Week in Review

[kate_nepveu]

Another day late, this time because I actually fell victim to an impulse buy at the supermarket cash register: a DVD of The Princess Bride. Having bought it, well, I had to watch it, didn't I? So that killed last night. It's such a great movie that I was thrilled to see a decent DVD of it (I'd seen one before that had basically nothing else on it, so I couldn't really justify buying it when we already own the video). Of the additional content, the best was the new documentary with interviews of the cast and crew; Cary Elwes' video diary of the shoot was frustratingly short. We also watched the movie with William Goldman's commentary track; Goldman wrote both the book and the screenplay. This was entertaining in a kind of sideways way. I'd read most of the stories he told, either in his introduction to the anniversary edition of the book or in his screenwriting books. However, he said up front that he hadn't seen the movie since it first came out, and he was clearly watching the movie and really enjoying it, enough that I suspect he'd rather have just watched it without someone prompting him to talk about it. It did get a little tedious when he kept repeating how much he liked it and how rare that was for him; but the first five or six times, it was charming. There's also a commentary track with Rob Reiner, which should be fun and which we will watch soon. If you love the movie, definitely a good purchase. (The Digital Bits also has a good review.)

I probably would have gone to bed early last night even without the DVD, though: I made a risotto for dinner, and gosh, that's work. I will have to fiddle with how high I can get the heat without ruining it, because an hour's stirring for a cup of (uncooked) rice is a long time, no matter how much I love the flavor. The new stove is pretty cool, though (I thought the "Warming Drawer" was kind of a cheesy idea, but we've even been using that).

The house is in slow-but-steady mode right now, as we go back to a more normal weekday schedule. Chad's folks put up a whole bunch of molding downstairs this weekend, as we hid upstairs: some component of the nail gun gives off noxious fumes that cause instant headache for us. On the bright side, we did get all of our pictures on the walls, which definitely makes the place feel more like home.

At work, the most notable thing last week the day I spent 6 hours in a conference room with our defendants in the trial that starts a week from tomorrow. It went really well, but at the end of it, I was about as energetic as a limp noodle. I think trial will generate sufficient adrenaline that I probably won't have that problem next week, though. (Boskone this weekend is unfortunately not going to be conducive to being well-rested; it figures that the first year we get a hotel room at the con, I'll be using it to go to bed early rather than late. Oh well—I'm still really looking forward to it.)

Also, I finally got around to updating the booklog with my comments on The Paths of the Dead. Short version: it rocks. Go read it.

And now that I'm caught up on blogging, it's time for me to go to bed. Good night, everybody . . .