… I found it difficult to say no to a pound and a half of bulk milk chocolate on sale at Woodman’s. I think I paid about $0.78 for it. A big block. I planned and still plan on baking with it … but a bite here or there.
Yum.
The only good presentation of the four I heard these past two weeks was today on German dialects. It was well organized, included “meta” information (keeping people up to speed on where they were at, etc.), had good multi-media aspects, and had few technological difficulties.
We got started a bit slow/late because I wanted to cover more of extended adjectival modifiers (which Zak and others said they didn’t understand). So the dialects presentation was a bit rushed, but still rather good.
In the afternoon I made it to Fair Trade after a lunch break at the Mediterranean for a sandwich and tea, and I got there before the 2nd lunch rush. Fair Trade was not packed and they had fritters available. I got a wall seat, plugged in, and got some work done as well as a few pages of the 3rd Tad Williams volume read.
Not enough, but progress.
It turned out to be an amazingly gorgeous day as the afternoon wore on and I saw people moseying up and down State Street, and even in the neighborhood in the evening folks were out for strolls, people I hadn’t seen before, people who didn’t look like neighbors.
I had some more of the Turkey Loaf I made last night — warmed it up in the oven — and opened the bottle of 2005 California Viognier from Smoking Loon that I picked up for $6 something at Woodman’s yesterday. It is fruity but not too sweet nor overly dry. I chilled it for a while before opening it.
Issue 24 of the comic book Girls has come out and I read it this afternoon. It’s a mostly satisfying ending to the series, with some references to the first issue, but it’s a lot of narration and explanation, little real dialog or action. Thins are simply wrapped up after Ethan has a several page internal monolog with his fictional “girl.” There is little in the way of a “twist” per se, although when the bubble burst it is interesting to discover that the outside world has been fascinated by the bubble for the past week.
If I understand correctly, the giant sperm land on a planet (Earth in this case) and wraps itself in a giant sphere — nothing in or out. Within it uses its clone-girls to kill and then feed it women. When it is ready the shields comes down and the giant space-sperm shoots its load back into space, with the consumed, dead women now converted to new sperm containing new, egg-laying women, who will land on new planets.
I caught up on Lost, which I missed Wednesday due to rehearsal. And then I watched Don’t Look Now, a 1973 Anglo-Italian “thriller” with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. In many regards it’s a mid-range early 70s film, and it follows the 1960s and 70s genre conventions for “psychological horror” — lots of foreshadowing and symbolism. There is an interesting alteration between distanced, objective camera angles, and 1st-person-surrogate angles, with and through which we experience the movie as if we were a character in danger.
Time for more wine.
