Visual Delights!

This weekend is one of those lovely crossroads - FryDaddy and I have both reached stopping places on our respective writing projects and, while the next one for both of us is gesturing frantically from the wings, we made a conscious decision to spend the long Labor Day weekend resolutely not working.  As experience (that harshest of professors who refuses to grade on a curve) has taught me again and again, taking time off to breathe is necessary to produce quality work.  Just going and going and going results in motion, but not usually of the forward-reaching kind.  So we've spent a chunk of time watching things that we don't intend to turn into articles, presentations, or chapters.

It's been lovely.

First up, I worked to get caught up on Season 4 of Breaking Bad.  I'm still not caught up on past seasons, but that'll come.  Seriously, if you're not watching this, you ought to be.  At least, you ought to be if you enjoy character-driven drama, seeing the effects of hubris, and flat-out gorgeous cinematography.  The look is lush and the story has that sense of impending doom - bad things are coming, and they were set in motion by conscious choices.  You can build the levee, but it won't hold back the tide forever.  What's even worse is that the high water mark from this storm is likely to be so high you don't even see the mark, for the whole house is underwater.

We also treated ourselves to a popcorn matinee.  (Yeah, the "eat healthy" plan took a hike for the afternoon.  Good for it.)  We decided on Apollo 18, which I will heartily recommend.  It's a member of the "found footage" genre, but don't make the mistake of thinking it's "Blair Witch in Space."  The production values are much, much higher and the story is a keeper for anyone who enjoys a slow burn.  (Blair Witch made me jump, but also irritated me - just follow the river, people!  It'll lead to some sort of settlement.  Always.)  By the way, Apollo 18 is not a film for the "whiz-bang-blow-'em-up" crowd.  I was impressed with the film, which I predict will become a cult classic, despite a plot hole or two.  The tricks with the film stock, the marketing ploy with the website given at the end of the film and the reminder that Watergate did indeed change everything about how we view our own government - all of these are reasons the see the film on the big screen.  Having just read Mary Roach's Packing for Mars, which answers many of those questions you may have had about space travel, but never felt comfortable asking (How do you test a space toilet?  How do you shower in zero-g?), the film has a different level.  Astronauts are carefully vetted for psychological stability as well as desirable mission skills.  It's pretty cramped up there and the flip side is that there's an awful lot of nothin' up there, too.  Going bibbledy isn't an option.

I've read some rather vicious criticism of the film, which leads me to my next point.  No one is going to like everything.  However, if your main complaint is that the film takes too long and isn't scary enough, try watching something that wasn't edited together with smash cuts.  Further, if you want a film where the astronauts are slashed apart and their innards are floating in space (1) this isn't the film for you and (2) exactly what's wrong with you?  Disclaimer:  I count myself in the "I don't like everything" category.  For example, I despise slasher films.  I find them to be uncreative, shocking-just-to-shock, and generally very unkind to women.  Some people like that sort of thing.  I try not to leave sharp objects around such individuals.

Also, one of the actors in Apollo 18 plays one of the leads in Alphas, a SyFy series about super-powered (read: mutant) beings.  It has some promise - there are some very interesting characters and anything that brings the amazingly under-rated David Strathairn to television is worth a look.  The fact that it also gives Ryan Cartwright a role that will make your jaw drop to the point of forgetting his very entertaining turn on Bones is simply a bonus.

Work beckons and a stack of books on anime yearns to be gutted for a short presentation on Cowboy Bebop in about a month, but this was the right call for this weekend!

Irons in the Fire!

School has started back - the first week was crazybusy, but with fairly easy-to-manage stuff when viewed individually.  The trick is that the stuff didn't come individually, but rather attacked in battalions, which made keeping the importance of various things in perspective a bit of a trick.  (Forced perspective, perhaps?)  Too many irons in the fire . . .

My nose continues to heal from the recent sinus surgery - I spent Friday morning at the doctor's office discovering just how many different suction tools can be utilized to clear out the *ahem* "debris."  I'll have another couple of these appointments for Dr. Nostrildamus to check on his work and my healing.  (I must say, it wasn't something that exactly hurt, but it sure felt weird, even after the "yummy numby" stuff, which is applied to strips of gauze which are then gently stuffed up each nostril and then left to [no kidding] "marinate.")

