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Sunday night I had the horrible realization that I had gotten the dates wrong, and a big deadline I thought was Tuesday was really Monday. I blame those damned European calendars! Stayed up almost all night working on it, but at least it got done and the client is happy. Monday was a busy day, then last night I crashed after dinner and slept all evening and all night. Woke up feeling great. I guess catching up on sleep worked after all.

My next door neighbors just got wireless. They have a massively strong signal. In my living room I get a better connection on their network than on mine. My network is actually kind of bad in the living room, sometimes I have to move the laptop around on the table to get a connection at all. I feel a little guilty about using their network, but it's not like I'm doing anything bandwidth intensive. Besides, I didn't do it intentionally. My laptop is set up to go for the best available, so it jumped onto their network automatically. When I'm working in my study, which does use more bandwidth, it goes back to our network.

One (or maybe both) of the dogs has decided that the bales of straw we're using for mulch are fun to play with. Every time I go outside, there's more straw strewn about. I'm not going to scold them though. Time they spend pulling apart the straw is time they aren't digging up my hydrangeas. Hmm, maybe I should keep an extra bale of straw around to distract them from the flower beds.

I did a little more yardwork today, planting those last daffodils. Daffodils are no fun because they have to go so deep in the ground. Also because I hear they tend not to do well in the hot, damp South, and all that digging may be for nothing if they rot in the clay soil next summer. I splurged and got myself some waterproof gardening clogs, in a cute bright green, and a foam kneeler thing. My knees still got gross from dirt getting on the foam thing, but it was a lot more comfortable.

Nov. 30 movie: Ready to Wear. In case you haven't heard, this movie sucks. It was supposed to be a cynical insider comedy, The Player of fashion, but it's just a chaotic, unfunny mess. For a while my ex and I had a tradition every Christmas day, of going to the Carolina Theatre to see an eagerly anticipated indie film that turned out to suck bigtime. Ready to Wear was one of them.

It's not all bad though. There are some good moments. Richard E. Grant is funny as a Galliano-esque designer. And there are lots of runway shows full of wacky, now tacky, early 90s fashions. The Isaac show had "Twiggy Twiggy" as soundtrack music, which if I recall correctly, was the first time I ever heard Pizzicato Five. That's something to recommend the movie. I remembered a couple of the shows from having seen them in magazines at the time, definitely Gaultier's eskimo collection. It makes me wonder how Altman filmed this? Did he film at the actual shows, with his actors in front row seats? It seems like he must have. It would have been difficult to recreate those shows with all the models and real industry people. And now I've put way more energy into thinking about this movie than it deserves.

Nov. 30 movies: The Best Years of Our Lives. Thoughtful, deeply affecting movie about three soldiers just back from WWII, dealing with emotional and physical battle scars and trying to find a place for themselves back home. The performances are nicely restrained, giving realism to the sense of loss and alienation. There's beautiful camera work by Gregg Toland, with these deep focus scenes where different things are happening simultaneously in the foreground, middle ground and background.

It's interesting to compare this movie to Since You Went Away, which is all about waiting for the soldier's return, and makes it seem like everything will be sunshine and roses after he gets back. It makes me wonder, when Claudette Colbert's husband came home after the movie ended, did he feel like a stranger to his family? Did he have recurring nightmares? Did his job seem trivial and pointless?

The three soldiers were Fredric March, Dana Andrews, and Harold Russell, who was not an actor but a war veteran and double amputee. Russell's performance is heartbreaking. He's the only person ever to win two Oscars for the same role: Best Supporting Actor and a special award for being an inspiration to veterans. The movie also starred Myrna Loy as March's wife, Teresa Wright as his daughter, Virginia Mayo as Andrews' wife, and a small part for Hoagy Carmichael as Butch, the proprietor of a little bar. Carmichael played the piano a couple of times but alas, didn't sing.

Nov. 29 movie: The Man Who Came to Dinner. No, this isn't the movie where Sidney Poitier wants to marry Spencer Tracy's daughter. That's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. This is a very funny movie with Monty Wooley as an imperious radio star who breaks his leg and has to stay in some hapless man's house over the holidays, and Bette Davis as Wooley's personal assistant, whose life he tries to control with hilarious results. It's way too early for a Christmas movie but this is so funny, it's worth watching any time of the year. Also stars Jimmy Durante as, well as himself basically. Durante plays himself in pretty much every role.

I totally forgot to mention, while I was outside weeding today, three deer came running out of my next door neighbor's yard, crossed the street, then disappeared into the woods behind the yard across the street. I live on a busy road and the deer stopped traffic, which kindly waited for the third deer, lagging somewhat behind the other two.

I wouldn't have seen them except the dogs did, and went nuts with the barking. I thought it must be a jogger and turned around to look, and there were the deer. Wow. That's the closest I've ever been to wild deer except for seeing them on the roadside while I was driving my car at night. We've seen deer on other parts of Cole Mill before, mostly near the golf course, but never right here.

In other wildlife news, I made an attempt at squirrel proofing our bird feeders. Georg bought a domed baffle which I put up over the little tube feeder. And I found some leftover bathroom tiles from our bathroom renovation and taped them inside the "squirrel-proof" feeder, covering the little holes that the squirrels have been using to get to the seed. Also we replaced the suet feeder, which the squirrels had knocked to the ground and eaten up, with new suet that has hot chilis in it. Apparently the birds can't taste the chilis but the squirrels can.

The red-bellied woodpecker has found the seed feeder. I didn't even know woodpeckers liked seed feeders but apparently they do. I've seen him on it every day for the past few days. And he's been hanging around a lot in the tree it hangs from. Maybe he'll build a nest there. Also there's a wren that keeps getting through the dog door onto the porch. Luckily he seems to have figured out how to get out as well. Making the wren more intelligent than my dog Thirteen, who can only get out the dog door, not in. Thirteen is a good dog but she's sometimes not very smart. Or should I say, there are inexplicable gaps in her problem solving abilities.

The weather was beautiful today, perfect for yardwork. I didn't get the last of the daffodils into the ground, but I did make some good headway on preparing the soil for the vegetable garden next year. It's the bed along the driveway, which seems like a weird place to put your vegetable garden, but it's good for two reasons: first, it gets the most sun of any place in the yard, and second, it's outside the fence where the dogs can't dig it up, chew on the plants or poop in the soil.

