyone, but i thought it was crap - i felt it was vulgar and just bad comedy - i’m not a fan of jackass (the movie) either

i also think the critics were a bit like the emperor and his new coat - no one could tell the emperor that he didn’t have any clothes on, and it seemed to me that no critic could just come out and say this was crap - it was like if they said it, the other critics would pull their critic card and tell them they just didn’t understand film, that they were shallow or conservative or too old to know what is interesting, when, in fact, they just knew crap when they saw it

the painted veil:
based on the novel by w. somerset maugham, the painted veil is a love story set in the 1920s that tells the story of a young english couple, walter (edward norton), a middle class doctor and kitty (naomi watts), an upper-class woman, who get married for the wrong reasons and relocate to shanghai, where she falls in love with someone else. when he uncovers her infidelity, in an act of vengeance, he accepts a job in a remote village in china ravaged by a deadly epidemic, and takes her along. their journey brings meaning to their relationship and gives them purpose in one of the most remote and beautiful places on earth. (summary cut and pasted from imbd website)

the cinematography was outstanding, the story was typical somerset maugham (don’t expect a comedy - bring the tissues) - i’d recommend it - worth seeing on the big screen

venus:
peter o’toole plays an aging actor who develops a friendship - borderline relationship - with a teenager who is a grandniece of a friend. it has it’s uncomfortable moments, but mainly because you realize getting old doesn’t mean that emotions end - i was really crying towards the end of the movie - it really hit something in me
i’m not really recommending this movie - not because it’s not good, it was good, it was very good - but, because i don’t know anyone who would enjoy it - it’s a difficult film to watch and absorb

other than that, we have been sticking with netflixs - watching six feet under and deadwood - shows that were on hbo, which we don’t have

so, that’s it for now - life is good - hope it is for you as well

later days!

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