the underwear drawer

snow day

So the snow was crazy, wasn't it? It finally tapered off sometime this morning, though it may have stopped even earlier than that--it was hard to say after a certain point if it was fresh snow falling from the sky or just old snow that was getting blown around and redeposited. Pretty for now, but I'm sure by the middle of next week all that will remain are these giant ice mounds on the side of the street where the plow heaped eveything up, with a nice little dog poo core that won't thaw until mid-March. Lovely.

Even though all the local merchants were shoveling and salting like crazy, the sidewalks still aren't all cleared off, so it was a little hard to get around still this afternoon. So Joe and I just walked over a couple of blocks and finally finally finally watched "Sideways". I guess everyone else had the same plan, because the theater was packed, despite the fact that the movie came out, like, two months ago. I guess that's what happens with all the award season hype. What, like I'm going to see "Hide and Seek" when I have "Sideways," "Million Dollar Baby," "Closer," and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" all showing at the same theater? Girlfriend, please.

Anyway, if you want to see a solid, likeable movie starring the brilliant Paul Giamatti in an honest movie about male friendship--and also crippling mid-life depression and inertia--you should pop on over and see "Sideways". I love Paul Giamatti, and if you look at his filmography, you realize that this guy has been in everything. (Overlook the unfortunate Martin Lawrence vehicle "Big Momma's House" and skip to "American Splendor," which also stars indie film sweetheart Hope Davis.) My enjoyment was only hampered by the fact that I had to pee really badly the entire movie, starting from the scene where they go visit Miles's mom (which, if you've seen the movie or read the book, you know is all the way in the beginning), and we were trapped dead center in an aisle with, like 40 people on either side. And I really don't like missing part of a movie, and I really really don't like disturbing other people, so I somehow managed to hold it until the end, although I was having some trouble walking straight by that time. I remember vividly for some reason that the same thing happened to me when I watched "The Last Emperor," only that movie was, like, three hours long and, being eight years old at the time, I had a much smaller bladder capacity.

So I'm on this reading/study elective until the end of the block, before I return to the NICU in February. So this week might be a good time to catch up on all those other movies that I've been waiting to see until now. I mean, in between the hours I'm going to put in studying very, very hard, of course. Ahem.

Currently reading: Finished re-reading "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." So good. My sister actually got to meet Dave Eggers when he was doing some sort of college promotional tour, and I was so jealous I almost had to kill her. Kill her and steal her autographed copy of "AHWOSG," a book that I gave her for Christmas so the fact that she has as the autograph whereas I am autographless is just infuriating. But now I'm really fresh out of books to read. Maybe I should scour my bookshelves for books that I never got around to starting and therefore forgot about. Or maybe I'll head on over to Borders tomorrow (in between the hours I'm going to put in studying very, very hard) with a list of recommendations from the Comments section and see what they have in stock. I know I could find them all online, and probably for cheaper, but sometimes you just want that instant gratification.