Speaking of dogs messing up garden beds, yesterday we put a new fence around the hydrangea bed. It's hideous. A 3 foot high green plastic monstrosity. Thank you Lina! We also saw a dog and cat repellant spray called "Pet B Gone" or something. I looked it up online and it's reportedly effective, but contains capsicum (the active ingredient in chili peppers). It's the same stuff they give mailmen to spray in the faces of attack dogs. I even read that it's so powerful it can be used to ward off bears. I'm not comfortable spraying that in my garden. I want to stop Lina from digging up the flowerbeds, but not if I have to torture her. Other recommended dog repellants include vinegar, which is unfortunately toxic to plants, and moth balls. Which I think I will try.

Anyway, back to the vegetable garden. I thought about it last night and decided that I like the idea I had yesterday, to add organic material by burying dead leaves under a layer of soil. It seems like the leaves should rot under the soil and make a nice layer of compost. We have tons of leaves, so why not? Even if it doesn't work like I hope it will, it certainly won't hurt anything.

The bed is 45 feet long and 7 feet wide. Which seems pretty daunting: every time I think about trying to clear that whole bed, I end up panicking and doing something else instead. So today I just did a little area about 5 feet wide. I pulled back the black plastic, which by the way, seemed to work better at killing weeds than over by the blueberries. Maybe because it gets more sun, so the soil got hotter underneath the plastic. Anyway I pulled back about 5 feet of plastic, then dug up the few weeds with deep enough roots to survive 2 months under black plastic. Luckily my friend Pete had lent me a small mattock, so I didn't miss my broken one. I even dug up a stump about 3 inches in diameter. Which sounds more impressive than it was, because the soil was so dry and crumbly. It wasn't too hard to clear the soil away from the base of the stump with the mattock, then chop it out with an axe. I hope I got it deep enough that it won't come back.

Clearing the ground was the hard part. Then I raked up a wheelbarrow full of leaves and piled them up on the ground, then covered that with a thin layer of compost and peat. Covered it with newspaper to keep weeds down over the winter, and then straw over the whole thing. Then I hosed it down, to wet the straw and keep it from blowing away. Next spring I hope I'll have a nice layer of organic material to turn into the ground. Even if I'm totally wrong about this, and end up with nasty wet leaves and straw sitting on top of clay, it won't be any worse than if I'd left the plastic all winter.

While I was doing all that, Georg cleaned up the front porch, got rid of all the trash, then organized the gardening tools, art car supplies and toolbox. Because he is amazing.

This afternoon I spent an Amazon gift certificate from my folks. I bought 2 gardening books, one about vegetable gardening and one about organic gardening. I don't have a huge moral investment in organic gardening; I don't object to artificial fertilizers and pesticides on general principles, if they're safe and do the job. But having pets makes me reluctant to use chemicals in the yard unless absolutely necessary. Besides, an unintended result of our total yardwork negligance is that we're starting with a clean slate in terms of organic methods. I don't think we've used a single chemical in the garden or yard in the seven years we've lived here. Well, I may have used some fertilizer on the vegetable garden that first year, I can't remember. But that's in a totally different part of the yard, and nothing since then.

Also I ordered a DVD I'm very excited about: The Man With a Movie Camera with the Cinematic Orchestra score! I didn't know it existed, but I was checking to see if Cinematic Orchestra had a new album out and it came up. Amazon was out of stock, but they had someone else selling a copy of it. Yay! Playing the DVD on mute and then simultaneously playing my CD of the score was my best approximation. But it wasn't great because some of the tracks had been shortened, so it was difficult to sync the two. I can't wait to see the movie with the soundtrack as it's meant to be heard.

Nov. 27 movie: My Man Godfrey. A crazy thing happened tonight. I had no movies saved on the DVR, nothing from Netflix, and nothing good on TCM. What's a girl to do?

Dip into the DVD collection of course, with one of the great screwball comedies. William Powell plays Godfrey, a down-on-his-luck former Boston aristocrat who somehow ends up working as the butler for an insane Park Avenue family, which includes grumpy father Eugene Pallette, ditzy mother Alice Brady, bitchy sister Gail Patrick, long-suffering maid Jean Dixon, and our heroine, Carole Lombard. The family are mostly likeable, but there's an edge to the humor that keeps it from being saccharine. The humor also balances a storyline about homeless men which could have been heavy-handed and preachy, but ends up just a light social satire.

This movie is hilarious from beginning to end. The DVD has some nice extras, especially a blooper reel showing Carole Lombard flubbing her lines and then swearing like a sailor. I meant to watch the commentary by historian Bob Gilpin, which I heard was good. But once the movie started I wanted to hear the dialogue, so I turned the commentary off.

Did someone forget to circulate the memo that it is too damned soon to be inundated with Christmas cheer? I expect it from TV advertising and mall displays -- heck, that's why I have a DVR and avoid malls -- but people were buying Christmas trees from Home Depot this afternoon, and several of my neighbors have their lights up already.

It's too soon! We haven't even polished off the pumpkin pie yet! Aren't these people going to be royally sick of their Christmas decorations by the end of the month? I know I will.

Nov. 27 movie: The White Sister. Clark Gable plays an Italian soldier who falls for Helen Hayes, an aristocrat. He messes up her engagement to an old drip, then WWI breaks out so Gable goes off to war. His biplane is shot down and she thinks he's dead, so she becomes a nun. Eventually he makes it back, but by then she's gotten used to being a nun and doesn't want to give it up. Something about not being able to marry Gable because she's already married to Jesus, or whatnot. Gable sort of kidnaps her and tries to make her admit that she loves him. And can I say, Gable played a lot of bad boys but forcing himself on a nun? That's pretty low. Anyway the Germans start bombing, Hayes starts praying, and Gable thinks better of the whole "kidnap the nun" thing and takes her back to the convent. Then he goes back into combat and dies. What a happy story!

This may be the first Clark Gable movie I've ever seen, after he became a leading man that is, where he doesn't get the girl. (Gone With the Wind doesn't count, because there he gets the girl, but doesn't want her.) I guess God trumps Gable.

Nov. 26 movie: Before Sunrise. What a sweet movie. But before I talk about it, I have to say that we tried to watch American Movie first, but turned it off after about a half hour. I heard it was funny, and assumed that meant "laughing with" funny, a celebration of a kooky amateur filmmaker. No, actually it was too cruel to even be "laughing at" funny. It was funny the way kicking someone in the nuts is funny.

