it's not life that matters but the journey...

Greetings - I hope all of you who celebrated Easter had a wonderful day full of bunnies and chocolate. I didn't get any chocolate easter bunnies, but I did get a wonderful e-card from dawnie1970 - thanks!!!!

I thought I'd do a proper post today. It's been so long since I have written anything really resembling an update, and I've so much to write about. This may turn out to be a very random, very long-winded post, so bear with me.

Friday, the Chicago area was hit with a wonderful "welcome to Spring" mini (and very slushy, wet) snowstorm. I say mini because it dumped and dumped for hours from early Friday until early Saturday, probably a good 3-5 inches where I live and work; but almost all of the snow had melted by late Saturday afternoon. Saturday was gloriously sunny and even, dare I say, warm (well, not warm for you folks in warmer climates like Florida and California, but warm for us here in the midwest). Today was very nice too. But to back up a bit, on Thursday, the day before our glorious storm, and just in time for colder temps, the heater on my car decided that it wouldn't work properly - it only worked when I put it on the highest setting. So Friday morning I dragged my grouchy self out of bed at 6 a.m. and drove through the heavily falling snow to my mechanic's - they were supposed to be open at 7:30, but the guys were both late. Bad traffic I guess. They arrived at 7:45, and thankfully got the part, and I was on my way to work by 9 a.m - with a working heater - yay! The snow fell and fell all day, and work was boring and slow; I stopped on the way home for Indian food and red wine, and had a nice night watching Hot Fuzz and sleeping early.

oh and by the way, Hot Fuzz is quite a funny movie - not as perfectly clever and hilarious as Shawn of the Dead , the other venture by the same directing and acting team, but still entertaining. I was a bit surprised when it totally changed it's direction midway through and became a complete bloodbath (with some quite comically gruesome decapitations too); it started out so humble and quiet, and then ended with quite a bang. I wish I could watch it again because I missed quite a bit of dialogue (those darn British accents - LOL), and it did have some very laugh out loud scenes that I want to see again. I'm looking forward to Simon Pegg in his new movie (directed by David Schwimmer of Friends), called Run Fatboy Run - and I just read that Simon Pegg is going to play Scotty in the Star Trek movie! Boy that's going to be quite the cast, with Zachary Quinto playing Spock and Eric Bana (who cares what he plays, we can just look at him, which is just FINE), and Winona Ryder, and even Leonard Nimoy!

But I digressed - I did warn you that my post would be random like this.
anyway, after the snowstorm, things settled down. And this is what it looked like at our apartment complex on Saturday morning

( before the snow melted )

Pretty huh?

oh but it's not so pretty after it melts and leaves black slush and piles of dirty snow around which you need to walk to get to your car. fun stuff. when is summer coming?

okay what else is going on...

( cut for life stuff )

I've been watching lots of movies lately and not writing about them. I watched David Lynch's Inland Empire about a month ago and was going to write about it so that galactic_jack could help me to interpret it's meanings. But I got so busy and distracted that I never did write about it. I'm so lazy! I still plan to write about it though - and I want to write my feelings about No Country for Old Men, Rendition, Reign Over Me, and The Simpson's Movie , all of which I enjoyed to some extent. Anyone interested in movie reviews, tune in tomorrow (if I'm that organized)...

Finally I have some music recommendations: Radiohead's "In Rainbows" (which I know is quite old by now) is amazing!! and Herbie Hancock's tribute to Joni Mitchell "The River: The Joni Letters" is a work of art. Great stuff.

well that's about it. I've got to go and call my sister, do my assignment, and sleep.

Friday we had an absolutely beautiful, and terrible snowstorm - the first of the season. It started overnight while we were sleeping, and by the time we woke up, our cars were buried under more than a foot of snow. The snow came down heavily until about 10 or 11 a.m., with strong winds, and the news was warning people to stay home. So I did. I missed a whole day of work Friday, and I enjoyed it tremendously - though this means that next week I have to do overtime to make up 8 lost hours! Masahiko got help from the maintenance guy digging his Jeep out, and he went to work because his office is just about 15 minutes away (while mine is over 30 minutes on a good day - god knows how long it would have taken me in that storm, and in a small Nissan Sentra without snow tires). So, my car remained stuck in the parking lot, surrounded by snow and ice, until Saturday afternoon. stupidly we hadn't bought a snow shovel, and all the stores around town were out of them (uh, it's a necessary item in this city, so why are they not stocking enough?), so we bought another kind of shovel at Wal-Mart, and spent over an hour clearing my car of the snow, which had by this time become heavy with ice. I realize now that the management of this building doesn't give a shit. they didn't put any salt down in our parking lot, so it's treacherous to even walk around, and they didn't get snow plows to move the snow, so even after I'd cleared the snow behind my car, two hours later there was more snow behind it (apparently someone else cleared their car, and dumped the snow behind mine). I've complained to the people in the office, but they still haven't cleared the lot by Sunday morning. I guess that means that we're in for a hard winter - which makes me wonder how long I really want to live in this city or this state!

anyway, while it was coming down, from the warm safety of my apartment, and on Saturday morning, the snow was very beautiful, and I took ( these photos )