The blog post I co-wrote with FryDaddy was published as part of the ongoing Buffy Rewatch - check that out here.  I'll have another one in about a month, but this one was specially special, as it concerned the Season Five episode "The Body," which has always packed such an emotional punch for me.

I've spent the last few days fine-tuning my chapter for an upcoming Whedon project which is to be published by Syracuse University Press, who has some very definite ideas about citation style and formatting madness.  I think it's done, but I'm taking one more look at it tomorrow before I send it off to the editors.  So many little things to fix (along with the big one of "switch all of the internal cites and references to Chicago author-date style" which made me go, "Huh?"), it wouldn't surprise me if something slipped by and I want to avoid that if I can.  I'll own my mistakes, but I'd rather they not be the boneheaded kind.

FryDaddy and I are back to our commuter marriage, since classes have also started for him.  In a way, it was fortunate that we both had writing projects this weekend - he's drafting a chapter dealing with Farscape as a allegory for the Cold War - but I'm already looking forward to next weekend, which we have ruled off as a "we're married; let's act like it" weekend.  Between the doctor's delicate anteater-crossed-with-an-Electrolux procedure and the writing, we didn't have much time to enjoy each other this weekend, and we got spoiled over the summer.

Well, this too shall pass.

Post surgery, I'm discovering that I don't have to hack and cough to clear the clutter from my throat, which means I can push myself with exercise more.  Still not training for any marathons, but it feels good to stretch.  As a reward for hitting the gym today, my toenails are now a gleaming shade of dark, dark purple.  Think black and you'd not be far wrong.

It's all about the small rewards.  And surely I deserve one for (a) not biting the doctor, (b) getting a publishing project another step towards completion, and/or (c) keeping my sense of humor during the first week of the semester, among other alphabetized items.

And I like dark purple.  And the glow from the fire with all those irons in it is actually quite pretty.

Nosey About Surgery

I try to post here every week, but I'm a bit behind due to some recent surgery.  I'm well on the way to recovery now and thought I should probably update.  Be warned - while none of the following content is exactly graphic, there's a certain amount of ewwww!  That's simply to be expected with Things Surgical, so let's be grown-ups about it.

The surgery itself was considered routine, but let's face it.  Thanks to amazing advances in medical technology, "routine" is used to describe heart bypass surgery.  It is a mistake to confuse "routine" with "no problem."  Even if the procedure has been done to the point of boredom by the surgical team, your body is still undergoing assault and trauma and you're not likely to feel that great afterward.  In my case, I was dealing with two separate and distinct procedures involving two doctors (no, there was no volume discount on the billing, but at least we could double up and not do this twice).  First, Dr. Gullet, my throat specialist, would go into my trachea with a tiny li'l light and a tiny li'l camera and a tiny li'l laser to cut a star pattern in the scar tissue in my windpipe.  Then he'd gently spread the cut tissue and laser away as much excess as possible, thereby widening the airway.  Scar tissue always comes back - the goal is to (pardon the pun) stretch out the time between surgeries through medication, exercise, and diet.  But I'll keep seeing him always.

Now that's the "routine" part to me.  The surgery involves general anesthesia, but it's short - usually less than an hour.  And it's miles better than it would have been say, thirty years ago when the solution was a tracheotomy and I'd have been breathing through a tube forever.

So let's wave a thankful goodbye to Dr. Gullet and let him go off and do other work on vocal disorders.  Next up to the plate, we have Dr. Nostrildamus, whose specialty is nose stuff.  This is the guy who was going to break and reset the deviated septum that had slowly smushed half my sinuses, then painstakingly rebuild my mutant sinuses which had openings that needed to be closed and closures that needed to be opened.  He would be doing very delicate work from inside the nose, just under the eye sockets.  This was going to take time.

And it did.  Both procedures took approximately five hours. We started a bit later than expected - operating rooms are booked, but things sometimes happen and I don't want anybody pounding on the door and rushing my docs, so we have to be patient while being a patient.  Still - that whole "fasting after midnight" thing is easier when you have to be at the day hospital at 6 am than when it's later.

The surgeries went well - or so I'm told.  As with all good anesthesia, it came with amnesia.  Don't remember a thing.  I could very well have declaimed on literary theory in the recovery room or cussed like a longshoreman on leave - I don't know and they (wisely) won't tell.

But - ow.

