Optimist Under Siege

So I’m reading Peter Mayle’s book A Year in Provence to get ready for and excited about our upcoming trip to southern France (Languedoc-Roussillion and Provence- from Toulouse to Marseilles). It’s witty, beautifully descriptive…definitely something I’d recommend. But the problem is that reading it always makes me hungry!

Mayle is always talking about these amazing meals, in great gastronomic detail. I can almost taste the stinky cheeses (I LOVE stinky cheese), local wines, pork and duck and rabbit. He has some intense culinary experiences. And if the book isn’t going on at length about long, leisurely meals in aesthetically pleasing surroundings, it’s describing the fresh, succulent vegetables at markets. Or the fresh melons from their garden. Or the locally made wine enjoyed as the sun sets.

It’s pleasant torture! Needless to say, I am VERY excited about our trip. We’ll get to see a lot of wonderful places, and eat a lot of wonderful things. Cuisine is a serious thing in France and I am a serious eater. I think we’ll get along just fine.

So the sad thing is that I’m still limping around after going backpacking in the White Mountains this past weekend. Ouch! Fortunately it was pretty fun, not to mention (yes, I’m going to mention it) that I have now been vindicated! I finally hiked to the summit of Mt. Washington.

You see, when I was 13 I went to hiking camp and we made it pretty far up Mt. Washington. We were high enough that we were able to have a snowball fight in July, which was awesome! Unfortunately, our counselors wouldn’t let us go to the summit. They said something silly about not being prepared for the weather. Sure! Okay, maybe they had a good point. But now I have finally made up for it. I have stood on the summit of Mt. Washington and looked out at the great wide world!

Alright, I really only looked out about 20 feet because there was little to no visibility with the fog and mist. But that’s not the point!

Have I mentioned that on Saturday the winds were in the 50-60 miles per hour range, with a high of 94 mph (and I think I felt that particular gust!). It was actually hard to walk. And it hailed. In August. Stupid Mt. Washington and the Presidential Range.

So I’ve triumphed and reached Mt. Washington’s summit, but have also been beaten down and forced to hobble around because my legs hurt. Oh well.

I went to see Stardust yesterday and it was a great movie! I love Michelle Pfeiffer as a bad guy. She does it so well! And Robert De Niro… Well, you’ll have to see that one for yourself! If you love fantasy, or romance, or just a good tale, this one’s for you.

This film was SO much better than Neil Gaiman’s last film, Mirror Mask. If you haven’t gone to see that one, don’t!

One of my friends and I went to see the new musical movie, Hairspray, which was quite a lot of fun. It was amusing because we both realized that he and I were probably the only ones we knew who’d be willing to go see it! To be fair my husband WOULD go if I made him, but he wouldn’t have liked it! I would definitely recommend it if you like musicals.

And hey, did you know that the Mom is played by John Travolta? I spent the whole movie trying to figure out who it was! John Travolta, wow! He’s come a long way since Grease!

My husband and I went to see the new Harry Potter movie with some friends from where I grew up in New Hampshire. It was a send off party for my friends Holly and Jen who are both moving to California to pursue a career in film (no, not as an actor!) and to attend acupuncture school respectively. Everyone’s leaving me for the west coast! Come on guys…where’s your New England spirit?!

I thought it was actually a decent movie. I enjoy reading and watching Harry Potter as a rule, but some of the movies haven’t been all that good. I did quite enjoy this one (Order of the Phoenix). It was suspenseful and had a quickly moving plot. I won’t ruin it for anyone that hasn’t seen it yet, but I would recommend it to Harry Potter fans and non-fans alike! And that Hermione Granger has grown into quite a cute young women. Good for her!

Expecto Patronum!

I watched a couple of episodes of the tv show, The Office, last night for the first time. That is one hilarious show! I think what makes it so funny is that it may be over the top, but so many things about it are not that far from the truth. Every office, every work place has its cooky characters and strange clueless bosses. I may not have any coworkers who make a jello mold with my stapler in the middle (too funny!), but we do have our share of interesting personalities.

