quit work make crafts

Next Spins & Needles is on January 18! It's downtown, an easy walk from the transitway. Ottawa folks, y'all should come too...you know you want to!

The Golden Compass was pretty awesome, quite faithful to the book in letter and spirit, despite the careful footwork around the whole question of the church. I have to say that the wingnuts who are up in arms about this movie are making themselves look really, REALLY bad by pointing out that they're the ones the Magisterium is supposed to represent. Way to go, guys...most of the target audience probably wouldn't have put that together without your help. And the fact that a film about shrugging off the shackles of would-be mind-controlling authority has to censor itself in order to tiptoe around certain authorities really only underscores the point.

I was particularly impressed with the way they captured the spookiness of the North, the foreignness of Lyra's world, and particularly the sinisterness of the Magisterium. In the book the General Oblation Board is a bunch of zealots in the ranks of a fairly standard world-power type of organization, but in the movie they're much more monolithic, and much scarier. There's so much communicated about them in the opening scenes - unspoken politics are flying in furtive or pointed glances. And Nicole Kidman is, as predicted, letter-perfect as Mrs. Coulter.

TOTALLY looking forward to the next one.

And now, for latkes!

Hmm, been a couple years since THAT subject header came up. Tomorrow we meet up with teh real estate agent (who is, freakishly, the husband of one of my bosses - holy small world, batman!) to see the house. Apparently there are no structural issues, but several major upgrades to be done in fairly short order: the roof needs replacing in 3-4 years, and the wiring has been partly upgraded but still needs work. (Roaming the internets for information about this last has actually been pretty interesting.) Well, whatever, it will be a fun real estate adventure and good practice, if nothing else.

...

Right, so in the middle of poking at this entry and reading about rewiring old houses, I got a call from arndis, result of which was that instead of bumming around the house by myself while Corey went off to poker, I spent a lovely evening at George's place chillin with old friends, met a couple of incredibly cool people, and rolled back home around midnight. Certainly an auspicious start to the weekend! Supervising kitties' dinner just now (with three different prescription diets, you have to police them to make sure they don't eat each other's food) but must get to bed soon so as to have wits about me for tomorrow's real estate madness.

And just because everyone needs another meme in their life:

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