Thanksgiving

We decided to wait until Thanksgiving morning to drive down to Melissa and Jeff’s place in North Carolina, since there was bound to be way more traffic than we wanted to deal with Wednesday night. (The last time I drove down was over Presidents’ Day weekend, and it took me more than four hours to get just 60 miles out of town.) The drive down was uneventful, though we passed about 10 cop cars, 7 of which had pulled someone over. It took just about 5 hours total.

Jeff and Melissa prepared us a vegetarian feast. They had looked up Tofurky on the internet, and found that it had a competitor (Quorn) which most people were saying was much more like real turkey, and more tasty. As an experiment, they decided that we should try them both. We agreed with the opinion on the internet — the Quorn was more like real turkey (though my opinion may not count for much, since I haven’t had real turkey in over 14 years), it even flaked a bit like turkey. The Tofurkey turned out a bit rubbery, and had a mass-produced stuffing in the middle. Jeff had made homemade stuffing, so there really was no comparison.

The remainder of the weekend was spent playing games, seeing movies, and just generally vegging out. We did head out to the flea market at the fair grounds Friday, but the outside vendors got rained out shortly after we arrived. We got to try out a couple Steve Jackson games — Chez Geek and Munchkin — which were both quite fun (and I’m not just saying that because I won all the games we played). We broke out the 20th Anniversary Trivial Pursuit that Mom and Dad sent me for my birthday — I did much, much better at this edition than the original. Oh, and we also got to try playing Elfenland with 4 people. Andrew and I had bought this after our board game class, and after playing a couple times, decided that it would probably be better with more players. We were right.

Andrew and I headed out relatively early Sunday morning. Surprisingly, the worst traffic we encountered was in Richmond. On the north end of the city the traffic coming in from Virginia Beach joined I95, causing a large backup. I was discouraged, thinking that the traffic would continue all the way into Washington (over 100 miles away). However, about 20 miles outside the city, it just broke up. Not sure where everyone went, but I’m glad they left. In Frederick, VA, we also encountered a bit of traffic, but that was because of an accident. There was surprisingly little traffic in the final approach to DC. Not that I’m complaining.

Gothika

3.5/5 stars

I don’t usually get into horror flicks, but this one did pull me in more than most. Halle Barry plays a psychiatrist at a secure mental hospital. She wakes up after a car accident, and finds that she is now a patient in that very hospital, accused of killing her husband. But she can’t remember what happened.

The “spring-loaded cats”, as Andrew calls them, are generally quite effective. Even more fun, though, were Melissa’s reactions to them (she gasps louder than anyone I’ve heard). I had some trouble with the ending, though, this is not a movie to see for the plot.

Xanadu

0.5/5 stars

This came on Oxygen, and Melissa begged for us to watch, so we did. I tried reading my novel through most of it, but was too drawn in by the utter cheese to get very far. Olivia Newton-John is a muse who has come to Earth to help inspire artist Sonny Malone. Sonny partners up with Danny McGuire to build a mega-huge roller dome. If that’s not a story for that ages, I don’t know what is.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

4/5 stars

This movie is based on the claims of XXX, creator of many game shows and host of the Gong Show in the 70s, that he was an agent for the CIA. The movie follows his missions to assassinate enemies of the US, often his travels were disguised as part of his official duties as chaperone for the prime time Dating Game.

Do I believe it? It doesn’t really matter. One the one hand, he is the perfect kind of person to be an agent, I mean, who would ever suspect him? On the other hand, the movie doesn’t have to be completely believable. It’s fun.

Lesson 11/26/03

I was getting frustrated with that 18th century piece (#31 in the Voxman book) I’ve been working on. Every time I play it, I seem to sound worse than the last time I played. So, I decided over the week to move on to a different piece, and also to go back to my “regular” book and work on the A-major scale.

Master and Commander: Far Side of the World

4/5 stars

The orders of the English ship, the Surprise, are to hunt down the Acheron, a French ship, and burn, sink or take it home as a prize. Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) takes his ship to the ends of the Earth, and beyond, to fulfill his orders. The Surprise finds itself rounding South America, and then trekking back north to the Galapagos Islands.

I was glad that we were able to see this movie on a big screen — it would have lost something on a TV screen. We toured the USS Constellation in the Baltimore Inner Harbor this past spring, and it felt very claustrophobic, even without a full crew — the movie captured this feeling of claustrophobia quite well. The opening scene shows the men in their hammocks below decks — they are packed in there! The movie did lose me when the doctor (Paul Bettany) preformed surgery on himself — until then I was fully taken in by the movie, it’s scenery, plot and characters.

Frequency

3/5 stars

During the biggest solar storms of memorable history, Frank and John Sullivan find that they are able to speak to each other through time. On October 10, 1999, John hears a voice on the other side of his father’s old ham radio. The voice identifies itself as Frank Sullivan, John’s father who died on October 12, 1969. He thinks the guy is playing a joke on him, until Frank accidentally burns the desk, creating a burn on the desk Frank is sitting at, only it’s cold. John gives Frank some advice on the fire he’ll fight the next day (“don’t go with your instinct…go the other way”) But in changing his father’s fate, he changes his mother’s as well, who subsequently becomes a victim of a serial killer. Together, Frank and John work across time to fix what they put wrong.