Anyway, Before Sunrise. This is another one of those "can't believe I hadn't yet seen this" movies. We've had the DVD from Netflix sitting around for ages, but I've been resisting watching because I thought it would be talky and boring, like a slacker My Dinner With Andre. (Call me a philistine but I found My Dinner with Andre insanely boring. I can produce my own painfully clever dinner conversation, thank you very much.) But I was totally wrong about Before Sunrise. It was talky, yes, but also engaging, funny and sweet, and very romantic. There were a lot of great moments in the film, but I think my favorite is the scene early on where they're in a listening booth, playing this horrible American singer-songwriter, and Ethan Hawke wants so badly to kiss Julie Delpy, but every time he looks like he's going to, she turns her head the wrong way so he pretends like he wasn't. So sweet!

The ending was great too. I like a movie that doesn't wrap everything up in a neat little package, that leaves things somewhat open-ended and makes me care enough about the characters to spend time thinking about what happens to them after the movie ends. Of course the existence of Before Sunset means that they do meet again. Speaking of which, I need to add Before Sunset to the Netflix queue.

Thanksgiving dinner at Four Square was wonderful. As expected! This was my second time eating there and it's been fantastic both times. It was a prix fixe, with choice of appetizer and main course, and then everyone got the same dessert. I had pheasant and chestnut soup to start, and venison wellington in dried cherry sauce. Georg went for the seafood extravaganze with a tuna sampler -- tuna tartare, smoked tuna carpaccio, and cooked tuna wrapped in rice paper with a spicy sauce -- and then salmon in saffron cream sauce. We traded tastes and everything was outstanding. I want to learn how to make saffron cream sauce. My venison was wonderful. It was served with mushroom risotto and collard greens. Which sounds like a yucky combination but was actually very good. I didn't want to fill up on bread but in the bread basket they served this cornbread that was so delicate, it was just like pound cake. Georg said he thought there had to be some wheat flour in it. I think he's right; no matter how finely ground, there's no way they could have gotten that light texture from just corn meal. I had to ask for another piece of that.

The dessert was three things: a caramel custard which was a bit too eggy for me, but Georg liked it very much; a little chocolate brownie with a block of peppermint ice cream, which we both loved; and an "apple cinnamon beignet," which was the only disappointment of the meal. First of all, it was nothing like a beignet, and I'm annoyed by the fancy restaurant habit of naming everything after whatever food is hot at the moment. We had a "wasabi beignet" last year at Morimoto and that wasn't anything like a beignet either. It's like how a few years ago, every sauce with fruit had to be called a chutney, no matter what was in it or how it was made. So I guess every small pastry in a trendy restaurant is going to be called a beignet for awhile. But aside from my persnickity trendoid food complaint, the apple cinnamon "beignet" wasn't great anyway. It was a bit tough actually. But the apple cinnamon part was good.

I got lots of compliments from the staff on my outfit (the polka dot dress, first time I wore it this year!). I think our waitress must have told the other staff about it because another waitress came out at some point to see it. She also gave me a tip on a thrift store I hadn't been to before with good vintage patterns. While she was telling me about the store, she accidently said "shit" and then turned red and looked around to see if anyone had heard her. That was funny.

But the funniest thing of the evening was definitely the group sitting near us. It was three men about our age, one young guy, and one older woman. Based on their conversation we guessed that it was maybe a man who had moved down here for work, and his mother and two brothers had come down to have Thanksgiving dinner with him and his partner? They sounded like New Yorkers based on their accents and speaking volume, the mother for sure at least. She was hilarious, loudly commenting on how surprisingly good the restaurant was, "because you don't expect fine dining when you go to Durham North Carolina!" Also arguing about something, proper decorations for a baby's room maybe? All I know is she kept saying "But Amber? Why would Amber want blue elephants?" Her funniest moment without a doubt was when she explained the e.coli outbreak at the state fair, shouting "They touch the animals, they put their hands in their mouths, next thing you know, they've got the bacteria!" while someone else at the table tried to shush her. I seriously hope they couldn't see me laughing. I turned away and didn't make any noise, but I was probably shaking from laughing silently.

The rest of the day was great too. We watched the Philly parade as I wrote earlier, then spent the afternoon in the garden planting rhubarb. I broke my mattock! Boo hoo! Hit a rock and the blade snapped right off. I hardly even felt it: just a weird noise and the mattock came up with a big piece missing. Luckily I had another mattock, but it's a smaller one that doesn't dig as deeply. I'm going to replace the big one tomorrow.

Anyway we dug out a big area on the end of that bed along the driveway which is going to be the vegetable garden, added lots of compost and peat, planted the two rhubarbs, mulched over them, then covered the slope all around that area with newspaper and old straw. I sprinkled blood meal over the straw because the Gardener Guy (I love that show) says that attracts worms which eat the rotting straw, which is a good way to improve bad soil. Also instead of taking the extra clay from the hole and using it to fill another hole somewhere else, I piled up some dead leaves at the bottom of the slope and loosely mounded the clay over the leaves. I figure the leaves will compost under there and then the soil won't be quite as bad there. Also I want the ground at the bottom of the slope to be higher because there's a city water pipe under there, but I don't know how deep it is. I'd like to raise that bed a little so I can plant without worrying about hitting the pipe.

Unfortunately, it wasn't until after doing all this that I realized the rhubarb bed would have been a perfect place to plant daffodils. As I recall, rhubarb dies all the way back each winter. So the daffodils would get lots of sun in early spring. Then when they had bloomed out, the rhubarb would grow and cover the daffodil foliage. By the time the daffodils needed to be divided, the rhubarb probably would too. Also I realized that we had planted the two rhubarbs too close together -- 2 feet apart instead of 3. So today I dug up the front of the rhubarb bed again, moved one rhubarb, and planted about 30 daffodils around them both.

The really bad garden-related thing today was Lina's discovery that the little fence around the hydrangea bed is really no impediment at all. She got in there and dug up half the bed, unearthing a bunch of Spanish bluebells I had planted, possibly damaging two hydrangeas and likely killing one. I'm very upset with her. The worst part is, until we get a better fence around that bed, we can't put her outside unattended. This afternoon after I had cleaned everything up in there, the little brat jumped into the bed and started digging again, right in front of me! I was not 20 feet away, just wasn't watching her that instant because I was refilling the bird feeders.