I've never had "big" surgery before.  I've never had to stay overnight in the hospital before.  I come from very Calvinist stock and, provided you don't see bone, you simply soldier on.  We were having None Of That.  I was so drugged, hungry, and overall puny that my hands were shaking eating my post-operative applesauce. My feet seemed to belong to someone else entirely for all the good I was having in moving them.

So this is the romantic part.  If you're going to be sick and puny and whiny with pain, it's absolutely marvelous to have someone else there with you.  FryDaddy and I have reached a new level of intimacy that has nothing to do with Victoria's Secret and everything to do with those vows we took more than a year ago.  Face it, my health affects him and his affects me.  So we have to be able to talk about all sorts of things that polite company doesn't discuss and we have to be able to do it without averting our eyes or blushing too much.  (This blog is for public consumption, so let's just say this - anesthesia takes a while to wear off and pain medication has some unusual effects on other parts of the body.  As the book may tell us, everybody poops, but things change after surgery for a few days.)

My nose had "discharge" for two days after the surgery and it was heavy enough to be issued a "nasal dressing" which is a fancy way of describing a thingamabob that straps over your ears and runs under your nose to hold a gauze pad in place so you don't constantly dab at your healing schnozz.  (Yes, the name of the device is real.)  Yes, you look ridiculous.  No, the nurses won't loan you a Sharpie to draw a mustache on the gauze.  It's hard to sleep in, too.  As the nose heals, there is a surprising amount of crusty blood and gunk.  You can't breathe all that well, although stents have been inserted in your nose to help with that.  You just have to tough it out and it'll take longer than you think.  If you have good doctors - they ARE Board-certified, right? - you don't even have black eyes after all of this, but don't think that you're okay.  You're not.  I've been running on about half-throttle for the last few days (due some to the lack of sleep and some to the lack of good breathing and some to the drugs - there was infection in those sinuses) and that's pretty much typical.

But yesterday I had the stents taken out.  (The packing in the sinuses stays for about another week.)  Easy-peasy.  Snip, snip and out come the stitches then gentle pressure and gravity remove the stents which OH, MY GOD, THOSE THINGS ARE HUGE!  AND THEY WERE IN MY NOSE?!? WHAT'S GOING ON HERE??  Yes, I asked to keep one.  I washed it carefully to make it pretty before I posted it here.  The almond is only provided for scale - please don't put either of these up your nose yourself.

Two other asides in this lengthy post - one, when taking out the stents, Dr. Nostrildamus wore one of those Norman Rockwell headbands with the metal disk thing.  I suppose it's intended to reflect light up into the nose, but maybe he's a worshiper of the Egyptian sun god Ra.  Having those stents out feels so good that I don't really care.  Also, that doctor's office has a lady on staff who - seriously - pushes a little treat cart around the the waiting room to provide patients with coffee, candy, and granola bars.  Amazing.  Still plenty of healing to do, but the breathing is already improved.

And that's what I did on my summer vacation.

I Will Not Bite My Nails . . .

Nail-biting is a bad habit and usually done as an outward sign of anxiety.  I don't usually engage in it, but lately - well, who could really blame me?  After all, among the things that are on my squirrelly little mind these days . . .

1. Congress is behaving like a large group of spoiled children.  Not wanting to make hard decisions that might cost them votes (oh, no!), they elevated foot-dragging to a near art form, reluctantly raised the debt ceiling (sort of) and then skedaddled from D.C. as quickly as possible to pout in their home states, which led to . . .
2. The FAA furlough mess.  Upwards of 70,000 people were facing furloughs (way to go with that job creation stuff!) because the two houses of Congress couldn't decide how to/whether rural airports should be subsidized by tickets purchased at much larger hub airports.  Sure, that wasn't the only issue.  There was a big fuss about how to get around a labor ruling that would make it easier for airport employees to unionize.  (Let's be clear on that one.  The new rule would require a simple majority of the votes cast to be in favor of unionization.  The old rule would require a simple majority of everyone who's eligible to vote to cast votes in favor, regardless of how few/many actually show up to vote.  We don't run Presidential elections that way.)
3. Then Standard and Poor's downgrades the credit rating of the United States and investors begin to act like Chicken Little.  These are the same jackwagons, by the way, who kept many investment banks (Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns among them) at "gold" ratings the banks did not deserve as the banks were in the middle of free fall.  So I'm not sure how much weight I want to give this development, but it's still a Something That Must Be Dealt With.
4. On more local news, classes begin next week and, while I've spent my days on the Hamster Wheel of Paperwork, it seems that there is so very much to get done so that the first day is smooth.
5. I have surgery scheduled in a few days and, minor though it is, I'll admit to being a bit jumpy at the prospect of spending the night in the hospital.  FryDaddy is doing  his best (which is quite good) to reassure me that all will be well, but I'm still nervous and want this to be done with.
6. I have a writing project due in less than a month that involves learning and applying the Chicago style of citation, about which I know exactly nothing aside from the fact that I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with adding commas to deep dish pizza.
7. All of which adds up to -- diet? What diet?  Bring on the fried chicken and pimento cheese and just back off so no one needs to get hurt, Drake!

