I haven’t listened to patty griffin before, but almost everyone i know on xanga does, so i’m checking it out. love it already. i’d like to close my eyes and listen to the lyrics and float off on a memory cloud. i am at work. so this cannot happen now. it reminds me of lots of the folk music languishing on my cd shelves. using pandora.com so the first song was hers, now i’m gettin a song by an artist with similar traits in her music. it’s by anais mitchell. it’s reminding me of dar williams. now toni price. also good. ahhhhh… sippin’ my chai, relaxin’ into the morning. (beth orton, more patty griffin, now ani difranco. LOVING this station! HEE! Now Dar Williams. neat. KT Tunstall, ahhhh Eva Cassidy, be still my heart! Lucy Kaplansky.nice, i have one of her records too.).

At home, having moved my computer to the living room, at least temporarily, i’m “semi” watching a bunch of things i would normally not watch. hubby has very different tastes than i do. actually, broadened tastes is probably more accurate. he likes pretty much anything i want to watch, but i only like a fraction of what he wants to watch. but, he wants me to hang out with him in the living room. my solution? move the computer in there, (he uses a laptop while he watches tv), hook up the headphones, and when he’s watching something i don’t want to watch, i just crank up the music and drown it out. we watched the last couple episodes of LOST this weekend so now i’m all done. I tried very very hard not to read any spoilers for the finale before i watched it and was *mostly* successful. all i can say is….. wth?? start season four immediately you mofos!!! you can’t just leave us hanging like that! of course, the fact is they can and will. i can say without a doubt that this is my favorite tv show ever. “we” (i use the term loosely here because i was not paying much attention) also watched The Upside of Anger, Barton Fink, Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban, baseball, Seinfeld, Simpsons, South Park, Ellen Degeneres “Beginnings” (ok, that i paid full attention to… she’s hilarious!), and some other stuff i can’t think of right now.
Baseball game had a brawl in it. That was awesome! “I went to a baseball game and a hockey game broke out!” A’s vs. Mariner’s. Now, i grew up in Berkeley, which is next to Oakland. So, nominally speaking I was an A’s fan until I moved to Portland. Now I’m a Mariner’s fan. The term fan is used a bit loosely as i enjoy going to the games, but on tv is a bit dull. However, hubby is a FANatic, so he watches just about every game. Anyway, it was quite the scene. Emptied both benches/bull pens onto the field near the home plate. Baseball would be a lot more interesting to watch on tv if they could manage a brawl or two per game. Why do you think people watch hockey anyway? the FIGHTS! Marketing people, pay attention here!

Upside of Anger was interesting, though i watched somewhat half-heartedly as i was doing stuff in my game online. Kevin Costner played the character he plays best: washed up baseball player. I thought he was actually REALLY good in this. Just the right touch of emotions. The 4 daughters were well played overall. I only recognized 2 of them, but they all did a nice job, if under-developed. However, Joan Allen is …. AMAZING in this movie. She’s a bit of a “shrew”, which seems pretty reasonable given the premise of the movie. But she moves with pathos from drunken disinterest to righteous anger to biting humor to kindness and affection and then back again and through, at a moments notice to any of them, yet at all times beguiling. This was in my mind an Oscar winning performance. Perhaps it was a bit of recognition in myself of those feelings, for similar emotional reasons. Abandonment, betrayal, neglect.  I didn’t care for the narration of the film by the youngest of the daughters. It felt overdone and unnecessary. the director gave himself a part in the movie that was also fairly useless: aging lothario, not even attractive enough to explain how his part in the movie was supposed to be understandable. whatever, it was good.

Went to a party at our best friends’ house for one of the kids’ birthdays (Maddie) and mom’s birthday (Tracey). I invited Melissa to come with us and she did! We had a blast! At least, i did. I think she did!  She told me i have to stop that negative talk about my weight, which I know I shouldn’t do, but it’s so hard not to be disparaging of my flaws/failures. I WILL TRY! There Melissa, I will try. i promise.