The problem is that for years I've let her dig in that bed all she wanted. It's always been her favorite place: she likes to dig up a spot and then lay in the dug up place. It's cooler in the summer and I guess also warmer in the winter. Now that we've got nice soil and nice plants in there, I don't want her to dig anymore. But try telling her that. She seems to want to dig bare earth, where no plants are. So I guess in the spring we'll have to plant lots of ground cover in there so it won't be a nice digging spot for her anymore. In the meantime, I wonder if there's anything we can spray or sprinkle on the earth that would be a deterrent to her?

For some weird reason, our local ABC affiliate is showing the Philadelphia Thanksgiving parade this morning. It's not getting national coverage: they showed a map of stations showing the parade and it's just the Delaware Valley area, a couple of stations in New Jersey and New York, and us. I wonder why? Is our ABC station manager from Philly or something?

Except for the incessant ads for Disney (which owns ABC of course), watching the parade is fun. It's the 85th year, and everyone keeps saying "The oldest Thanksgiving parade in America!" You can just hear them muttering "...so fuck you Macy's!" under their breath. They've also been showing footage of floats and balloons from old parades. I had to take a photo of this one. They aren't providing any captions or explanations, but I swear it looks like a balloon Cthulu.

The other fun thing about a local parade is local coverage. Everything is just a little less slick, the camera work is off half the time, the news people aren't afraid to look like dorks. Or maybe they just can't tell. Here they are getting their groove on while the Trammps (looking like nice middle-aged gentlemen) lip-sync "Disco Inferno." That's not my sister on the right, it's Kelly Ripa. Who bears an uncanny resemblance to my sister. But my sister is way too cool to sit on a podium and do the electric slide.

Nov. 24 movie: Since You Went Away. Oh my GOD I love this movie. It's an epic melodrama about Claudette Colbert holding her family together while her husband is away at war. The ensemble cast includes Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple as Colbert's daughters, Robert Walker as Jones' love interest, Monty Wooley as the crochety roomer they take in, Joseph Cotton as the old family friend with an unrequited love for Colbert, Hattie McDaniel as the obligatory jolly maid, and Agnes Moorehead as the selfish, hoarding neighbor.

The movie was made during the war, and it's very much a propaganda piece encouraging American families to stay brave and help the war effort. Colbert works in a munitions factory, Jones is a volunteer nurse's aide, Temple collects salvage and sells war bonds. All the principles are great, but for my money the emotional heavy lifting of the movie falls to Jennifer Jones. She has the most character growth, and the most scenes that made me reach for the kleenex. Although at three hours, there were plenty of heartwrenching scenes to go around.

And I think that's all I can take of Tearjerker Night. I have Penny Serenade on the DVR but I think I'm going to delete it. This afternoon I teared up in my car over a story on the radio about a doctor who found a treatment for rabies and saved a young girl's life. I think I need to take a break from the melodramas.

Nov. 23 movie: Stella Dallas. Tearjerker Night continues with Barbara Stanwyck earning her title as the Queen of the Weepers. Stanwyck plays the title character, a crass, loud, vulgar woman who devotes her life to her daughter after her upper-class husband leaves her. Eventually Stella realizes that her daughter will be better off living the upper crust life with her father, but her daughter is too loyal to leave her. So Stella pretends not to want her daughter any more to drive her away. It's so sad. But don't cry, because Alan Hale is in it! With the biggest part I've ever seen him have. He plays Stella's best friend, a loud, crass, vulgar man who would be a much better match for her than her husband was. He loves her but she won't marry him because there's no room in her life for anyone but her daughter.

Reasons to be happy: Not feeling sick anymore. My dogs all curled up and snoring. A pumpkin pie in the oven. The day off with my sweetie tomorrow. America's Next Top Model on the tube at this very moment. Okay, so it's only the clip show. But it is a chance to see the contestants I liked who are gone (Julie, Tocarra, Bitch Poured Beer on My Weave Girl).

Life is good.

Well it's a big bummer to have holiday plans suddenly disrupted, but at least Georg and I aren't going to just sit around feeling sorry for ourselves. We got reservations at a nice restaurant -- Four Square -- for Thanksgiving dinner, and the silver lining of having to stay home is that the dogs don't have to be boarded. (On the other hand, the coal underlining -- so to speak -- is that I lost the 50% deposit at the kennel, but what can you do.)

I'm hoping tomorrow to get done some of the yardwork that I couldn't do last weekend because I was sick, miserable and/or asleep all weekend. First, my rhubarb plants arrived and have to be planted. They're dormant bare-root plants, so it's not super-urgent, but still they have to get into the ground as quickly as possible. The bed where I want to put them is in terrible shape. I've had black plastic over it for a couple of months to kill off the weeds, but I have to take up the plastic, dig out the roots, and amend the soil which is solid clay. You're not supposed to cultivate around the plants once they're in the ground, so I need to improve the soil as much as possible now. Fun, fun.

Also I need to plant a bunch of bulbs. I've already planted over a hundred, but most of those were planted shallow -- Spanish bluebells, muscari, snowdrops, things like that -- and went into the hydrangea bed, which has nice soft earth. The mattock blade is 4 inches long so it was easy: just poke the mattock into the ground, wiggle it a bit, pull it out and push the bulb into the hole. All the rest of the bulbs are daffodils, which are planted much deeper, plus the soil is much harder where they go. I might cheat and put a few inches of mulch over them so I won't have to dig quite so far down. Will that work? Is mulch included in the recommended soil depth over the bulbs?

The nasturtium experiment was mostly a failure. I thought they would be more frost-resistant than they really were. Half of them were taken out by the hard frosts we had a couple of weeks ago & I expect the rest to go with the next frost. Oh well, I'll replant it in early spring next year, maybe we'll get some flowers before it gets too hot for them. We have the worst of both worlds with cool-weather plants like nasturtiums and sweet peas: our summers are way too hot for them, but we can't grow them in the winter like people can in the Deep South.

On the bright side, the cilantro is still going strong, no sign of frost damage. I'm having to check a couple of times a week and pick off the flower stems to prevent them from going to seed. It's really nice to have fresh cilantro every time I want it. I hate having to buy a giant bunch when I only need a little, and then invariably wasting half of it. The basil was all killed off by the frost, but clever Georg had picked almost all of it in time, to make a pesto.