As with most movies involving time travel or faster than light communications, I had to turn my inner-scientist off for this movie. But factoring out the questionable science, I enjoyed the movie. It borders on touching — telling a story of second chances — but doesn’t become overly sentimental.

Science Meetings

I’ve spent a few days in science meetings before today — though it doesn’t happen frequently, yet, and I can still look on it with humor. Here are a few things I learned:

• You can always tell who the guy from headquarters is: he’s the one in a full suit and tie.
  The scientists, even when they dress up for a talk, rarely wear a jacket, let alone a tie. Many of the scientists don’t even bother to dress up for talks. That’s one reason I love this profession.
• A laser pointer in the wrong hands is a bad thing.
  Some people know that a laser pointer should be used to highlight a few things on their slides, and then turned off. Most think they need to constantly have the little, hypnotic light dancing across their slides.
• If something is truly “exciting”, you shouldn’t have to say it more than once or twice.
  Asserting that something is exciting ten or more times during your talk makes everyone a bit suspicious.
• Itineraries are just for show. Time limits don’t actually apply to someone as important as me.
• Even science meetings can turn into pissing matches.

Mike

During junior high and high school, I often thought about killing myself — I’m certain that a good part of that was due to winter depression (it was worst during winter), but part of it was just teenaged angst. In November 1989, though, a guy I had met a few weeks earlier killed himself. There is still some question about whether or not it was intentional — I find it easier to think that it was an accident. But his death, and how much it affected me even though I’d only known him for a short while, jolted me out of my own suicidal thoughts. Perhaps that sounds odd, since it might be more intuitive that I would become more depressed about life from his death, but instead it showed me how much my life might mean to other people.

I didn’t know him well. We met the first day of chemistry class, and he sat directly in front of me (at least after we talked a few times). He was a sophomore, I was a senior, and chemistry was considered a junior-level class (everyone else in the class was a junior). So we were both “misfits” in the class. We ended up being lab partners, and I remember that he talked in anticipation of the traditional Christmas lab in which we would make peanut brittle (with brand new lab equipment!).

On October 14, I hosted a “How to Host a Murder” party. Everyone came dressed up. I was in a taffeta dress I made myself, Mike was in a suit. I later found out that he and his mom had just picked out that suit the day of the party! He had kept telling his mom that he needed to go get something, but she kept putting it off. Then the day of the party arrived, and he still didn’t have a suit. They ran off to Sears.

On my 18th birthday, I later found out, he was in class early. When another student came in (I can’t remember her name, but she was the one who told me this after he dies), he got a huge grin on his face, dug into his pocket and told her that it was my birthday. He then pulled out the 18 lucky pennies he had collected for me, and proudly showed them to her. When I came in, he presented me with the lucky pennies. (I still have them in a scrap book.)

The first weekend of November, the Sadie Hawkins dance was held at school. Each day that week, I told myself that I was going to ask Mike to go. I felt my heart pounding when he would walk into the classroom. I tried to nerve myself up to it, but each day I chickened out, until the deadline passed to buy tickets. I told myself that I would ask him to the next dance.

The Friday after Sadies, Mike and I walked out of chemistry class together. We got as far as the staircase, and then he had to go up, I had to go down. He told me to have a good weekend, and I yelled back, “I’ll try.”

The week after Sadie’s, my church held a “murder mystery” party. I considered inviting Mike, but chickened out on that, too. I knew he liked me as a friend, but I was scared to ask him to parties and dances, because I didn’t know if he felt the way I did. The murder mystery party was on November 18, a Saturday.

Mike took his life on November 19. The very next day.

I’ll always wonder if it would have happened if I had invited him to that party. I know that I have no responsibility for his death. I know that if he was determined, there was nothing I could do to stop him (assuming it was intentional). But I still wonder. I can’t help it.

I occasionally find myself wondering what he would be doing now if he were still alive. He was very smart…almost as smart as me 🙂 He certainly could have done anything he wanted, but I find that I don’t remember what he said he wanted to do — not that he might not have changed his mind.

His wake was on Thanksgiving day. I hate Thanksgiving. I know that his family did it then because the whole family was already going to be around. But I now hate Thanksgiving. It’s not that I actively grieve anymore — I am over his death — but there’s still a pall over the day.

I found out at his wake that after my How to Host a Murder party, Mike had come home and told his mother how beautiful I looked that night. Beautiful. I think that was the first time any boy had ever said that about me. I bet he would have gone to Sadie’s with me.

Lesson 11/19/03 — Cancelled

Bad weather tonight. The store was still open, but I was tired from my commute home (second worst), and worried about Andrew getting home from work.