Monday, November 19, 2012

By the River and Through the Woods

I can't believe it's Thanksgiving week already. This will be my only real "work" day of the week, as I'm adjusting my usual holiday schedule. Some friends are getting married this weekend, so I'm coming home from my parents' house earlier, and so I'm going to my parents' house earlier. Tomorrow is my mom's birthday, which makes it a holiday anyway, right?

I've already got my laundry done. Now I just have to pack, wrap some presents, proofread half a book and do a little baking. Oh, and there's a choir rehearsal tonight. Eep.

As I mentioned, I went to see Skyfall on Friday. My verdict is that they remembered to make a Bond movie while making a good action film (something I think has been lacking in the Daniel Craig Bond films). There were lots of fun callbacks to the entire series even while shaking things up. I love the new Q and his dynamic with Bond. And we have further proof that no matter what role she's playing in any film or television series, Judi Dench is going to be the biggest badass in the show, period. I love that about her, that she's this tiny lady who's so incredibly imposing. This is the first time in ages I've left a Bond film actually eager to see the next one.

My other weekend viewing was part one of The Dust Bowl. I just read the book The Worst Hard Time, upon which this seems to be largely based (the author is one of the major talking heads, and most of the same stories come up). It's interesting to get all the visuals to go with what I'd read, and we get to actually see some of the people whose stories were told in the book. I've heard of the Dust Bowl my whole life, but I had no concept of what it was really about until I started reading about it recently. That must have been absolutely terrifying to live through. I've been through some nasty West Texas dust storms, and those were nothing compared to the black blizzards of the Dust Bowl.

My other weekend fun was my first foray into geocaching. The friend I went to the movie with had found that there were a number of caches near my neighborhood, so we set out to find some. For those who haven't heard of this, it's like an orienteering scavenger hunt, where there are GPS coordinates and clues to finding hidden containers that may contain little prizes and a log book to show who's found them. They're all over the park where I like to go walking by the river. Though I think using GPS makes it almost too easy because it just points you there. More thinking and clue-solving should be involved, but that's just me liking to do things the hard way. If you're going on a treasure hunt, it should be stuff like "take ten paces from the first phase," and you have to figure out that the starting point is a rock that's kind of shaped like the first phase of the moon. Just looking at a map on a smart phone seems like cheating. Though I think there are caches like that (considering that the GPS coordinates for one are in my yard, those coordinates aren't always where the cache actually is). We were just going after the obvious ones to see what was there.

I was going to say that I didn't need another hobby, but this is just a layer onto an existing hobby. I like going walking and hiking. This might give me more to do on my walks and hikes.

If I don't manage to post the rest of the week, have a Happy Thanksgiving, to those who celebrate it, and a good week for everyone else.

No comments: