08 Sunday Mar 2009
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My brother Brian turns 25 today. Happy Birthday Bro! Hope you’re making time between prepping for your art students and designing threadless t-shirts to eat some cake and ice cream. Just think: if you worked at Dunder-Mifflin, Michael Scott would be throwing you a party!
26 Thursday Feb 2009
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A couple of weeks ago, Hanna’s bed unexpectedly died. It was a very traumatic event that led to a lot of hauling of various old bits out and new bits in, deconstruction, construction, sweeping of dust bunnies and the consumption of a very nice bottle of sake. Which in turn led to the creation of this annotated list of twenty-nine of our favorite romantic movies.
Which was also, in part, a response to this list, that Hanna had blogged about earlier.
So anyways, check out our own (far superior, *coughcough*) list over at Hanna’s blog, …fly over me, evil angel….
UPDATE: We’re already accumulating, via comments, constructive critique concerning films we short-shrifted. And really, there is no excuse for forgetting a movie like Secretary or My Girl Friday. In the interest of full disclosure, certain movies (Hanna has already mentioned History Boys) were considered for inclusion, sidelined, and then we ran out of room (the list we were responding to had 29 films, thus our seemingly-arbitrary cut-off). “Honorable mentions” from the rough draft also include Stardust, Beyond Silence, Little Voice, Bend It Like Beckham, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Lion in Winter, Stage Beauty, and The Princess and the Warrior.
Clearly, we’re already at work on installment number two . . . thoughts? put ’em in comments (on either blog)!
25 Wednesday Feb 2009
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Hanna and I watched the 81st Annual Academy Awards last night, from red carpet to closing montage. Why, we are not quite sure given that between the two of us we had seen exactly two out of the entire slate of nominees (Hanna saw Dark Knight and both of us had the great pleasure of seeing the spectacular Wall-E in the theater). A few others are on the list (eg. I would like to see Milk eventually, and we keep saying to each other, “we really should go see Slumdog Millionaire“) but student schedules and student budgets have conspired to put most of these on the Netflix list.
Still, the ceremony was a fun way to spend Sunday evening. Danny Boyle’s acceptence speech for Best Picture was eclipsed by the way he bounced onto the stage (“in the spirit of Tigger”), and Dustin Lance Black’s acceptence speech for Best Original Screenplay (Milk) was a beautiful, heartfelt piece of extemporaneous oratory — and I say this as someone who finds most speechifying, yes even Obama’s, stilted and dull.
Poor Hugh Jackman seems to have gotten scant mention for his turn as Oscar host, which I think is a shame given the exuberance with which he embraced the role. Perhaps it was just my own childhood ambition to be a broadway musical actress welling back up to the surface, but he seemed to me to be having such a brilliant time. So for this week’s Midweek post, I’m sharing the YouTube video of his opening monologue/song with cameo appearance by Anne Hathaway as Nixon (no, Hanna and I aren’t quite sure why either, but somehow it totally works).
And for the dedicated musical junkie (read: me), his later number with Beyonce, composed by Baz Luhrmann (yes, you could tell), was also thoroughly entertaining.
02 Monday Feb 2009
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I was putting on a warmer sweatshirt just now (I’m airing out the apartment on this warmish sort of day and it’s cold at the computer!) and I noticed upon hanging up the t-shirt I’d been wearing on the door to my closet that virtually every item of clothing hanging there was some shade of purple. I guess I have a color theme going without even trying!
26 Monday Jan 2009
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While I was in Michigan for the Christmas holidays, I received several gift certificates to the local knitting shop, Friends of Wool, which enabled me to stock up on some lovely knitting supplies before returning to Boston. Thanks to leisure time during the winter break, and the (coughcough) responsibility of making my way through seasons of Torchwood, Dr. Who, and Primeval. One of those projects was this balaclava, which I finished last week.
Hanna says it makes me look like a mentholated cherry cough drop. The only response I can make in my own defense is that it does keep my ears warm out on Comm Ave while I’m waiting for the T!
25 Thursday Dec 2008
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15 Saturday Nov 2008
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When Hanna asked me earlier this week what my soundtrack would be for a “happy dance.” I came up with the Weather Report song “Birdland” which my brother, sister and I used to rock out to on a regular basis as high-energy children. She’d never heard of it, so I (naturally) had to hunt down a version for her to here (thank you YouTube!) Here it is for a little Friday night jumping and jiving.
And now I’m off to bed.
06 Thursday Nov 2008
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With autumn well and truly here, the temperatures dropping, and the days getting shorter, it is most definitely time for that coziest of beverages: tea! Hanna and I were shopping down on Newbury Street today and stopped in at Tealuxe to augment our collection with two new additions. When I brought them home and added the bags to our little regiment above the stove, the effect was so pleasing that I felt compelled to take a picture (or two, or three).
Hope you’re all enjoying the post-election glow . . . and now it’s back to the books.
08 Wednesday Oct 2008
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How not to use a moustrap:
“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”
02 Tuesday Sep 2008
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Here we are again, the first week of September; this time last year I was in the midst of GSLIS orientation, still unpacking in the dorm, and figuring out where to buy groceries. Today, I’m sitting here in my flat in Allston, having just come back from a grocery run at the Harvest Co-op, planning dinner for my roommate’s return from vacation tomorrow and enjoying the creep of the afternoon sun across the hard-wood floors. Yep, a lot has happened in the past year. And now with a new semester beginning, I’m looking ahead to year two . . . the same, with changes.
Work and school will definitely keep me busy this fall. I have on the docket:
On the leisure side of things, I’m a firm believer in continuing to have a life while in graduate school. Since I now have an apartment with a fully functional kitchen and a roommate, this “life” thing means cooking meals, enjoying Tuesday night British Comedies with Hanna, Sunday strolls along the Charles (as long as the weather holds), and of course Thursday night episodes of a new season of The Office! Not to mention watching the political circus in the lead-up to November’s election and posting regularly on my blog.
Happy fall, one and all . . .
the feminist librarian 