personal

Tuesday various

Monday it was

There’s no disguising the fact that today was a Monday.

I got to the train station this morning, running, I thought, a little late, only to discover everybody walking up the stairs to the platform on the other side of the tracks, thanks to an announcement of a track change. Of course, after we all got over there, it became quickly apparent — by the train going in the opposite direction on that track, and by our train in the distance on its usual track — that we had been misinformed. Sure enough, just before my morning train pulled into the station, they announced another track change, back to the original, and we all trudged back over. I felt particularly bad for a woman with a cane and her friend, but they did seem to be holding the train for everyone. Heck, we were already well into the “late” portion of what the Long Island Railroad considers “on time,” so why not?

The train got very crowded by the time we got to Queens, but that’s nothing especially new. And the train home was a lot less crowded.

Then again, I invariably fall asleep on the train home in the evening — I did this evening — and get very little reading done. Usually, I only get to read when I’m standing the whole way.

This evening, I’m going to try to finish We Have Always Lived in the Castle, while I wait for my iPad to update. I’m not certain about some of the so-called improvements that come with the new iOS 4.2 — the loss of the lock switch for a pretty needless mute button, or the fact that not everything works as magically as Apple insists — but I decided to bite the bullet for the chance to put apps in folders and actually multitask. I expect the upgrade to take several hours, if not days or weeks, judging from past experience with Apple products.

Hopefully it will be worth it.

Is my four-day weekend over already?

Today, I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 with friends — it was pretty good, although rather long and occasionally a little boring — and I did the Sunday crossword. Oh, and I watched this past week’s episode of Fringe and am currently reading more of We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Not exactly an exciting day, but a decent enough ending to the four-day weekend. Tomorrow, it’s back to work for what promises to be a busy three days.

Don’t look now, but I think that was a Saturday

I think the four-day weekend is starting to catch up with me a little. Today very much felt like a Saturday, and not just another in the string of Fridays I’ve been having. Which means that it’s fast approaching Sunday, and the upcoming work week. It’s a shortened work week, of course, because of the Thanksgiving holiday. (This, incidentally, is probably the one thing the holiday has over Canadian Thanksgiving, from which I believe it is otherwise indistinguishable: because the holiday’s on a Thursday, most of the time we get the Friday rolled in.) But it’s a week in which I need to get a fair amount of work done.

I didn’t get a whole lot done today. The most exciting thing that happened was I went for a walk, and along the way I startled a hawk trying to make off with a dead pigeon near my old elementary school. I took some photos, of the living bird only, when it flew up into the trees. It swooped back down and away with its meal when I turned to go. Then I saw two other dead birds before I finally arrived back home. (A superstitious man might look upon that as ominous.)

I didn’t do much reading today, and only the barest hint of any writing, but I did watch Winter’s Bone, which I’ve had sitting around for several weeks. It’s really quite good, but also kind of bleak and unflinching. I like what Roger Ebert wrote about it:

There is a hazard of caricature here. Granik avoids it. Her film doesn’t live above these people, but among them. Ree herself has lived as one of them and doesn’t see them as inferior, only ungiving and disappointing. In her father’s world, everyone is a criminal, depends on a criminal or sells to criminals. That they are engaging in illegal activities makes them vulnerable to informers and plea-bargainers, so they are understandably suspicious. The cliche would be that they suspect outsiders. These characters suspect insiders, even family members.

As Ree’s journey takes her to one character after another, Granik is able to focus on each one’s humanity, usually damaged. They aren’t attractions in a sideshow, but survivors in a shared reality. Do they look at Ree and see a girl in need and a family threatened with eviction? I think they see the danger of their own need and eviction; it’s safer to keep quiet and close off.

It’s no The Human Centipede, but then, what is?

But you know who one of the stars of the movie is? John Hawkes. So it all ties together.

This feels like my third Friday in a row

So, what did I do today, the second day of my four-day weekend?

Well, I read some. Last night, I started Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and I read a few more chapters of it today. I’m really quite enjoying it. I’m familiar with Jackson’s work — it’s almost impossible not to be, given the annual award named in her honor — but I think I’ve only ever read the one short story, the one practically every school child has read, “The Lottery.” This week, though, I bought a copy of the Library of America’s collected volume of her work, and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it.

I watched just a little TV, namely this week’s great episode of Community and another episode of QI. I also watched The Bicycle Thieves, which I’d been meaning to watch for quite awhile. It’s one of those movies that shows up all the time on all-time best-of lists, groundbreaking and hugely influential, and it’s not hard to see why. Mostly, though, it’s just a really touching story of a man looking for a job, and a wonderful look at post-World War II Italy.

And I dropped off a package for my father at UPS, then went and bought myself a new toothbrush. Such is the exciting life of leisure I lead.