I have another sewing project too, a cute wool jumper. It's a much simpler pattern than the coat so it should come together quickly. It's a knock-off of the Marc Jacobs mod design from two falls ago: the sleeveless dress with the round pocket on the hip. Unfortunately I kind of messed up the fabric by washing it. It was a beautiful crisp checked wool, and now it's much more fuzzy and indistinct. It doesn't look that bad, just not the look I was going for. But I'm not upset about it, because I know full well that if it had to be dry-cleaned I would never wear it. Or worse, eventually I'd forget or just say "hell with it" and wash it anyway. Then the pattern would be messed up and the whole thing would shrink. Better to have a dress that isn't quite as nice as what I wanted, but at least I can wear it.

Nov. 23 movie: Imitation of Life. It's "Tearjerker Night" on TCM. I really needed a good dose of sentimental melodrama too. A good cry helps clear the sinuses. The Lana Turner remake of Imitation of Life is one of my favorite movies, so it was great to see the 1934 original with Claudette Colbert. It's basically the same story: two women, one black and one white, become friends and raise their daughters together. The white woman's daughter falls in love with her mother's fiance, and the black woman's daughter causes her mother heartache by abandoning her mother and passing for white. Lana Turner played an aspiring actress in the remake, but in this version the two women are partners in a hugely successful pancake business called "Aunt Delilah's Pancakes." (Hmm ... that sounds so familiar.)

According to Robert Osborne, this movie was criticized both by conservative audiences who objected to a white woman going into business with a black woman, and by black audiences because Louise Beavers (the black woman) doesn't establish her own home after they start making money, but prefers to remain in Colbert's house as a domestic. It did make me cringe to think that Beavers debasing herself, talking in "yas'm" dialect and begging to stay on as Colbert's cook, was progressive in 1934. But then again, I guess things hadn't improved much in 1959 when they made almost the exact same movie -- worse in some ways, since Annie (the black woman in the remake) isn't a business partner with her own share of the profits.

On the bright side, the movie also stars Alan Hale as the Furniture Man! Hale gives Colbert her big break by selling her all the furniture and fixtures for the first pancake restaurant, for no money down. Alan Hale makes any movie better.

Nov 23. movie: Day of Wrath. I put this aside the other day because I wasn't up for it, a bleak psychological drama set against 17th century witchhunts in Denmark. But I couldn't stop thinking about it until I had seen the rest. Brilliant movie, but man, what a downer. That Dreyer sure knew how to bring down the mood. I think I'll be in bed with the covers over my head, contemplating the meaning of fate, love, fear and evil. Send Fig Newtons.

Nov. 21 movie: Two Girls and a Sailor. This sounds like the punchline of a dirty joke, but actually it's the movie from last weekend that I forgot to write up. June Allyson, Gloria de Haven and Van Johnson star in an East Coast version of Hollywood Canteen. Allyson and de Haven are singers who run a wartime canteen -- an entertainment hall for the troops -- secretly funded by Johnson, a sailor they both have a crush on without knowing he's stupid rich. The canteen features performances by (starring as themselves): Harry James, Jose Iturbi, Xavier Cugat, Lena Horne, Gracie Allen, and another singer whose name I forget. The movie also featured Jimmy Durante as a washed up vaudevillian (not playing himself, I hope).

This movie was mostly forgettable but it had a couple of unintentionally funny moments: for one, at the very beginning, before Van Johnson bankrolls the big canteen, the two sisters host a nightly "private canteen," meaning that after their gig at the Flamenco Club, they walk up to random soldiers on the street and invite them over for an evening of singing, piano playing, sandwiches and soda pop. Which prompted me to yell at the screen, "Two women alone in an apartment with thirty military men? Are you insane? Haven't you ever heard of Tailhook?" Also, the big canteen had seating areas for soldiers, sailors and marines, but airmen got jack. Georg pointed out that there wouldn't have been many Air Force in New York, but then why were all those soldiers and marines hanging around the city for months on end? Rather than stopping in Manhattan for a day or two on the way to a base somewhere else, the same guys hang out at the canteen throughout the movie. Actually the war has pretty much no presence here. It's basically a "hey kids, let's put on a show" movie in which a lot of people happen to be wearing uniforms.

Like I mentioned, I've been sick. And therefore haven't done much of anything except lie around watching movies. Here's the round-up. Hope I don't forget anything.

Solomon and Sheba. Oh lordie this was bad. Biblical epic starring Yul Brynner (with hair) as Solomon and Gina Lollobrigida as the Queen of Sheba. In this movie I learned that the ancient Israelites believed slavery was a sin, the people of Sheba liked to get funky, and God spoke to His people with a wussy British accent. The depraved pagan rituals, clearly the point of the movie, are over way too soon. Then we settle in for the long, depressing retribution against the sinners.

Men in White. Clark Gable as a brilliant intern and Myrna Loy as his selfish socialite fiancee, who wants him to give up medical research and take a cushy Park Avenue practice. This movie was made in 1934, right after the introduction of the Hayes code. They seem to have basically made a pre-code movie and then simply dropped any scenes that wouldn't have passed the code. The result is a plot so elliptical that I'm still not exactly sure what happened. Gable secretly kisses a lonely nurse, and then he leaves the room and tells her to leave too, but she stays there alone. Next thing you know, time has passed and she's being admitted to the hospital as a patient. They never say what's wrong with her but the surgeon (Gable's mentor) asks about "the man who did this to her," and Gable wants to know why she never came to him for help. So I guess they must have had sex and her illness is somehow related. But it's not pregnancy, because they show her full body -- no pregnant belly -- when they put her on the operating table. But everyone seemed to know what was wrong without saying. After the surgery Gable promises to marry the nurse because her life is ruined and it's his fault, but she conveniently dies just after asking Loy to forgive Gable. Anyway I found this movie quite perplexing. Near as I could tell, the woman died of premarital sex. Or maybe just from that one kiss. If it had been made three years earlier, they would have shown Gable and the nurse in bed, and they would have explained what was wrong with her, and then thrown in a scene of a man hitting a woman for good measure.

