Monthly Archives: March 2004

The Weight Barrier

Somehow, I’m at an all-time high of 117 lb. In the last three years I’ve been fluc­tu­at­ing between 114–115, no mat­ter how much or how lit­tle I ate. I nev­er even imag­ined that I’d break the 115 bar­ri­er, so sud­den­ly find­ing out that I was this…“heavy” came as a huge sur­prise. I’m guess­ing that it’s my metab­o­lism adjust­ing to being on a reg­u­lar sched­ule of three meals a day now, on top of the extra exer­cise that caus­es me to eat like a BEAST.

Melt In Your Mouth

Man, have I missed steak for din­ner. I brought back a nice hunk of strip loin from home, sea­soned it with Montreal steak spice, and pan fried it to per­fec­tion. I’ve been liv­ing off chick­en and pork for the last two years, so the red meat is a nice change. I think I’ll start doing steak nights on Fridays. It’ll cer­tain­ly make decid­ing what to have for din­ner a lot eas­i­er.

A nice­ly cut T‑bone, cooked to medi­um, served with pota­toes and a glass of red wine. Ugh. Heaven.

My Cat Misses Me

Ever since I came back on the week­end, when Dolly was home all alone, she’s been espe­cial­ly affec­tion­ate to me. Before she would sleep on my chair at night, but now she tries to sleep on my pil­low by lean­ing on my head, or crawl under the cov­ers to sleep on my chest. Even though I keep get­ting wok­en up, I hope she keeps it up.

A Few Movies...

School of Rock was very well done and very enjoy­able.

Lost in Translation was great. Everything about the film was suc­cess­ful, but I espe­cial­ly enjoyed the sub­tle­ness. The direc­tion was per­fect, in how under­played and min­i­mal­is­tic it made every­thing seem. I was­n’t tru­ly impressed though until I found out that Sophia Coppola wrote the script as well. Bill Murray was made for the part, but every­one else was sat­is­fac­to­ry. The entire movie felt to me like a sim­ple glimpse into the chance inter­ac­tion of two peo­ple, and it began as gen­tly as it end­ed. The audi­ence is left as an observ­er, which made every­thing all the more believ­able to me. I inter­pret­ed the sto­ry as the inter­ac­tion of two peo­ple, who are at two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent points in their lives. As a result, their com­mu­ni­ca­tion becomes jum­bled. Lost in trans­la­tion. They dis­cuss the same things, but they’re not quite say­ing the same things. The res­o­lu­tion came from the end, when both peo­ple rec­og­nized the rela­tion­ship they had, and it was as far as it should have gone. Anything else would have seemed ridicu­lous. I think it was an over­rat­ed movie, but def­i­nite­ly one that deserves a healthy, gen­er­ous amount of praise.

As for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I’m at a loss for words. The entire expe­ri­ence was almost com­plete­ly inef­fa­ble. I laughed. I cried. I got goose­bumps. I melt­ed. A com­plete mas­ter­piece, and the one of the most poignant films I’ve ever seen, although I’m par­tial­ly biased due to my cur­rent cir­cum­stances. Where the Gondry/Kaufman duo failed in Human Nature due to an unsup­port­ive script and result­ing super­flu­ous direct­ing, this film has com­plete­ly suc­ceed­ed. A movie I will be buy­ing. A movie I will be watch­ing over and over again. A movie that would have changed my life had I not already come to the same con­clu­sion a few months ear­li­er.

Bus Buddy

Met some­one on the bus back who has some odd coin­ci­dences with me. Both of us are Scorpios, and read­ing books writ­ten by authors who won Nobel Prizes in Literature with­in two years of each oth­er. The per­son who start­ed at her work around the same time I start­ed at my work end­ed up being the per­son I replaced at my cur­rent job. Our fathers also both went through their midlife crises in the last two years. Both bought Japanese motor­cy­cles, then bought Porches. Both were Boxters and sil­ver.