As far as I'm concerned, there's plenty there to cause nail-biting.  So then my job becomes to search for solutions.

Well, I can't do much about the first three.  Write my representatives, be polite, be persistent and know that America is large enough to withstand any number of idiocies.  (But they do seem to be grouping, don't they?) I try to keep in mind that people -- everybody -- really are doing the best they can with what they have, but some days, that's a harder point of view to maintain than others.

As for #4, who am I kidding?  The first day will be smooth, despite the fact that there will be things that are not quite done.  It'll work.

As for #5, I've got some of the best surgeons in the Southeast, if not the country.  We're talking about relatively minor procedures; I'm just a teensy bit of a wuss about being knocked out and out of control as my insides are being reshaped.  (Although the prospect of performing sinus and throat surgery on myself should make me quake with a totally different kind of fear, don't you think?)

As for #6, I'll learn.  Fast.

And #7 - well, that's a battle to be picked another day.

I've been told that there are some days that you just do your level best to get through without screaming at people.  Come home, pet your animals, wash your face, say your prayers, and go to bed.

And I realize that in life, sometimes you give the advice and sometimes you take it.

Hunger, Satisfaction, and Dessert

I've been hungry a lot lately.  Well, Mockingbird, you might say reasonably, that'll happen when you're trying to lose the last seven pounds or so.  Rumbly tummies are to be expected.

And I say "fie" to reason!  (I actually do that sometimes.  It leads to a great number of very strange looks in public places and to those people, I often add a stout "harrumph!" to my previously-mentioned "fie"! Umm, I'm digressing here, aren't I?)

Strange how things go in groups.  (Shakespeare had something to say about that, as I recall.)  Yesterday, small Ramona, our god-daughter, was doing the readings at church.  I cajoled FryDaddy into getting up early enough on a blissfully sunny, perfect-for-sleeping-in Sunday to go in support of the young one's efforts.  He manfully pulled himself together (and poured himself a travel mug of coffee for the service - unusual for church, but hey! not at all a bad idea, provided he doesn't use the hymnal as a coaster), but I left without breakfast.  Not so bad, until I realized that the first reading was about "eating what satisfies" from Isaiah.  As if I weren't already keenly aware that I had skipped breakfast, the Gospel reading was the re-telling of a very few bits of bread and fishes being made to feed thousands.  By now, I needed a snack!

Later, we took Ramona to see the new version of Winnie the Pooh.  By the way, if you haven't gone, do.  The film is just delightful, old-school animation, complete with a cartoon short (narrated by Billy Connolly!) a the beginning.  But again - all about hunger.  Pooh must ignore his own Rumbly Tummy to search for Eeyore's misplaced tail.  And I'm trying to be all good, foregoing buttery popcorn and Junior Mints for baby carrots and grapes.


Sigh. One can only be so good for so long.  Then the dietary Mr. Hyde comes out.


Supper last night was a large pizza and Klondike bars.  (That's right - "bars," as in plural.) And it was perfection itself!  Heck, due to some cash register glitch, we were even given the pizzas.

I've beaten Mr. Hyde back into submission today, but I don't regret a bite of that crust nor a drip of those bars.  My goal is to get healthier, not saintlier. I'm so very, very fortunate that when I'm hungry, it's because I've chosen to be so, not because I can't find or afford food to keep the rumblies away.  So yeah, I'm back to "being good," but let's not take that too seriously.

But I'll still take absolution for those Klondike bars from anyone who feels qualified to give it.

