Spring Break: Day 6 - Chores and Errands

Spring break is a chain of days off for Dad and Meridith, so with that much space available, anything can be done. And yet, errands of any kind only feel right on the weekend, when we do the majority of them.

Yesterday was a majority, but first in chores for me to do. I started the morning with some more of "Sordid Lives", which is based on a play by Del Shores, who also wrote and directed the film, but before I even found out it was first a play, I knew it had to have been a play first before a movie, because there's many monologues in the film, and instances where a character, with other characters, speaks at length and those characters listening either interject or just listen. It's not as obvious as, say, "The Big Kahuna," starring Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, and Peter Facinelli, which is entirely obvious since it takes place in one room. There are changes in location in "Sordid Lives", but you've really got to pay attention to find those moments that indicate that it was once a play.

I liked the cast. Beau Bridges is in it, Olivia Newton-John, and Leslie Jordan, who's known for Beverley Leslie on "Will & Grace", but here, embraces entirely another role, a cross-dressing gay man locked up in a mental hospital simply for being gay and being different, who idolizes Tammy Wynette and lip-syncs to her songs in full Wynette regalia in front of a medicated audience. Usually.

I finished it this morning, and now I'm curious about the TV series that was made. Netflix doesn't have it. Amazon does, but it's fairly pricey for 2 discs, even in the Marketplace section where the price is slightly lower. I also found out that Leslie Jordan's one-man show, "My Trip Down the Pink Carpet", based on his autobiography, is on DVD, and I think I want to see that more right now.

So, back to yesterday morning. A bit of "Sordid Lives", and then I decided on a shower, and then washing the dog's dishes (food dishes, water dish, the tray that all of them are on), and gathering the garbages to put together into the kitchen garbage to take it out to the bin in the garage, and the same for the recycling.

I did everything I could possibly do in one morning, and then sat down on the couch, trying to finish the rest of "The Good Fight" by Walter Mondale. The day before yesterday, we'd gone to Porter Ranch and Simi Valley, to PetCo, HomeGoods, PetSmart, the Reagan Library for lunch at the cafe there (best fresh potato chips you'll ever find), and to see "Arthur" (Mom went with me since she wanted to see it, too, and I liked it. I like Russell Brand and he did what he always does best in it, though I still have a soft spot for the original, not only because of how good it is, but als because years ago, after a concert at the Hallandale Park racetrack, Christopher Cross autographed my "Arthur" DVD case in two places), and there wasn't much time to read.

I was on page 255, and had 100 more pages. So it went through that half an hour, and then after I was done with lunch, and before we went out, and on the way to the newsstand (for my usual copy of Wall Street Journal Weekend), and on the way to the library, and in the library, since I still hadn't finished it by then. I sat down at the table we chose when we got there, and did.

34 books on hold, and I picked up 20 (after returning everything I had in my tote bag, including "The Good Fight"). I usually don't read everything I check out. There's a lot of titles that I put on hold when I'm interested in them and about a week later, that interest fades, not long after I've checked out those books. That happened with one book that was a profile of the world's most powerful law firm. It happened with a book about Coke called "The Coke Machine" (http://www.amazon.com/Coke-Machine-Behind-Worlds-Favorite/dp/B004MPRWOQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302457913&sr=1-1). I try to make it happen less, though. For example, all the books I have right now about the presidents, I need all those for my research. And I have a few books by Anthony Bourdain, which I won't read until I've read "Kitchen Confidential", because I want to be knocked on my ass and breathless enough to want more, just like I was when I read that excerpt in the "Best Food Writing 2000" anthology.

I also picked up the first few James Bond novels by Ian Fleming. I want to read "Casino Royale" again and really pay attention to the subsequent works, unlike when I was at the Pembroke Pines campus of Broward Community College in South Florida with the Southwest Regional library right next door. I read the books, including "Moonraker", but didn't really feel like I paid a lot of attention to them. Just read them to get through them. But being that James Bond is my Star Wars, I'm going to go for it again, including the ones that came after Ian Fleming.

The rest of the day was busy; a lot of walking, with PetSmart, Target, and I didn't mind any of it. The more walking to do, the better for this body. It's when you get past 8 p.m. and go to Chick-Fil-A for dinner and start to feel it, then later at 9-something at Pavilions to pick up a few things, that the tiredness really sets in. It's not a stiff kind of tiredness, but you soon know when you've reached your limit. And I knew that when we got home a little past 10 p.m., and I put the Chick-Fil-A nutrition guide in the restaurant menu folder in a drawer in the kitchen. I looked for it again on the table, couldn't find it, went to that drawer, opened the folder and there it was. But I didn't remember that I had done that. That's when I knew it was time to let the night be ruled by others. I was done with it.

Today is possibly lunch at Moon Wok, our Chinese food heaven. Besides that, who knows. It's just an average Sunday and I like it that way.