A Free Soul. I realized near the end that I'd seen this before. It's a pretty depressing film starring Norma Shearer as the willfull daughter of a drunken lawyer (Lionel Barrymore). Shearer shacks up with a gangster (Clark Gable) who turns out to be a heel, then Shearer's upstanding ex-fiance (Lesley Howard) kills Gable to protect Shearer. It's kind of interesting to compare this 1931 movie with Men in White. A Free Soul has everything: gambling, drunken carousing, unmarried people living together, Gable hitting and pushing Shearer. Also interesting to see Gable as an outright villain, not just a rough-around-the-edges bad boy.

This Is Spinal Tap. I tried to watch Day of Wrath, a Carl Theodor Dreyer movie about a woman in the early 17th century falsely accused of witchcraft. But I was so not up for that and ended up watching Spinal Tap instead. I don't really have anything else to say about it.

More Treasures from American Film Archives, part II. More silent movies restored by the American Film Archives. Highlights include: a gruesome version of the Three Little Bears in which Theodore Roosevelt shows up at the end, kills Mama and Papa Bear, captures Baby Bear, and then gives all Baby Bear's toys to Goldilocks. Also some early two-strip color films, including "The Flute of Krishna," the first recorded performance by the Martha Graham company. And an early Chinese-American film, and a "soundie" vaudeville performance by "The Original Singing Duck." The duck didn't really sing, just quacked on cue. And a Rin Tin Tin movie, and a bunch of neat pseudo-documentaries about life in New York at the turn of the century.

More Treasures from American Film Archives, part III. This one included a melodrama about tuberculosis by a female director, which was almost censored because they showed improper quarantine procedures (the healthy family members hugging and cuddling with the daughter who had consumption). The guy from the film archive explained that tuberculosis was a leading cause of death at the time, but still. I can't imagine the MPAA censoring a film because it depicted unsafe sex. Also a silent version of "Lady Windemere's Fan" by Oscar Wilde, which is ambitious to say the least. And a couple of "soundies": Calvin Coolidge giving a speech about lowering taxes, making him the first US president filmed in a talking picture; and Eddie Cantor telling jokes so offensive I didn't even understand them, and singing a song about how much better stupid women are. The chorus of the song was "The dumber they are, the better I like them, because the dumb girls know how to make love!" Also an 1896 movie of "Rip Van Winkle" starring an actor who had been a stage star since before the Civil War.

Well I finished my coat, but as it turns out it doesn't matter. Because Georg and I both have colds, and rather than transmit our germs up and down the eastern seaboard we are postponing our holiday visit to my folks until mid December.

Anyone need an XDU sub over Thanksgiving?

I just got back from my friend Carina's eighth birthday party. Last year, as I recall, her party knocked me flat. This time I took the precautionary measure of a taking small handful of ibuprophin before leaving home, so I was fine. Who knew twenty kids hopped up on sugar could make so much noise? (well I guess everyone with kids knew that, but it was a surprise to me.) Carina is my bud so I'm happy to go to her party, but I must say that, not being a parent, I don't have much to talk to the other adults about. And the kids are too busy running around in circles screaming. So I usually end up helping Carina's parents with set up, clean up, keeping the smallest kids from being trampled, etc.

Last year I sipped water while everyone else gorged on pizza, potato chips, cake and ice cream. This time I joined in and ate an ice cream brownie sundae with chocolate sauce. I can't remember that last time I consumed that much sugar. I feel kind of jittery. I'm either going to crash and zone out all evening, or I'm going to be up all night sewing. I hope it's the latter as I'm close to finishing my coat. Just have to put in the lining and do the hand sewing: the hem, finish the buttonhole backs, that kind of thing. Of course it's way too warm for a coat right now, but I want it to be finished in time for Thanksgiving in DE next week.

I saw the owl again today! It was fighting with a hawk. Well actually, the hawk was fighting with the owl. The owl was mainly ignoring the hawk.

I heard the hawk screeching, constantly and really loud like it was right outside, so I went outside to look. The hawk was up in a tree over the house, just sitting there screeching. Then it flew a short ways towards a branch that I couldn't really see, seemed like it tried to land, flapped its wings a lot, then shot off in the other direction to another high branch. I walked around and what do you know, the owl was sitting where the disturbance had been. The owl never made any noise, but it moved to another branch a couple of times and the hawk followed it, each time finding a close perch and screeching over and over at the owl. Finally the two of them flew off together.

I wonder what they were fighting about? Who gets first dibs on all the juicy rodents in the yard? Or maybe one was threatening the other's nest. It's the wrong time of year for that, isn't it? I thought owls had their babies in late winter/early spring.

Nov 17 movie: Persuasion. I guess I'm on an Austen kick. This is a subtle, quiet movie, much less broad and funny than Pride and Prejudice. Which well suits the source material. Also my least favorite thing about the book -- its abbreviated length, due to Austen's declining health while she was writing it -- turns out to be an advantage in adapting it to a movie. Relatively few cuts had to be made to get it down to two hours. The two principle actors are wonderful, and I especially liked that Amanda Root blossoms so naturally that it's not clear whether her more attractive appearance by the end is due to makeup or just her own demeanor. But my favorite actor in this movie is Fiona Shaw (best known in the US as the evil aunt in the Harry Potter movies) as Mrs. Croft, Anne's mentor and future sister-in-law.

Nov 16 movie: My Man and I. On Tuesday Sylvia and I had another Ricardo Montalban night. This time her very cool friend Hilary joined us and we ate at Sitar India Palace beforehand, which was yum, then watched Sylvia's favorite Montalban movie, My Man and I. This was a touching story about Montalban as a Mexican immigrant who is thrilled to be a US citizen, then is cheated and falsely accused of assault by a chiseling white farmer and his wife. Also Montalban falls in love with Shelley Winters, a troubled young woman who can't seem to handle someone being nice to her.

I was impressed that this movie handled racial issues head-on. Maybe it's because I mainly watch older movies from the 30s and 40s, which generally wouldn't be so overt as to have the white bad guys using racial slurs against the hardworking Latino, to his face no less. Also the relationship between Montalban and Winters wasn't softpedaled. Montalban romanced white women throughout his hollywood career, but typically as the exotic "latin lover" (that was even the title of one of his movies) suitable for a summer fling. In My Man and I he wants to marry Winters, and it looks like he'd be good for her too. That's pretty forward for 1952. Winters, as always, blew me away. She had an amazing ability to be real, even if it made her unglamorous or even unattractive. How many Hollywood actresses would have been willing to play the parts she did, much less play them convincingly?

