Hello, I Love You

Yes!  So!  I was supposed to maybe go to Minnesota this weekend, and that fell through.  I have an unexpected empty weekend in front of me for which I have already made a list of things I could do (involving tax preparations, even!).  I don’t know if I will actually do these things, but I am sure that I will get on top of laundry, at least, and that will feel good.  A Productivity Sunday!  I would be happy if I got some stuff accomplished.

I did go to my volunteer gig on Monday night at the local food bank.  That went well.  I decided last fall that I should volunteer more time, but it was hard to find an organization that would take me in the evening hours.  The local food bank does, though I have the feeling that it’s uncommon to have individuals volunteer, rather than people who volunteer as part of a church group or Scouts or something, unless they’re fulfilling a court order for community service.  So I am wondering if the church people on Monday thought I had a lot more edge than I actually do, being some kind of bad person with a criminal record.  Maybe it would disappoint them to find out that I am actually clean.  Hmm.  I should work hard to hone that bad-girl image there.  Do bad girls still smoke and wear leather jackets?

I also signed up as a volunteer with the True/False Film Fest, which is at the end of February.  I didn’t know that they sign up more than 600 volunteers for the festival, and that they get even more responses, enough that they have a waiting list for volunteers.  But I have actually never been to True/False, so I wouldn’t know any of this, including how it works or what films they will have.  I just thought it would be fun to do.  As usual, the question to ask me is, “Why have you never been to the True/False Film Fest, since you love movies so much?” And the answer to that is, “I hate crowds.”  But this year I have decided that this is a bullshit excuse, and I’m not taking it from myself anymore.  I am considering even buying a pass this year so that I will attend several movies over the weekend and not just show up to volunteer, but I will wait until next week to decide that.  There is a volunteer meeting this weekend so I will learn a lot more!

Anyway, so that’s the story of me getting out of the house and doing something interestingish with my life.

I went to see a movie this week, A Single Man, which starred Colin Firth and was written/directed/designed by Tom Ford.  You can be forgiven for not knowing who Tom Ford is, and this movie was not very good… story-wise.  In all things visual, it was spectacularly beautiful.  It was right up my alley, 1960s, perfect clothes, perfect hair, perfect architecture.  I enjoyed looking at it.  I thought it was a shitty story.  So I rated it 3 stars overall.  Colin Firth and Julianne Moore are both good, and it was fun to see Nicholas Hoult, a young British actor, doing an American accent as a gorgeous young college student.  It does not seem very long ago that he was the dorky middle-school kid starring alongside Hugh Grant in About a Boy in 2002.

In other news, this was Baby Week in my life!  A few years ago was the Wedding Boom, and this is the middle of the Baby Boom years.  Tracy’s sister had a baby boy on Tuesday, and my brother’s wife’s sister (my sister-in-law’s sister, whose wedding I shot last summer) had a baby boy yesterday.  And my co-worker, whose wife gave birth to their first baby a couple of weeks ago, brought his new daughter in on Wednesday.  She was pretty cute.  So three babies, born days apart, whose parents are/have been involved in my life, and they may never even meet each other.  What a weird world it is, you know?