Weekend Update - March 23

The Week That Was - Oh it was a beauty! About mid-week I lost my voice (my vision of hell is me trapped, voiceless for eternity) caused by the head cold that has sunk its claws into me. I probably didn't help it by singing Irish folk tunes mid-week. I'd been invited to a parish to talk about youth ministry as part of their Lenten program (thanks St. Matthias!) and they did an Irish sing along after. Which I couldn't resist. Next morning, no voice.

The groundhog continues to evade me while making more holes. And the weather, which had promised that it would get a tiny bit warmer, has instead gotten colder. Oh frabjous day.

On the bright side I fixed two problems on my lady wife's car. One involved a little creative Bondo work. My father taught me the basics of Bondo for body work on cars and I've found it's very useful for lots of other things. House repair. Repairing trim pieces on car interiors. Felt very good to get that done. Did some cooking for the first time in a while (warming up food to eat is not COOKING. Cooking involves carefully selecting and preparing ingredients and then combining them with love and whatever level of skill I can muster. COOKING is an act of prayer for me these days). Made some spicy peanut chicken soup and some red pepper/garlic hummus. Bumped off a couple other small but satisfying chores around the house too. So on the whole not too bad.

The To Do List - I hate my to do list. There I've said it. Let's move on.

What Am I Procrastinating About? - Being sick and voiceless really limits a variety of things for me to do. I MUST get the camp applications done and printed this week. Everything else is secondary.

What Am I Watching/Reading/Listening To?Still reading Scott McClellan's book "What Happened - Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception". I keep thinking that I've lost interest then I get back into it. Need to move it along however.


Movies - "Hollywoodland" - Wow, what a cast! Ben Affleck, Adrien Brody, Bob Hoskins and Diane Lane (sigh, Diane Lane). The movie revolves around the death of George Reeves, the man who played Superman on the old TV series. Reeves probably committed suicide but the standard of police work around the movie industry back in the day leaves plenty of holes to poke at if you into conspiracies. Affleck's Reeves is a rather shallow, insecure guy who was alternately a really nice guy and a jerk. The director sticks closely to the known facts and offers three possible answers to what "really happened". The problem is he gets too cutesy at times for my taste and comes off trying to show off his chops. Allen Coulter was primarily a TV director and this was his first feature film. Brody's character of the detective is the real lead in the movie but I didn't really ever care that much about him. I wanted to see the Reeves story which is much more compelling. So great cast, solid script, and an OK movie. If you're into old Hollywood, if you remember George Reeves' Superman and you've got a lazy afternoon to burn you'll enjoy this one.

Music - Back to the no music routine. It's tough to get into it when you have to keep unclogging your ears. Just put the ipod on shuffle and took whatever came. I spent part of the week with Jimmy Buffett's "Barometer Soup" and part of the week with a Sesame Street song stuck in my head. No idea why. I'm thinking of checking out a girl group called "The Pepper Pots" a Spanish group (apparently) that does a ska thing. Got a pretty good review at SXSW this year.

Next Up Camp applications plus at the end of the week the kid gets inducted into a Catholic University honor society. Very cool.

How Am I Doing Still hanging in. Hopefully I'll make some forward progress this week.

Peace