10 July 2004

We went to see "Spiderman 2" last night. First movie I'd seen since "Return of the King." There have been others on our list of movies to see -- the Cole Porter one that's out now, for example -- but we just haven't gotten around to it. We had fun. There were bits to pick at -- lots of bits to pick at, if you really wanted to -- but we had a good time. I think the message is "if you treat women like fragile flowers, everybody will be miserable." Mark thinks the message is, "Do not perform fusion experiments in population centers." So, y'know, lots of interpretations.

The theatre we saw it in, though: they had the worst music. No, really, the worst. They were playing "Tell Laura I Love Her" before the movie started. "Tell Laura I Love Her." Words cannot express. I mean -- guuaaahhhhhhhhhhh. "Tell Laura I Love Her." I think if ever there was an excuse to shout obscenities at the ceiling, that would be it. I did not, however. I merely clutched my head and howled. Sometimes I howled "noooooo!" Sometimes I made incoherent noises of pain and dismay. Sometimes I repeated the lyrics after they were sung, in a dazed and disgusted voice. I realize that this was melodramatic behavior, but -- "Tell Laura I Love Her." My brain makes noises like a cat with a hairball. My brain runs in little circles demanding why I will not let it out. There is absolutely no excuse for that song.

Also, we went to Edina Creamery, so you don't have to. I have at least four types of ice cream place I will occasionally want to frequent: traditional, experimental, do-it-yourself, and gelato. Edina Creamery is traditional -- there wasn't a flavor in there I hadn't seen elsewhere, mostly many many times. But compared to the traditional ice cream you can get at Bridgeman's by the Falls, it's just kind of meh. So why wrestle France Ave. traffic when we can just pop over the Mendota Bridge and have Bridgeman's? Add to that the Bridgeman's nostalgia factor: Bridgeman's was the ice cream standard of my childhood, and it's by the Falls, which is always, always nifty.

It still amazes me that I can just hop in the car and get to the Falls in a matter of fifteen minutes or less, whenever I want to.

Helsinki of the Czars is boring me silly. I've been able to read dozens of books of Finnish history, art, business, myth, literature, politics, dance, whatever, but this one is not holding me at all at all. I think I'll return it to the U library and make a note to myself that they have it if I need it for a later book. I don't think I'm doing much with Helsinki in that period, but maybe peripherally. We'll see. In the meantime, I've picked up Tuomo Polvinen's Between East and West: Finland in International Politics 1944-1947, which is already a million times more scintillating than Helsinki of the Czars. Which makes me -- surprise! -- a great big Finnogeek. I realize this.

For books-without-notetaking, I finished Megan Lindholm's Cloven Hooves yesterday and will be reading Garth Nix's The Seventh Tower: Castle today. I am in the mood for something mentally and physically light, so Quicksilver will have to wait.

Cloven Hooves was...well, it was good, but I can see why Lindholm's books under her other name have more audience. Although the constant between her books was that her protagonists have a tendency to self-pity. That wasn’t such a thrill. It clarified for me, though, how much of my self-perceived awkwardness when I was younger was non-physical. I had awkward phases, and I am still not the soul of physical grace. But mostly it was just that I was obviously a geek, and am obviously a geek, and that used to be more of a worry than it was now. And I certainly didn't feel like my body had betrayed me when I started my period; it was just something that happened, something expected and normal. And if someone had suggested that it limited me to "girly stuff," my dad would have thumped them -- if Mom hadn't gotten to them first. But the protagonist was explicitly a generation older than me, and that might have made all the difference in the world. (In my family, indeed: Grandpa and Grandma would have done the thumping instead.)

I'm now in the middle of making wild rice bread with blueberries and pecans. I'll let you know if it's good. Other than that, I intend to write some more of Sampo and read and do house chores. Not an ambitious day, but a steady one, I think.