Of Friends, Food, Bullies, and Vita-Rays

Big week here at the Nest. As you may know from my other blog (click here), I have a friend who is going through some bad times just now, of the hospital variety.  Part of the way I dealt with the shock and sadness this last week involved developing a near automatic pilot path to the local Dairy Queen.  (No kidding - they know me now.)  So part of this week is devoted to getting back into the better habits I had been developing.  There are plenty of better and more productive things I can do for my friend instead of wallowing in the self-pitying Blizzard of Despair.  Besides, a few days of that sort of thing just doesn't feel as good as it used to.  Please keep my friend and her family in your thoughts - this is going to be rough road.

In other news, I finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and while I'm not quite ready to go as hard-core locavore as her family did, I'm thinking about trying a few things.  Putting up tomatoes, for example, and maybe (just maybe) trying my hand at making mozzarella.  We'll see.  Great book, by the way and it points up the hidden cost of buying out of season (like asparagus in July, which I am guilty of snatching up).

Have you seen Captain America yet?  If so, wasn't it great?  If not, why not?  Seriously - I've got my cred as a comic geek and this is quite likely the best superhero movie I've seen.  Period.  And I'll admit to going in with a few misgivings.  Cap is hard to get right - it's too easy to make him either too gung-ho, "my country right or wrong" or just pitifully naive - and if they get this wrong, next summer's Avengers movie is going to be hard to get right, since Cap is the heart of that team.  For me, they walked a fine line and balanced the story beautifully.  It's amazing what filmmakers can do once they understand that it's about the story, not the whizz-bang stuff.  It was a smart move to approach this as an origin story - you not only get great villains (who aren't Nazis, but are so evil that they believe that the Nazis are just wusses who refuse to aim high enough), but you get a "just war" against a clear-cut enemy.  This Cap is loaded with pluck, courage, and a finely-tuned moral compass - he's not out to "kill anybody.  I just don't like bullies."  It also comes with an amazing cast, including Hugo Weaving (who totally sells the Red Skull character) and Stanley Tucci.  There's even a woman (Peggy Carter, played by Hayley Atwell) who isn't flailing eye candy.  Go.  Be sure to stay through the very end of the credits - there's an "Easter egg" in there for you.

FryDaddy and I were part of a ceremony yesterday to officially become Ramona's god-parents.  Yep, when she gets a little older and thinks her parents, Victorian Marxist and Barefoot, just don't understand her and why it's so crucial to her high school career to pierce her nose or some other bit of teenage rebellion, she's supposed to come running to us.  We plan to offer a listening ear, an open door and a promise to never, ever take her parents' side "just because."  I further solemnly promise to never tell her how pretty she'd look "if only you'd get that hair out of your face."  But it's so much more than that - it's being there for her when she rubs up against the sharp edges of life and trying to set a good example by right living.  It's showing her how spirituality can make life's inevitable sharp edges more bearable and teaching her that not everyone walks the same path.  It's spending time with her and showing her that she's interesting and valuable and deserves respect and consideration.  (It's also sitting through iCarly re-runs and [this weekend] taking her to Winnie-the-Pooh).  It's meeting her for lunch at school and hearing about gymnastics practice.  It's a humbling experience to realize that we're being asked to take on such a role in a little girl's life and that her parents feel we're up to it.

Big week, as I said.  Oddly enough, I think it all ties back to Cap.  Yes, Captain America is a "super soldier" who's been altered by a top-secret serum.  But, as the film points out, really what that stuff does is just amplify what's already there.  A good man becomes great.  Whether we're trying to make sense of the random "gotchas" of the world or growing a garden or trying to help raise an amazing child - aren't we all just doing the best we can?  Or maybe we're not quite reaching that potential.  Cap knows what the right thing to do is - what separates him from most of us is that he then does it.  We don't have Vita-Rays to enhance our natural abilities or a fancy-schmancy vibranium shield, but we can write our representatives to say, "Hey, this is important to me and I'm watching."  We can speak up when we see unkindness.  We can take a few minutes to drop off used clothing to places that'll get it to those who need it.  Kids are going to dress up as Cap this Halloween, and that's good, but wouldn't it be great to start acting like him as well?

He's the Captain, but we're America.

Essay Writing Time!

