The work week went pretty well. I worked pretty hard, made some slow progress, and mostly enjoyed it. We had somebody fly from Tennessee for the day on Friday to meet with us about some of our work. That still seems nuts to me--why would you want to fly twice in a day if you didn't have to? How could you travel across the country to a strange town and not want to spend at least a day or two looking around?
In any case, it reminded me of a big project we have to do that's felt a little stalled lately. I spent some time over the weekend trying to think about it some more, and it's starting to feel just a little less impossible than before.
A shorter-term project with a looming end-of-the-month deadline is also finally starting to break itself down into smaller pieces, to the point where I can believe it'll actually get done in time.
So, I did some work Saturday, but also passed clubs with Dave for a while at juggling, and got a ride with Ajit to Fred and Deanna's for games later on.
Sunday I spent a little time working at the media union, just for a change of scene. The advantage to being there on a summer Sunday is that it's deserted and there's lots of great places to sit. But the various coffee shops and fast food places are all closed, which puts a natural time limit on how long I could work there. Well, I guess I could have packed a lunch if I'd known.
Friday we saw "Nobody Knows", a documentary-style story about four siblings who, despite an impressive level of independence for their age, just aren't quite mature enough to take care of each other when their mother abandons them. It's a long slow one-directional plot with lots of nice moments to linger over--the sort of thing that's charming sandwiched between more animated scenes in a Miyazaki film, but that started to try my patience towards the end here. It was also very good, but probably too sad for me to bear sitting through it again.
And Sunday we watched "A Prairie Home Companion", which I found hilarious in a deadpan sort of way.
Earlier this week we also tried "Herbie: Fully Loaded". Sometimes you don't expect much of a movie and it still manages to disappoint you. It wasn't a guilty pleasure, or a fascinating mess, or an unintentional comedy, it was just sort of senseless and badly done and predictable.