Another planned weekend. There may be a chance to do a little more Jeeping between now and Rosh Hashanah (which leads into an entire month of planned weekends), but for the moment, it's obligations and time to catch up on a lot of deferred maintenance.
So of course, Saturday night, we went to see World Trade Center. Stone tried on this one, he really did. But a lot of the scenes involve two guys trapped under tons of rubble talking to each other. At one point I thought the movie had gone all avant garde break-down-the-fourth-wall on us, because when the two cops kept imploring each other not to sleep, it sounded like advice to the audience. Keeping dramatic tension is difficult when you know the outcome, but that's why Oliver's making the big bucks. For his homework, he should go see Miracle.
The religious aspects were interesting, though. The steely-eyed marine who bluffs his way onto the pile to look for survivors feels as commanded to do that as the murderers felt commanded to create the pile in the first place. Kearnes is tough, and ironically, the only guy to try to talk some sense into him is his pastor. Well, if you've been following the course of mainline establishment Protestantism for the last few years, maybe that's not so surprising.
Then to sleep. Sort of. There's no air conditioning, so the attic fan has to suck in the cool night air. Except that the local Pepe Le Pew has been perfuming that for the last few weeks on an occasional basis. Usually at 3:30 AM, he sees the local fox, smells the dog, takes offense at some passing traffic, and lets one fly. Which means getting up and closing the window. And then trying to get back to sleep.
Sunday was Work Day. After the bike-riding. I'm up to 55 minutes on the new bike (the old one having ground itself to bits), and hoping to be up to full speed, hour-a-day riding by this evening. As usual, I'm working on some Teaching Company CDs. The prof is up to Thoreau, and while he's clearly an admirer, he does ttake time to point out that spending your life single, out in the woods, taking little responsibility, and in contempt of the people who buy your books, is perhaps not the most mature philosophy of life, and that we've run into it before, in "Rip Van Winkle." How ironic does that make this, then?
The time spent cleaning the gutters may be solid, honest, character-building work, but it's also three hours of my life I'll never get back. Then to hacking up some wood we've had lying around curing into a fire hazard for a few months, and why not weed a little and mow the lawn while you're already covered in mud?
The good news is that whatever browning disease that has attacked the Bishop Weed at least seems to have been arrested, so there's hope that more BW is the right answer. At least it doesn't need much light. The bad news is that the plants I put down on that strip have been absorbed and overrun by the co-stars of Weeds on a Plane, harsh, mean-looking toughs from a neighborhood I don't want to live in. They need eviction.
The show this week was different - expansion into the Colorado Springs market. Maybe with Beauprez's Lt. Gov. pick, we can get into Grand Junction next. It would certainly make those weekend trips around the state easier to manager, with a remote studio to come into.
The most disappointing part of the show was the Muslims for American founder we had on, one Muhammed Ali Hassan. I really wanted this to be The Guy, the Moderate Muslim we've all been searching for, and truth be told, neither Mr. Hassan nor anyone welcome in his organization is going to use 9/11 as a role model. But when you try to tell me that people are making semtex a part of their morning commute because of a couple of basis points on a mortgage, you've lost me.
And then, back home and back to sleep. Fortunately, no skunks last night.