There is a time-honored back-to-school writing assignment that involves students writing a stilted essay about "What I Did During My Summer Vacation."  Interestingly, I was never assigned this essay and I'm not sure how I missed it - probably the same way that I missed reading certain pieces of classic literature as part of the curriculum.  (Really, the holes in my "what I've read" list are pretty appalling.)  So since I'm wrapping up my summer vacation, I thought it might be interesting to sketch out what I might write about, in the event that I am assigned to do so.

Let's see . . .

1.  Strolling through downtown Charlotte on a Sunday afternoon and discovering a lovely green space smack-dab downtown that is just crammed with whimsical book themed decor.  It goes perfectly with the "Firebird" (not "Freebird") statue outside the Bechtler Museum.  I hope to return soon.
2.  I finished a frothy, brain-candy sort of book.  The Temptation of the Night Jasmine is a perfect "beach read."  Simple plot, easy to pick up and put down without getting muddled about who was doing what to whom.  Still, not a re-read and I'll soon pack it up to go to the used book store for a credit.  Speaking of which -
3.  Picking up "new" used books at our secret stash store.  Frank runs a combo used bookstore/movie rental joint down at the beach that we always hit.  Seriously - we included a line item called "Frank's" on our honeymoon budget.  Naturally, there are a lot of popular "beach read" paperbacks (Stephen King, J.D. Robb, etc.), but also some real gems, including some lovely leatherbounds.  If you're ever vacationing in the upper end of the Grand Strand (aka the "Redneck Riviera"), drop by.
4.  Movies!  I caught up on two classics - I hadn't seen Dr. Strangelove probably since my halcyon college days and I watched a Tracy/Hepburn I hadn't seen before.  Desk Set is cute enough, but not a must-see.  Fun office comedy about the early "computing machines" taking over the research department of some unnamed company.  IBM is mentioned both prominently and often.  Also saw Me and Orson Welles (excellent and be on the lookout for Christian McKay.  Oh, Orson - how hard you were on those who loved you) and Inside Job, a documentary that will get you fired up about the Great Meltdown of 2008 and how business as usual continues to be business as usual.
5.  Being fired up and all, I wrote my Congressional representative (who often behaves as an illogical troll, but I have hope) and both Senators urging them to consider the big picture on the debt ceiling mess.  Just maybe it won't just be business as usual - and I raised my voice to make it known.
6.  Starting Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and getting some solid ideas about how to become a little bit more of a "locavore."  The Kingsolver family went hard-core, but smaller steps could be taken.  (I'm toying with the idea of making cheese.  Don't call me Heidi.)  And did you know that Federal standards are stricter for tap water than they are for bottled?  Hmmm.

7.  Taking another hike.  This time, I took a shorter trail (1.7 miles one way), but it's rated as being "strenuous."  You don't say!  I was sucking wind like - well, like something that sucks wind, but I made it up to the top!  The views were stupendous - and yes, the final climb is somewhat after the sign that's posted.  Idiots will insist on getting too close to sheer drops and ruining it for those of us with the sense God gave geese.
8.  Eating lots and lots of tempting (read "junk") food during this last week.  Yum, Krispy Kreme.  Yum, ice cream.  Repeat as needed.  It's back to the "good stuff" tomorrow (which isn't bad at all - I refuse to do some wacky diet of twigs and grubs), but it's been great fun to be off my leash for a bit.
9.  Seeing the pack after being away for a few days.  Spooky and Pip continue to get along beautifully, to the point of Spooky settling herself carefully down in her crate to avoid smushing the curled-up kitty who is contentedly snoring in the back of said crate.
10. Having Sunday brunch with my husband and mother-in-law.  Usually it's just FryDaddy and Mom Squared, but this time I got to join in.  It's lovely to be married into a family that you genuinely like and enjoy being around.
11. (Yes, this list goes to eleven. No exploding drummer, though, I promise)  Finally seeing what all the fuss about Breaking Bad is about.  Although I'm not caught up with the entire series (by a long shot!), I now better understand the buzz.  The characters are three-dimensional (and that goes for both the so-called good guys and bad guys - it quite possibly may be the greyest show I've ever seen), the storylines are darkly plausible, and the filming itself deserves the word "cinematic."  Check it out, if you haven't already - but make sure the kiddies are safely in bed.

It really was relaxing, although you might not think so after reading that list!  Back into the breach tomorrow!