Sad news to see Deer Leap Books, a wonderful independent bookstore in Bristol, VT (nearby town) closing. I’ve definitely tried to do my book buying there when I can, because I want to see these shops succeed. Bristol is a community that loves and supports their local businesses. Another wonderful business, Angel Heart, is closing too. Very special store. The owner has lived in Nepal (or somewhere like that) for many years and buys fabulous stuff there and ships them back to the U.S. for the store which her sister (a true New Yorker that amazingly survived in small town Vermont!) ran. They also have the best collection of ageless toys that we had as kids and is fun to buy for our nieces and nephews. And some awesome classic “joke gifts” too.

Rich and I saw Borat last night and I couldn’t agree more with Charles Petzold’s assessment:

If Mr. Cohen’s intent is to explore people’s reactions in intolerable situations, then it makes no sense for this movie to have scenes of Borat by himself, or with his “producer.” And yet, Mr. Cohen has obviously become so enamored of his fictional creation that the movie really becomes about Borat rather than his American victims.

I found the movie nearly intolerable myself. Excluding a few scenes that seemed pretty real (the homeboys teaching him how to dress a little more homey and the very human Lunelle and everyone’s incredible patience) Cohen’s version of “Candid Camera” was over the top, but not really in what I saw as an intellectual or enlightening way. His outrageous public behavior was just outright mean and not funny. So much commentary of the movie is about how he tricked people on camera, but the ruse goes much further. He tricked us into the movie theater to shock us too. I’m pretty liberal and extremely tolerant, but there was way more in that movie than I felt like witnessing and nearly walked out.  I truly feel duped that I got lured into the theater with all of this promise of some fascinating expose of human behavior. And to top it off, I have now paid my $8 and brought my husband (who was hoping to see James Bond instead), and therefore contributed to the success of the movie. The joke has been on all of us, not just the “characters” in the movie.

Something to write home about! 🙂

(It’s my mom)

We have gone to see the Telluride Mountain Film Festival for hte past few years because it comes to us. It will be in four locations in Vermont this year – Burlington, Waitsfield, South Royalton and Middlebury – during the month of November. Luckily I’ll be back from DevConnections in time to see it in Waitsfield, which is near where I live. Here’s the schedule.

Rich and I went to a halloween costume party this past weekend. I did something I’ve always wanted to do – put wire in my braids to make them stick out so I can be Pippi Longstocking. My hair is a little long for doing this which made it hard to get through doorways and a little dangerous to walk around the party. Rich was a villanous Vampire.

The door bell rang this morning and when I went to answer, I saw the Jehova’s Witnesses literature in the hand of the stranger at the door and had the usual dread of wondering how I can politely get her to not take up too much of my time telling me something I’m not interested in hearing. I really can’t do it any other way, even when I know that by coming onto my property, invading my space, demanding my attention and time is more rude than I could possibly be anyway.

Luckily, it wasn’t necessary. She handed me her materials and said “I’d like to leave you this important message”. I said “thanks” and she just smiled, said goodbye and left.

How about attempting to sort out and file away 8 months of bills, etc that have been piling up in my filing in-box?

It’s hard to tell by the picture, but there is a LOT of paper in these piles. On CSI, of course, you’d be able to zoom in on this image …

…and then “enhance” it, to make it perfectly legible and clear. Of course, you wouldn’t think of that unless Horatio Caine was standing over your shoulder, looking in the other direction, saying, “hmmmmmmmmmm, what I want you to do…. what I want you to do, is zoom in on that picture. Yes. Now enhance it.”. Then slide his head around to give you the snake eyed glare. God that makes us laugh… ever predictable.

If that total fantasy isn’t the fantasy that I think it is, I guess I’m pretty much screwed.

Even though I was climbing a rock today, for the most part I have been living under a rock. Luckily for me, Maryam is on the ball (though a bit under the weather) and made sure I didn’t miss out on this insanity from Forbes Magazine.

I thought I would take a little break from the computer on this nice sunny day, so I did something that I’ve been giving lip service to for two years. I raked up a big pile of grass cuttings from the latest lawn mowing to put in the compost bin. We’ve been throwing food stuff in there for 3 years but never anything else. So it never “cooks” (breaks down and turns into black gold). I have never even stirred it up. The grass cuttings do add some needed ingredients to get the compost cooking.

Now I’ve always been careful when opening the lid of the bin because when we moved here, the *very* first time I went out there (hmmm, early August, come to think of it, just like today) there was a snake hangng out on top of all of the stuff (left by the former owners (not the snake, the stuff!)). I have added to it once or twice a week all year round for three years since then and have never seen another one. Today, rather than carefully sliiiiiiiiding the lid just a bit to expose enough space for me to put my little compostable cornstarch bag of kitchen compost in, I just flipped the lid off onto the ground and of course – SNAKE! Just a garden snake, but it was not one those little 1/4 inch diameter ones. It was more like 1  or 1 1/2 inches around.

Needless to say, after my girlie shriek and jumping back, I abandoned the lid, my bag of grass cuttings and my little pitchfork for when Rich gets home. In the meantime, I hope the poor snake recovers from the probable minor heart attack he had. There he was, resting in a nice dark place before all of this happened!

I’m not really afraid of snakes. In fact, a college friend had an Indian Python named Eve that I got friendly enough with to actually put around my shoulders a few times. It’s just the *surprise* snakes.

shiver…