So, I haven't posted in a while except to write up movies. That's for a couple of reasons: one, I've been kind of busy with work. When I have any free time, I've been spending it sacked out in front of the TV. Which leaves me with a lot of movies to write up, and little time for other posting. And not much interesting material to write about besides the movies. But here are a few odds and ends.

Does anyone want a little pack of 10 crocus bulbs in assorted colors? They were a free bonus with some plants I ordered, but I have tons of chipmunks and my gardening books says not to bother, the chipmunks will dig up and eat every one. Please take them off my hands so I don't waste my time planting chipmunk food.

I saw one of the owls two days ago. It was sitting in a low branch in a tree overlooking the bird feeder, right near the door. I've never been so close to one before. There were tons of birds flying around it making all kinds of noise. (I wonder if the birds were trying to chase it away from their nests?) It was kind of a crazy scene, the owl with a cloud of smaller birds around it. Alas, just as I saw it, while I was opening the door, the owl flew up to a higher branch on a tree about a hundred feet away. It was huge. Awe inspiring. Its wingspan as it took off looked as big as my outstretched arms. It sat in the far tree and we watched each other for a few minutes, but I was running late and had to go. I went to open the gate and when I turned back around, it was gone.

This morning I dreamed about the owl. The dream started out just like what had happened: I opened the door, the owl took off, those huge wings opening up. But in the dream my camera was already turned on and in my hands, so I got a series of photos as it flew away. They looked like good photos too: the owl flew towards the sunlight and the light flared beautifully off its wings. In real life it was an overcast day and the owl was flying through dense trees and my camera was uselessly packed in my bag. But hey, I can be a brilliant photographer in my dreams, can't I?

In the dream I thought to myself how lucky that this new camera has a "rapid shoot" feature that lets you take a bunch of photos and holds them in a buffer before saving them to the memory card. I would never have gotten so many shots of the owl with my old camera, which had to pause for a couple of seconds while saving each photo. But as soon as I finished shooting, I realized that something was wrong: it wasn't making the noise that meant it was saving to the card. I looked at the window and realized that the memory card was full. Stupidly I had forgotten to download my photos from before. (This is true: I've got about 3 weeks worth of photos on the card. But's not full.) I thought that maybe I could put in my backup memory card, but I was afraid that opening the case to remove the full card would clear the buffer and I'd lose the owl photos. I was looking for the camera manual when I woke up.

It's kind of funny that a beautiful dream about the majesty of nature turns into a major geek-out about my camera. But that's me.

Finally did some more gardening this morning. I hadn't worked in the yard for a couple of weeks, because of being busy and also because last time I kind of hurt my back. I was clearing a bed around the place where we planted the blueberries. There are all these vines growing there, and I was pulling out their long and tenacious roots. I've done this before with no problems, but it was on a slope where I could stand at the bottom of the slope and basically lean forward to grab the vines. This was on flat ground, so I spent a couple of hours stooping over, hacking at the vines with my mattock and yanking out the roots. I felt a little sore that evening, but then back pain actually woke me up in the middle of the night. That was kind of scary. I felt fine after some Advil and a day of rest, but it's made me want to be more careful in future. I think I might get one of those kneeler things.

Anyway, today I started attacking the yucca that is springing up all over the bed down by the road. There are a couple of big yucca plants which seem to have taken the clearing of the bed around them as an invitation to send up as many new yucca as they possibly can. Did you know that yucca have humongous roots? It's really impressive. They're so big that right under the plant they aren't even like roots: more like a thick, white, starchy layer in the subsoil. When you order yucca in a restaurant is that what you get? It doesn't seem like any of the above-ground plant would be good to eat.

I'm tempted to admire the yucca and its prodigious roots, except that I'm trying to get rid of them so the roots are my enemy. Even worse, I didn't know what they were at first -- the young shoots are soft and un-yucca like, I thought it was some kind of fall bulb -- so I planted my irises all around them. Now I have to take up the irises, dig up the yucca, hack out the root masses, and replant the irises. What a pain.

On the bright side, the yucca roots are so deep that taking them out is creating big holes where I can plant clumps of daffodils.

Nov 15 movie: Rabbit Proof Fence. For most of last century, official policy in Australia was to forcibly remove "half-caste" (i.e. white/aboriginal) children from their homes and raise them in education camps. This movie is based on a true story about three girls escaping from a camp in 1931 and walking 1200 miles back to their home town. The title refers to a fence stretching across almost the entire continent, which the girls follow to find their way home.

Rabbit Proof Fence was adored by critics, though Georg and I felt like it was too heavy handed and preachy. I guess it must be difficult to make a movie about such an appalling historical event without preaching at least a little. Kenneth Branaugh played Mr. Neville, the architect of the program that put the children in camps. It would seem to me that though Neville's actions were evil, at the time he must have thought he was doing good. But as Georg said, you could practically see Branaugh twirling his moustache (and he didn't even have a moustache). It would have been more interesting to find out why Neville thought it would improve the children's lives to take them from their families.

Lucky for me I was dozing on the couch when Georg put the movie on, so I missed the first half hour or so. Apparently I slept through the worst parts, like a scene where they measure the children's skin color to determine which will be mainstreamed into white society and which will be trained into the servant class. I woke up when the three girls had just run away, so the part I saw was mostly a road movie about the girls on their own, walking across a staggeringly beautiful landscape while evading the police and an aboriginal tracker hot on their heels.

To the movie's credit, I will say that Georg and I each predicted some horribly cliched stuff at the end which did not come to pass. Also, the acting by the girls was very good. And finally, I was glad to learn more about this historical episode. I had heard about it before, but only in vague terms.

