Bookstores, Horror Movies, Extra Coffee

"Aw, lookit the cute little critter. . ."
"AAAHHHHHHHGG! He ate my face!!!"

Ha ha ha. Sorry. That's a tarsier. I love weird animals. Always have. When I was a kid I collected books on animals and memorized the genus and Latin name and range and all that stuff. Books. I was one book-buying kid. I don't have the same recollections of libraries that some kids have, mainly because we lived overseas and didn't have English-language libraries. My sweet book memories are all of the bookstores -- even the Navy PX in Naples or the Army one in SHAPE -- Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe -- how daunting a place name is that? It's in Mons, Belgium. We didn't live there, but in Brussels, and there was an English-language bookstore in Brussels somewhere. As I recall it had mostly British editions of Evelyn Waugh and such. I probably picked up some James Herriot there. Ah, bookstores of my youth, they were not the fabulous, sprawling pleasure palaces they are today, with coffee and soft chairs and thousands of square feet of hiding places! They didn't even have public bathrooms. And I remember that clearly because bookstores were just about my favorite place when I was a little kid, and as soon as we would walk into one I would have to go to the bathroom. Honestly. My parents still tease me about it! It would just kill my pleasure. I would still manage to gather a stack of books and my parents, they might not have bought me every single book I wanted, but I did okay.

I remember staying home sick from school one day and reading The Trumpet of the Swan. I loved that book. I loved that day, with my flexy straw and 7-Up and staying in my nightgown all day. Funny to think: my days now involve pajamas, books, and flexy straws (in water, not 7-Up). Living the dream.

Huh. I didn't know I was going to write that when I sat down. It's early. Our hour of rising has been slowly creeping a bit later and later, upward towards 7:30ish. Yesterday and today I made a big effort to skimble out of bed at the first -- okay, second sound of the alarm at 6. Made the usual trough of coffee and then Jim said he didn't want any, which means -- yippee!! -- double coffee for me this morning, which I would never do on purpose but if it's there, you know. . .

Okay. Pushing Daisies last night: still loving it. The weird one-eyed aunt sewed a stuffed parrot's wing onto a maimed carrier pigeon and. . . it flew! There were diamonds hidden in a girl's wooden leg! There were love letters and pie and windmills and dancing on the rooftop in beekeeping suits! This show was made for me. And the bluish dead people with disfigured faces? Okay, that was kind of made for me too. I've always been a horror fan. I can take shards of glass sticking out of someone's face.

However, I am beginning to sense a change in my horror-love. We couldn't finish 28 Weeks Later a few weeks ago. This has happened a couple of times, when we put on a horror movie (and we're discriminating to begin with -- we don't watch the greusome stuff. We like "scary," not "gory") -- as soon as the movie got started and the zombies started to attack, I had this weird feeling like I had no idea why I was watching this and I really didn't want to! We kept it on for a while but it was too gross. Had that same feeling of "Wait. . . why?" a while back watching the chic-horror-flic The Descent which turned out to be awesome and really, really fricking scary.

On Monday, we went to see a horror film I didn't even know was a horror film -- Sunshine by Danny Boyle (of Trainspotting fame and 28 Days -- but not Weeks-- Later. Jim wanted to see it on the big screen and it's almost out of the second-run theaters so we went to a late show on Monday night at the Laurelhurst, one of Portland's many awesome second-run movie houses with pizza and pints. This movie. Do you know of it? It kind of passed by unnoticed, and I think the trailer might have had something to do with it -- looked a little arty farty. It's a sci fi movie about a group of 8 scientist/astronauts flying an enormous nuclear bomb toward the dying sun in a last-ditch effort to reignite it and save Earth, which has been locked in a solar winter. We. . . loved it. I say it was a horror movie, and it was, but not like 28 Days Later or anything. It was one of the only times recently I've gone into a movie knowing almost nothing about it. Usually I've read reviews and know what to expect. Not with this, not really. That was cool.

As for writing: good writing day yesterday, which I partially attribute to the extra few morning hours. So important, as long as I don't blog them away! A new character popped up out of nowhere. That was fun. And in knitting news, with the very very few moments of knitting I allow myself, it is slow going but I am almost at long last finished with my soft as a cloud alpaca blanket. Yay! And I have found I have an unexpected hankering to learn some basic lace-knitting stitches so I can start doing cooler and trickier stuff. I found some patterns online, and once I'm finished with Silksinger I am going to start going to the Wednesday night open classes at Knit/Purl downtown and learn me some new things.

Have a great day!