Fixated? Me? Nah...
Happy February!
It has been a rather sizable time since the last post, that I will admit. In my defense, the semester has properly started again, with classes and meetings in full swing. During my comparatively free weekends, I have not been studying. Nay, not studying at all. They have been a delightful combination of knitting and movies. During the month of January (and mostly over the space of two weekends) I knit a huge cabled scarf, a hat, and four headbands. I watched umpteen million movies in the process, including some I'd been meaning to get to for a while (There Will Be Blood, Pan's Labyrinth). TWBB made me want to see Nine just to see Daniel Day Lewis do something completely and awesomely different. Pan's Labyrinth honestly made me cry. Beautiful film. Dark as pitch, but beautiful. I think it was very much a fairy tale -- a fairy tale of the old school. The original fairy tales were always steeped in monsters and blood and murder and all sorts of unpleasant things happening with endings that weren't necessarily so happy. It's only been in the past hundred and fifty years or so that fairy tales began the sanitation process, and the almost aggressively cheery Disney versions began less than a century ago. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Disney -- it's had a definite hand in shaping who I am (although that's a tangent for another time) -- but the origins of the stories must be recognized. They sometimes had very pertinent things to say about the culture of the time, or at least its psyche.
This weekend just past... hoo boy. I found Dr. Who. Through the wonders of the internet, I have managed to hunt down at least three full seasons, starting with Christopher Eccleston's Doctor. I watched the first ten episodes of that season on Saturday. Yes, that's right, ten 45-minute episodes IN ONE DAY. Plus Waters of Mars. Sunday saw me finishing off the last three episodes, plus the 2005 Christmas special. Today, I watched the first three episodes with David Tennant's Doctor. It's like I've been trying to download everything I can into my brain to make up for lost time or something. I have friends who have been talking about Dr. Who for ages, and my mother was a big fan of the... Fourth?... Doctor (made the scarf and everything). And now I suppose it's my turn. I noticed Saturday evening that my inner monologue voice (you know, the one you hear when you're thinking) had taken on a British accent. I'd watched that much. I'm estimating Saturday was filled with at least 8.5 hours of British accents. Ai yai yai. How sad does this make me? I wasn't even knitting while I watched, so I can't say I accomplished anything tangible. And yet, I somehow don't care. I will likely give my thoughts about the two Doctors I've seen once I've gotten a better feel for Tennant's Doctor. I will say, right now, I really liked Eccleston. He seemed a bit more even-keeled.
I've felt a bit off-kilter for the past few months, and I believe I know why. And so, since the unexamined life is not worth living, I opened my paper-and-pen journal for the first time in five months today. I wrote quite a bit, too. I didn't have that many pages left in the book when I started, and now i think I'm down to one and half. I can't really bring myself to start ranting and spewing on those last few pages -- I'd like to end that book on a good note. It will be the first time I've actually filled out an entire journal from the first page to the last, and I don't want it to finish negatively. I can start the next one that way. }X>] Or something. I'm going to have to get a new pen, at any rate. As much as I love my current journal pen (it's a lovely blue), I think for the sake of color-coordination I'll need a black one. I'm that picky about my stationary. The journal I'm finishing up has a print of a painting of waterlilies by Monet -- it's all these lovely shades of blue -- with a blue cloth binding on the spine and light blue pages. And so of course the pen is blue-black. The next journal is a lovely dark red printed to look like leather with the Barnes & Noble-style portrait of Shakespeare embossed in gold on the front, with gold-edged pages. I can't quite remember what the inner pages look like, but I remember thinking that the blue pen just wouldn't quite suit. So we shall see. I got a check for $223.50 back from the travel agency yesterday because they accidentally overcharged me, so I think I can spare two bucks on a lovely new pen. :-)
It has been a rather sizable time since the last post, that I will admit. In my defense, the semester has properly started again, with classes and meetings in full swing. During my comparatively free weekends, I have not been studying. Nay, not studying at all. They have been a delightful combination of knitting and movies. During the month of January (and mostly over the space of two weekends) I knit a huge cabled scarf, a hat, and four headbands. I watched umpteen million movies in the process, including some I'd been meaning to get to for a while (There Will Be Blood, Pan's Labyrinth). TWBB made me want to see Nine just to see Daniel Day Lewis do something completely and awesomely different. Pan's Labyrinth honestly made me cry. Beautiful film. Dark as pitch, but beautiful. I think it was very much a fairy tale -- a fairy tale of the old school. The original fairy tales were always steeped in monsters and blood and murder and all sorts of unpleasant things happening with endings that weren't necessarily so happy. It's only been in the past hundred and fifty years or so that fairy tales began the sanitation process, and the almost aggressively cheery Disney versions began less than a century ago. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Disney -- it's had a definite hand in shaping who I am (although that's a tangent for another time) -- but the origins of the stories must be recognized. They sometimes had very pertinent things to say about the culture of the time, or at least its psyche.
This weekend just past... hoo boy. I found Dr. Who. Through the wonders of the internet, I have managed to hunt down at least three full seasons, starting with Christopher Eccleston's Doctor. I watched the first ten episodes of that season on Saturday. Yes, that's right, ten 45-minute episodes IN ONE DAY. Plus Waters of Mars. Sunday saw me finishing off the last three episodes, plus the 2005 Christmas special. Today, I watched the first three episodes with David Tennant's Doctor. It's like I've been trying to download everything I can into my brain to make up for lost time or something. I have friends who have been talking about Dr. Who for ages, and my mother was a big fan of the... Fourth?... Doctor (made the scarf and everything). And now I suppose it's my turn. I noticed Saturday evening that my inner monologue voice (you know, the one you hear when you're thinking) had taken on a British accent. I'd watched that much. I'm estimating Saturday was filled with at least 8.5 hours of British accents. Ai yai yai. How sad does this make me? I wasn't even knitting while I watched, so I can't say I accomplished anything tangible. And yet, I somehow don't care. I will likely give my thoughts about the two Doctors I've seen once I've gotten a better feel for Tennant's Doctor. I will say, right now, I really liked Eccleston. He seemed a bit more even-keeled.
I've felt a bit off-kilter for the past few months, and I believe I know why. And so, since the unexamined life is not worth living, I opened my paper-and-pen journal for the first time in five months today. I wrote quite a bit, too. I didn't have that many pages left in the book when I started, and now i think I'm down to one and half. I can't really bring myself to start ranting and spewing on those last few pages -- I'd like to end that book on a good note. It will be the first time I've actually filled out an entire journal from the first page to the last, and I don't want it to finish negatively. I can start the next one that way. }X>] Or something. I'm going to have to get a new pen, at any rate. As much as I love my current journal pen (it's a lovely blue), I think for the sake of color-coordination I'll need a black one. I'm that picky about my stationary. The journal I'm finishing up has a print of a painting of waterlilies by Monet -- it's all these lovely shades of blue -- with a blue cloth binding on the spine and light blue pages. And so of course the pen is blue-black. The next journal is a lovely dark red printed to look like leather with the Barnes & Noble-style portrait of Shakespeare embossed in gold on the front, with gold-edged pages. I can't quite remember what the inner pages look like, but I remember thinking that the blue pen just wouldn't quite suit. So we shall see. I got a check for $223.50 back from the travel agency yesterday because they accidentally overcharged me, so I think I can spare two bucks on a lovely new pen. :-)