Out & About – Page 410

Three sentence movie reviews: Meek’s Cutoff.

One of those movies were no one talks much, but man, is it tense in that way that you can’t really get around, just have to go through. Michelle Williams plays it quiet and understated as a woman on the Oregon Trail. Difficult decisions are made, not with the input of the women, of course, because who needs to listen to them?

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2011/meeks_cutoff.html

Essay: Marching Band part I

Note: I’m going to spend a few weeks of the essays dredging up details of high school band because I’m trying to remember things that have sunk into some mostly forgotten part of my brain. Feel free to tell me any of your band memories, should you be lucky enough to have them.

Also: I apparently never finished writing this, so it just trails off.

It was in high school that band changed. Before it had always been an elective, as in: “Are you taking band next year?” At the high school level it became, “Are you in band?” In junior high band, we were segregated by grade, travelling through seventh grade band, to eighth and then ninth grade band. Eighth and ninth grade band got to practice marching by appearing in the holiday parade the week before Thanksgiving, but otherwise didn’t interact with the other kids in band. In high school there was just one class with all three grades. We were an activity, like student council in that we had a class all to ourselves during the school day. We were also a group, like the sports teams, in that for part of the year we had practice outside of school hours.

Marching Band started off the high school band calendar. Our practices began the same time the football, volleyball and soccer teams started their practice, about two weeks before school started. I remember them being incredibly early in the morning, although I think we started at eight or nine o’clock. Unless it was insanely hot, eight to ten in the morning was a great time of day, before the heat really kicked in. The football players had two-a-days the first week of practice, so they were there with us and then came back in the afternoon for a second practice. I always admired the cheerleaders, who started early and were finishing up by the time we rolled into the parking lot.

The first day was usually all about logistics: getting the sophomores oriented, passing out the music, sketching out the plan for the season. We had not very much time to learn music for both parade marching and at the same time start to work on the halftime show. We would begin to build the piece and have the first song done in time for the first game, and then build more onto the show as the season went on. Mid-October was the competition, so that was our big date on the fall calendar.

As a sophomore, starting marching band was fairly overwhelming. There was a lot of music to memorize right off including at least three songs to know for parades, plus the pieces for the show. I wasn’t very good at memorizing and mostly floundered at this part of band. Avoiding memorizing music—and the drummer boyfriend—were the main reasons I played cymbals the last two years of high school marching band.

We also had to learn to properly march. Our band director was nearing retirement, having been at my high school since the early 1960s. By the early 1990s he was still a fairly cheerful guy, although a bit stooped in the shoulders, and he was happy to shepherd us through the high school band experience. We called him by his initials, JP, rather than Mr. Perkins.

JP had done his military service in the Army band and would now and again encourage us to go in as a musician if we were joining the services. The reason being, according to him: “while the other guys are doing pushups, you will be doing this” he would say, wiggling his fingers to mime playing the trumpet. An aside: I told that story to a friend who had gone into the army as a musician, and his reply was. “Yeah. Unless there’s a war.” So beware.

JP loved to teach us to march, especially the “roll step” that was necessary to carry out the smooth maneuvers on field and parade route. A good Roll Step involves placing your heel down and then rolling to your toes which minimizes upper body movement. He also liked to drill us on marching, especially at the beginning of the season when there was more time in practice. We would begin in a big block of people and started off in step while a drummer beat a steady beat. Then JP, or the drum major would call out the changes, “forward march” “right face” “left face,” “mark time” “halt” while we attempted to follow them as an entire group. People who messed up stepped off the field and watched while the group got smaller and smaller until there were only a few.

Postcards from Germany & Virginia

This lovely Christmas postcard arrived from Germany with best wishes for the new year.

And this nice sentiment came from Virginia containing thanks for a gift.

Three sentence movie reviews: Lord of the Rings Extended Versions of The Fellowship of the Ring, Two Towers, Return of the King

Really, there are three movies, so there should be nine sentences, but they all blurred together into a very long movie. I found that a lot of the bonus content was not necessarily necessary, but was mostly interesting. And I realized I hadn’t seen these movies since their release (it was a Christmas activity with the brother for three years running) so I had mostly completely forgotten the story, which made for pleasant viewing as it seemed new to me.*

Cost: free
Where watched: Laurie and Burt’s house.

