Monday, November 15, 2004

Spellbound

My #1 goal for this weekend was to get my life organised, since recent travels had left bills unpaid, papers piled up, and my office at home in a shambles. So what better way to start the weekend than dropping my PDA as I was packing up to leave work on Friday, shattering the screen? All of a sudden a good old fashioned paper organiser sounds pretty good. Now I just have to hope I can load my old data onto a new PDA or I'll be a very unhappy camper.

Luckily, things got off to a much better start once I got home. Gretchen had rented Spellbound, which I had wanted to see but never got around to. Highly recommended. A simple story well told, and good on so many different levels. It says a lot about the U.S.--good and bad--without being overt. Sweet but not cloying. Maybe I'm biased because I used to be a bit of a spelling geek, which I'm sure is a big surprise. (I actually competed in the San Diego County spelling bee in 8th grade to try to go to the national spelling bee, but finished out of the money--although I never studied words the way so many kids in the movie did, which I realise after watching this documentary may have been my downfall. And yes, I still remember vividly the word I was eliminated on--BENDAY, which I mistakenly spelled BENDET. But I'm not bitter. Really. Dammit.)

We also began our initial preparations for ski season this weekend--got a roof rack for the car, looked at a place to rent skis for the season, and priced some winter tires (OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive--around CHF 500 ($425) per wheel--but probably necessary). Of course, even if the car is in decent shape, I am unfortunately not...