The Office is close enough to real life that you can relate to the humor, much the same way that Office Space, is. While I don’t believe that anyone at work is devising an elaborate scheme to rip off the company, I can totally relate to the guy playing his radio too loud and the ridiculousness of having so many meetings and writing TPS reports (or the equivalent!). If you liked Office Space, I would highly recommend The Office.

Has anyone had the opportunity to use Apple’s new iTV? It’s a way to, among other things, watch or listen to whatever you would normally watch/listen to on your computer or ipod on your television. Oh boy, Ask a Ninja on the big screen! But that’s not the most fascinating thing about it.

Check out the screensaver! Yes, simple things do excite me! To clarify, I’m not talking about the default screensaver as it is set up to begin with (although it is pretty). What we did is connect the screensaver to our digital photo library. I can now sit and watch the television for long periods of time as our photos slide by. Who needs prime time tv when you can watch the days of our lives? Our wedding passes by backpacking in the White Mountains, followed by the pyramids from our honeymoon in Egypt, a Christmas market in Germany, and finally a shot of my friend Julie’s bridal shower. It’s all just fascinating! I already admitted that I’m easy to please and here’s the proof! I highly recommend, given the chance, that you give it a try. You won’t be disappointed (even if you don’t spend as much time watching as I have!).

After yesterday’s rant on my movie deprivation, I feel the need to justify myself by saying that I also enjoying reading a good book and doing other things! In fact, I just finished reading a really interesting book called Ella Minnow Pea (say it out loud a couple of times and you’ll notice something neat!). Without ruining it for you, the premise is that there is a fictional island off the coast of South Carolina which evolved its own society separate from the U.S. It’s a highly developed linguistic community founded by a much revered linguist, Nollop, who coined a sentence of only 36 characters containing all 26 letters of the alphabet. This famous sentence graces the front of the Nollopian town hall, and one day the letters start to fall. In keeping with Nollop’s supposed postmortem wishes, the town council sees fit to ban the letters. As the letters are banned from the island, so too are they banned from the book. I thought it would be a tedious book to get through, but it was actually quite engrossing. I would recommend it to anyone who appreciates unique use of language. As a French major in college and grad school, I find language fascinating. That’s part of my own dorkiness, or rather nerdiness. I believe there is a clearly discernable difference between the two.

Let me explain. I consider my husband a dork, while I myself am a self-professed nerd. In my husband’s case, dorkiness is defined by his enjoyment of role-playing games and LARPing (if you don’t know what this is, count yourself lucky! ;-)), predilection for science-fiction and fantasy in books/movies, desire to watch anime, and occasional use of plumbing supplies to fight with his friends (otherwise known as boffer fighting).

In my case, I am a nerd in the school-nerd sense. Back in school I was the one who got A+ grades. My husband is very smart and did well in school, but was more likely to do just enough to get an A- and that’s all (a conscious choice). I was the one who did all my reading, studied, and put my heart and soul into school. I wasn’t annoying about it, not the stereotypical teacher’s pet brown-nose you see in high school movies, but a nerd none-the-less. In my post school life this translates in several ways. First, the difficult to suppress but always present desire to go back to school. I already went back to school once since college to get my Master’s in French literature (I had originally wanted to be a college professor). The reason I don’t go back to school again is that I promised myself I would only do that if I had a very clear concrete end goal. If I want to become a lawyer, I can go to law school, but not if I’m not sure I want to be a lawyer (for example)!

The other ways my nerdiness still shines through are in my love of languages (French, English, anything) and reading. I have tried to address the back-to-school instinct by taking German and Spanish adult-education classes. Additionally, I’m the first one to sign up for extra “training” of any kind at work, and I was the only one of my team members who knew what, “ladies in waiting,” were when someone asked. I also tend to be an excellent speller, a sure sign of a school nerd. So that is how I define the difference between my husband the dork and myself the nerd. We’re a match made in non-prom king and non-prom queen heaven! (Hey, we know we’re cool. We don’t need a plastic crown and scepter to prove that! Once I move into my tower room at Chambord castle it will be clear anyway!)

