Alone at last

adfamiliares is going to touch down in Heathrow in about twenty minutes, and I am goofy enough to stay awake until I'm sure she's landed all right. I've been following her progress, though at the moment I am mostly thinking that that map projection makes the Mediterranean, plus the Red Sea and assorted inland bodies, look a surprising lot like a leafy sea dragon. God's plan is revealed!

I had a pleasant bachelor day today. I watched the ducklings in Congress Park once again, and took about fifty pictures of them. People in period clothing (what period? who knows?) were wandering about, twirling noisemakers and offering people period paper cones filled with Saratoga springwater, which I foolishly accepted—it tasted a lot like water from under a rock. The heat is pretty unbearable (it was 92° downstairs, hotter up here), but at least I am not covered in black fur; I pointed a fan at Gus-Gus while she lay stretched on the cool marble of the fireplace apron. She reluctantly enjoyed it, at least until the sun went down and she decided it was bug huntin' time.

Broiled salmon with olive oil, lemon, and fresh basil and parsley from our porch quite failed to disappoint. I'm getting by on my own. The next eleven days will each be longer than the last, though, and the eleventh may well stretch into a week from forever. Hopefully I will find diversions.

Aha, adfamiliares has landed, it seems. Goodnight!

XXX movie show!

No, wait, that's X-3.

This afternoon I biked to the mall, narrowly beating out a serious thunderstorm, for my traditional high school mall meal of an Arby's Beef-n-Cheddar, curly fries, and a jamocha shake. (When adfamiliares is away, I can eat what she opposes!) All I lacked was a D&D module to read and a turn on S.T.U.N. Runner in the arcade afterward.

Instead, I went to see X-Men 3. My expectations were set pretty low, but even so I was disappointed; the cheap dramatic dialogue and plot contrivance index was high, with nothing as inventive as Magneto's escape from the plastic prison, or as incisive as "When they come out...does it hurt?" "Every time." Instead of interesting villains, we got generic ethnic gang members plus a Juggernaut with a goofy styrofoam helmet and the worst muscle prostheses I've seen in a while. The studio rushed through post-production to get this out for the summer season, and the short cuts all showed up on-screen, alas.

I do <3 Kitty Pryde. And I guess the Superman Returns trailer actually made me excited to see it, for the first time. (Not so the Ghost Rider trailer. Not that I ever really got Ghost Rider, anyway.)

N.B.: stay through the X-3 credits for a nugget at the end. Details in the cut if you missed it.

( Spoilery complaints within. )

[Edit: forgot to mention, I must buy the black suede Chucks I saw before they stop being 50% off. $30, can't go wrong!]