Nov 13/14 movie: Pride and Prejudice. What fun to watch this -- the BBC miniseries with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth -- while I was cutting my fabric. So much better than the movie with Greer Garson and Lawrence Olivier. It's hard to imagine a better Austen adaptation. There were a few things added, notably any scene with just men talking to each other (Austen never wrote a scene with no women present), and a few tiny things taken out, but it was extremely faithful overall. Plenty of swoonworthy scenes of course, but lots of funny stuff too. Georg has been going around all afternoon saying "I am deeply vexed!" like Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

The weird thing is, I'm on an Austen e-list and some of the people there are offended by this movie because they think it's too licentious. For three reasons: first, the scene early on where Mr. Darcy is taking a bath, stands up and puts a robe on and you can see his bare back -- not his backside mind you, his back. Second, in the letter when Mr. Darcy mentions that Mr. Wickham was dissolute, there's a flashback of Darcy walking in on Wickham macking with a girl in his room. Third, at the very end during the wedding ceremony, they show all the bad guys and the bad ends they've come to, and Wickham and Lydia are shown lounging on a bed. I actually saw a post where someone called these scenes "Austen porn." These people seriously need to get a life.

? movie: Random Harvest. I was telling Georg the basic plot of I Love You Again when he said "Haven't you seen this movie already? No? Didn't you see another movie about a guy getting married while he has amnesia?"

Well what do you know, he's right. I forgot to write it up for the movie list but sometime during the summer I saw Random Harvest, a melodrama about Ronald Colman getting amnesia and marrying Greer Garson, then recovering his true memories, thus forgetting her along with the rest of his amnesia life. (I have to interject here, I'm not expert but I didn't think amnesia worked that way. But whatever!) I've heard this movie described as a brilliant romantic drama, but it really annoyed me. After he leaves her, Garson tracks Colman down and, rather than telling him who she is, takes a job as his secretary. She suffers silently for years, watching him court another woman and even eventually agreeing to a marriage of convenience so she can manage his social affairs. All the while she pretends to be satisfied with this abject subjugation. It's really quite appalling.

Nov 13 movie: I Love You Again. William Powell is a NY con artist who gets amnesia from being conked on the head. Amnesia turns him into a dreary, penny-pinching teetotaler in a small town in Pennsylvania. The funny thing is, all that happens beforehand. The movie begins with Powell getting conked on the head again, getting his original personality and memory back, and forgetting the nine years he spent in a small town in PA. He sets out to bilk the town, then discovers that he's married to Myrna Loy. Trouble is, she hates the penny-pinching drip he used to be and wants a divorce.

I don't know if that description makes any sense or not, but this movie was hilarious. Definitely "madcap," possibly even "zany." There is, however, one huge unanswered question raised by the movie: Powell showed up in this town a total stranger, with no idea who he was. Nine years later he was a pillar of the community, devoted to his mother, leader of social groups, manager of a pottery factory -- wait a sec. Devoted to his mother? Where did he get a mother from?

I seriously thought the movie was going to end with the real Larry Wilson, the man whose life Powell appropriated, showing up so that Powell and Loy could run off together. But there was nothing like that at all.

Nov. 12 movie: Once Upon a Time in Mexico. The "Mariachi" trilogy wraps up with a very fun flick. Quite a bit gorier than Desperado, which I think was due to Rodriguez getting into digital film, which made the special effects much less expensive. Or so he said in a DVD extra called "Ten Minute Film School," which was actually a ten minute ad for digital over traditional film.

Rodriguez compared the three principles (Antonio Banderas, Johnny Depp and Willem Dafoe) to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. But Georg and I agreed that they got two of them wrong: Banderas is "the good" of course, but they identified Depp as "the bad" and Dafoe as "the ugly" due to that whole "face messed up" thing. It seemed to us that Depp's character was much more like Tuco ("known as The Rat"), a bad guy but basically comic relief. Dafoe, like Lee Van Cleef, was the real villain.

Georg has already mentioned the cooking lesson on the DVD, so I'll just add that the recipe, for puerco pibil, sounded fantastic and I really want to make it. And I think every DVD should have a cooking lesson in the features.

I have tons of yard work to do, so I spent the whole weekend sewing instead. The change of seasons is a good time for new clothes, and having finished the halloween costume two weeks ago makes it a good time to start a new project.

Friday was the fun part: pulling out my pattern and fabric collections and deciding what to make. It's so nice to have a stash of raw materials and not needing to go to the fabric store everytime I want to make something. It's like having a free fabric store at home! Well not free of course, since it's already paid for, but it feels free. Those of y'all who do crafty things know what I mean.

I picked out a coat and two dresses, and started on the coat first because I've been feeling the lack of a warm coat the past few days. It's a cute little A-line, high waisted coat with a standing collar. I'm using a really funky blue and white fabric I picked up last year, with a nice soft flannel lining. I'd also like to make a fleece shell lining that could snap in for extra cold weather, but the "home fabric store" didn't have any fleece that worked so I'll have to buy that. Hey, JoAnn's is having a sale on fleece!

The only problem with buying fabric in advance is that you never know how much you're going to need. I almost didn't have enough of the blue and white fabric. With some careful rearranging I was able to fit everything, but I couldn't even try to match the pattern. I'll see how it turns out! It's an irregular pattern so it shouldn't be too bad.

Laundering and cutting the fabric took all day yesterday. Well actually I spent several hours cooking a nice big pot of chili for dinner, and the fabric took the rest of the day. I had a scare this morning with my sewing machine jamming up, and thought for a while I was going to have to take it in for repair tomorrow, but thanks to the internets I figured it out. Word to the wise: if you get a giant tangle of thread underneath that jams up the bobbin, the problem is actually with the top thread. It turned out there was a bit of crud stuck between the tension discs, holding them open and making the thread behave as if the tension was set to 0.

Spent a long time this afternoon practicing buttonholes, and it looks like bound buttonholes aren't going to work with this project. I don't know if's the fabric, or if I was just being clumsy, but all my practice buttonholes came out awful. Ugh. I hate to do plain old machine buttonholes on my special coat, but at least they'll be neat and even. I might try the bound buttonholes again in a few days when I'm in better spirits and see if I do a better job of it.

Anyway, I'll post photos when I get a little further along. I can't wait to wear my new coat!

Today's lesson is one I thought I had learned a long time ago: If someone asks a favor, and you really don't want to, and the only reason to say yes is that they assure you they probably won't need you, say no.

Nov 11 movie: Love on the Run. Did you know that Joan Crawford and Clark Gable made a lot of movies together? Well they did. (And they were having a love affair at the time, according to Robert Osborne.) This one is about Crawford, Gable and Franchote Tone chasing each other around Europe while two spies try to get some kind of map from them. Tone and Gable are rivals this time, alas no ho-yay to speak of. There is a funny scene where they all sneak into a palace