At work today I had what is probably for most people a pretty normal, frequently engaged in, conversation pertaining to movies we’ve seen. It started because one of my coworkers had heard that Pan’s Labyrinth had been listed somewhere as one of the 10 best movie of all time and I don’t agree. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed the movie. It was bit graphic at times (to the point that both myself and one of my guy friends noticed that we were both putting our hands in front of our faces to avoid looking at anything too graphic!), but overall was imaginative and fun to watch. I do not believe, however, that it was an extraordinary movie in league with others like Shawshank Redemption or Labyrinth. Oh come on! Maybe the movie with David Bowie and a bunch of muppets isn’t high art, but it was a fabulous movie. Someday, I tell you, I will be the Goblin Queen (forget about saving my baby brother!). This will probably happen directly after I move into the middle tower of my new castle, Chambord, in France. I continue to tell my friends I will live there someday (I’m not sure they believe me!).

As I was saying, I just don’t think Pan’s Labyrinth is one for the ages. While imaginative, it was pretty predictable. And furthermore, I just didn’t have that ineffable impression when leaving the movie that wow, that was a GREAT movie. It was okay. The reason I brought it up in the first place is partly to explain the strange position I find myself in regarding movie watching.

It was not in any way strange to be chatting about movies at work, but I was definitely the one who had seen the fewest movies mentioned and I’ll tell you why. My husband is a distinct anomaly: He does not like watching movies. Now, I don’t mean that he doesn’t like to go to the movie theater, or hates visiting the video store. He just does not enjoy sitting and watching a movie, pure and simple. I could certainly understand it if he only liked watching action flicks or comedies or even anime (which he will sometimes watch). Most people have certain genre preferences, but that is not the case here.

By contrast, I am one of those people who likes watching pretty much any movie. I have my own favorites…comedies, drama, sci-fi/fantasy, and yes, the occasional chick flick, but any movie will do in a pinch. I don’t necessarily feel the need to look up which movies are playing if I want to go to the theater. I just go and pick something once I get there. The result of all this is that I very rarely get the opportunity to see movies. It’s sad, but true. Weep for me!

Okay, my bad…I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve been preoccupied in a positive way. So while I’m sure I’ve been missed (ah yes, the epitome of humble), it’s all been for the good.

And what has been preoccupying me so much? Well, since no one likes to read a twenty page blog entry, let me summarize. In a nutshell, I’m doing sort of a life and career revamp. On the life side, I’m really reflecting on what I (and my husband as well) enjoy and want out of life. I’m not necessarily trying to figure out what we want our life to be like in 20 years. It’s more of a matter of what makes our lives better right now.

So I’m cooking more often (or trying to) and making healthier meals (while trying to accommodate my husband’s environmentally based desire to eat less meat). I’m booking theater tickets, organizing dinners with friends and continuing to push myself for more flexibility, strength and balance in several classes per week of yoga (and may try a martial art too…we’ll see. My husband really wants me to become his personal ninja bodyguard. Again, we’ll see!). Recently, we’ve gone snowboarding, did a puzzle (which I hadn’t done in years!) and toured a chocolate factory. Hey, why not? It’s all interesting, thought-provoking and fun.

On the career side, I’m working toward a similar transformation. This in and of itself could take up a lot of space with explanations, reasons, thought processes and goals. Again, in a nutshell, let me just say that I’m learning to be a career counselor, something that I think I’ll be amazingly good at and which is already bringing me great joy and satisfaction (and giving me the energy to do all the life enriching activities I mentioned above). I’m doing an internship to get some practical experience at a university, reading every book I can get my hands on, talking to people in the field as often as I can and even offering my services for free to get practice and experience (hey, if anyone needs help with figuring out what they want to do, job search strategies, resumes and cover letters, interview practice, self-assessment, I’m your woman!).

The moral of the story is: Things are good. They’re good and it feels great. It’s not like anything huge has changed in our daily lives, not outwardly at least. And yet it has. This post, as I reread it, seems a bit too preachy and is implying more of a sense of finality and of having found the perfect solution than I had intended. I understand that everything is a work in progress and in order to keep things going requires work and diligence. But for now, life is good! And I hope it’s good for you too!