*Also, I had completely forgotten the huge amount of eye candy, which made for a pleasant addition to eleven hours of viewing.

posters from:

http://www.impawards.com/2001/lord_of_the_rings_the_fellowship_of_the_ring_ver1.html

http://www.impawards.com/2002/lord_of_the_rings_the_two_towers.html

http://www.impawards.com/2003/lord_of_the_rings_the_return_of_the_king.html

LOTR Extended Editions

“If I were going to watch all the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy in one day, would anyone be up to watching them with me?” So the query was posted and so people replied in the affirmative and so the Lord of the Rings Butt-Numb-A-Thon came to be.

Laurie and Burt provided us with three meals which was good, because we were watching movies from 9:00am to 10:00pm. Here was the spread for Breakfast. We also had sandwiches for lunch and tacos for dinner.

And we begin.

And we continue. And some of us discover that sitting on the top part of the couch is preferable to the couch.

And so it ends, and I take a picture of the liquids that got me through my day. Tea in the morning, water through the day, hot chocolate to get me through the last two-hour stretch.

I confess, I didn’t really know what I was signing up for, and it was rough going in the middle*, but I’m proud to say I did it. There were nine of us (if you count Lily the dog) who watched all three movies. We should get tattoos.

*I actually left to feed the cats simply so I could get up and walk around. I even did lunges, my legs were feeling so dead. Since I stand at work now, I really never sit down for long stretches any more.

Three sentence movie reviews: The Italian Job (1969)

Yet another “why not?” at the library that turned out to be an excellent view. It’s speedily plotted, it’s funny in the small details and you get to see those cute minis driving around Italy. It also has the best ending to a heist movie I’ve seen in a very long time.

Cost: free from library.
Where watched: at home.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1969/italian_job.html

New Glass!

My Aunt Carol has been on a clean and purge streak and boy, did I win. Do I want the cactus glasses that were my Great-Uncle Tom’s? Yep. Do I want the cocktail glasses that were my grandmother’s? Yes ma’am.

Uncle Tom’s cactus glasses. There were 12, but I’ve learned that they don’t stack well, so now there are 10.

Grandma’s cocktail glasses, which would be even more amazing if I had put them against something white, so you could see the fabulous color.

They have these pretty roses etched on them.

And this is fabulous. It has a glass stir stick and I love the shape. Plus, the cups stack.

And now I must purchase something to contain all this glassware.

What we still write and mail in these modern times.

Judging from the amount of shelf space devoted to thank you notes, one can extrapolate that the only thing people hand write and mail anymore are thank you notes. This is a shelf at Target, where I had a gift card. Maybe I will get some stationary, I thought to myself. I was excited to see the huge selection they hand and then, as usual deflated to realize that 90% of the offerings are thank you notes. Grrr.

Final Postcrossing Statistics.

More fun stats from my friends at Postcrossing:

Hello Patricia!

In 2013 your mailbox was happy 41 days!
Here are some more statistics about your account

in Postcrossing:

Your numbers
	2013	Ever
Postcards sent	51	51
Postcards received	50	50

Country ranking
	Rank
By sent	9550th
By distance	9797th

Country distribution

In 2013 you sent postcards to…

Country	Sent	Travel (avg)
Germany	13	8
U.S.A.	11	7
Netherlands	6	7
Belarus	5	23
Russia	5	39
Ukraine	4	25
China	2	23
Taiwan	2	14
Brazil	1	10
Czech Republic	1	49
Poland	1	8

In 2013 you received postcards from…

Country	Received	Travel (avg)
Germany	10	10
U.S.A.	6	6
Netherlands	5	9
Russia	5	28
Belarus	3	30
Taiwan	3	21
Czech Republic	2	8
Ukraine	2	19
Australia	1	40
Austria	1	23
Brazil	1	38
Bulgaria	1	11
Finland	1	18
Hong Kong	1	21
Japan	1	10
Latvia	1	7
Poland	1	10
Portugal	1	12
Romania	1	8
Singapore	1	25
Spain	1	7
Sweden	1	11

Three sentence movie reviews: She’s All That

I thought it was a travesty that the library didn’t have a copy of this movie, but upon repeat viewing, I realized the movie doesn’t hold up all that well. Freddie Prinze Jr. is rather wooden, the main character is uneven and changes too rapidly. The two things I remembered from my first viewing (the dad answering wrong answers to Jeopardy and the dance scene at the prom) were still good, but overall the movie was not.

Cost: free due to boyfriend going out of town and me poaching from the Netflix queue.
Where watched: at home.

Part two in the Paul Walker memorial retrospective. And yes, his character was not very nice.
Also! Dule! From West Wing!

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1999/shes_all_that.html

Country distribution

Top 3 favourite postcards