It's Better in Wyoming.

So, I just got back (okay, 10 minutes ag0) from a showing on campus of "Sometimes Happy, Sometimes Sad." That's the English title for a 2001 Bollywood film. (Original title: Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham ) All total, it was nearly four hours long. That's a lot of dancing and singing and being sometimes happy and sometimes sad. It's the first Bollywood film I've seen from end to end, and I think I can say: I would've really liked it, if only it had been 90 minutes shorter. It makes me willing to watch some other Indian cinema, though. Two other things: I like the name 'Rohan.' In Irish and Gaelic it means 'red' or 'red-haired,' but in Hindi it means 'sandalwood' or 'ascending.' NameVoyager says it's about the 500th most-popular boys name in America these days. I can't decide if the actress who played Anjali was hotter than the actress who played Pooja.

Then, one day, I just woke up, and I said, 'e-i'! And ever since then, I haven't had any trouble figuring out how to spell 'weird.' 'E-i'!! I don't know how, after about 20 years of thinking about it, it suddenly just made sense to me, but there it was. That hasn't yet happened, by the way, with 'separate.' I still misspell it half of the time. Certainly there's some easy mnemonic device for 'separate,' though...? Last weekend, playing pick-up basketball, was sorta the same. There I was, with a basketball in my hand, and I thought, I'm gonna fake right and go left. Or, I'm gonna square up and take the shot right over top of the dude in front of me. Even though I've been playing basketball for years, it was like a whole new level of the game opened up to me. Weird, huh? 'E-i'!

I just finished Cormac Mccarthy's The Road . It was intense, and not intense. "Unpyschological," one reviewer calls it, and I agree. But that doesn't mean it wasn't deep or dense, in spite of the sparse language. I intended to post a couple of quotes from the book to throw here on the blog, but I returned it already to Jess who I borrowed it from, and it's surprisingly difficult, online, to find many quotes from it. Even then, I don't know if it's the type of writing that lends itself to excerpting. I don't think I can quote capture the complexity in the book by pulling a 10-line passage. Next I think I'll start Alyson's book, set in Wyoming. Snow, Ashes . Meanwhile I've got plenty of work-related reading to do (and seem to somehow be falling even further behind....), but fiction is some medicine for the soul.

As I was doing some research tonight about the move towards increased levels of online reading, I came across a reference to this incredibly worthwhile grassroots effort: http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ I also notice a link to their online gift shoppe. Look for me to be sporting my ringer tee in support of this important issue. Why haven't Barock and Hilary and McCain been talking about this?!

Something I keep forgetting to mention: a hockey game seems like a weird place to hear the "Star Spangled Banner" on a violin. It's the first time I've ever heard a violin play the anthem, and I have to say that I liked it. And once I got over the whole 'bull in a china shop' feeling, I actually thought it was pretty appropriate. I mean, those hockey dudes are seriously agile. Even under 30 pounds of pads they're elegant. Even when they're getting up from a full-body check they make it look easy to be out there on a sheet of ice. It's a song about bombs bursting in air. On a violin. I won't say it brought me to tears. But I will say it moved me in a way that nationalism rarely does. At a game where they balance some of the most elegant motion in sports with knock-down, drag-it-out, punch-you-inna-face fighting. Good times. God bless America.

Well, the Giants won. I don't really care. I did get to eat some fantastic curry chicken at Meggie's, though, with Josh and Lori and drink some Gnarly Old Vine Zin. 'Ole Vine Zin.' Reminds me of a song to sing at New Year's. Last night was Thai night with Mary Ann and Jamie and Anna and Kaijsa and Hank and Tim. And peanut sauce with chicken on a bed of spinach and lime-mint-cilantro chicken soup and massaman beef-and-potato and some fantastic cannolis with mango sauce. And iced thai coffee. I'm a big fan of the cardamom. Curry weekend! So good! As Jamie said, the new thai place in town will have a hard time beating our menu.

That's the estimate for fixing my anti-lock brakes. As I was leaving Happy Jack this afternoon, heading back from a fine afternoon of skiing, the truck started making a whining noise. I shut it off; the noise didn't quit. The ABS warning light came on. I called the Chevy garage; they told me that as long as the other brake warning lights weren't on, I still had brakes. Matt told me I could drive the truck down the hill and then bring it by to see if they needed to reset a sensor. So I brought it in. They couldn't get to it for a while; they gave me a ride home and told me they'd call when they could get it on the lift to take a look at it. Rich called to tell me that in driving it back to town I'd probably burned up the mechanical parts but that they had been engaging because the computer part was shot. $2180. Right now the ABS system is disconnected, which means I can drive the truck, just no anti-lock. Which is what I was used to anyway. But still.