Since I’m out from work recovering from surgery – I figured now would be a great time to try my hand at knitting. I’ve had a gauge size 8 needle and two skeins of yarn since the spring and a good yard sale. I even found a really spiffy looking (and collapsible) vintage knitting bag with wooden legs at another yard sale about a month ago for a quarter. So I’ve been ready to go.

Scouring YouTube via google for videos on how to knit wasn’t as productive as I’d hoped it would be. There’s a lot of crap out there. If you can learn how to do something with just a video without audio or instructions – good for you.

I have 2 favorite videos I’d suggest in getting started. One from VideoJug, and one from Threadbangers. The Threadbangers video has the easiest slip knot and cast-on methods I’ve seen out there – and great video quality so you can really see what’s going on. VideoJug’s Knitting session really captures the actual knitting bit the best – very slow, exceptional video quality and a clarity that I think the Threadbanger’s video lacks in its reviewing the basics format. These two combined though? Perfect for learning without a live person to help!

My first attempts were pathetic at best. Not being able to stand up and walk away easily after a few failures was frustrating to say the least! But doing my best for a short while then coming back the next day proved best.

I’ve also got a hold of a larger 15 gauge needles – as my size 8′s were a bit ambitious to start with. I also suggest going with wooden needles – mine were metal – and far too slippery for a beginner. And seriously? Nothing beats having a person who can help you! Some local craft stores have free sessions to get people started – some now charge for classes, but the prices aren’t unreasonable. My cousin wound up catching a small mistake I was making — which basically means you’re doing it completely wrong — and it’s really hard to figure out where you’re going wrong all on your own!

So – still very much in the early stages of the process – but feeling good! Goal #46 to knit a pair of mermaid fingerless gloves just feels reaaaaaally far away right now. But hopefully I’ll be able to upload a photo of a pathetic looking potholder in the very near future!

2.5/5 Stars

As a theatre person, I guess it comes as a shock for some that I’ve never seen My Fair Lady.

So it may come as even more of a shock that after I finally did watch it – that I couldn’t have liked it any less than I did.

And it’s not just the percocet talking. (I AM at home recovering from ankle surgery, but that’s hardly relevant…)

The plot sounds simple and cute enough – Professor Henry Higgins takes a bet than he can convert a very cockney Eliza Doolittle into a lady. She should transform like a butterfly, in song and music and there should be some sort of love affair. Lovely.

The only problem is that within a minute of the film’s start (after a lengthy and highly unnecessary flowers montage) I was introduced to the most irritating leading lady I’ve ever seen onscreen. Percocet or not, I sat in front of my television and found myself quite loudly muttering, “Oh my GOD. SHUT UP,” at the screen. Audrey Hepburn is a nightmare. Maybe that’s supposed to show ‘how good she is’ — maybe that was the director’s choice. But I honestly struggled to sit through the plot setup. The voice was bad enough, but combine it with the whining, the stupidity, the ignorance… It was awful. When that ‘The Rain in Spain” song finally started, I wanted to stand up and cheer simply because I knew I wouldn’t need to hear that blathering street urchin voice again.

I watched the rest of the film out of sheer love for Rex Harrison, but nothing could win me over. I enjoy several songs from the show (and I call it ‘show’ because I know it was a musical first, and I’m hoping that Julie Andrews, lord bless her, as the original Eliza made the character far more likable.) and didn’t even know they were from it  — and that still couldn’t save it for me.

I have to care about characters to get involved in a film – seeing as this film showed me the most annoying leading lady in history – that just wasn’t going to happen. I give My Fair Lady 2.5/5 Stars and having never seen Audrey Hepburn in anything else, really have little desire to see her in anything else either!

So my blog has been deathly quiet for many months. Fortunately there are 2 reasons for this – one being, my new job (goal #39) where I’ve been for a whole year now – has NO internet. Talk about a downer. I have a smartphone to help take the edge off, but my internet use has tanked subsequently, and writing posts is no longer in the forefront of my mind.

My second reason is not such a good thing — and really stemmed from my trying to tackle goals #12 and #13.
I’ve had flat feet since end of Junior year at college. Right around the same time, I suffered an injury to my left ankle which has never been the same since. I didn’t take proper care of myself in that respect. I worried about other things, and glossed over addressing the issues by putting a band-aid on them in the form of Fit Flops. But last spring, they weren’t helping anymore.

It’s taken me over a year to get here – but as I sit here typing — I am 2 days into recovery from ankle surgery.

I had an arthroscopic procedure to explore my left ankle joint – my surgeon was going to remove an
osteochondral lesion from my joint. He would remove the surrounding damaged cartilage, bone chip underneath and then drill the talus bone underneath to generate growth of fibrocartilage to replace the damaged parts. He also apparently removed the small bone spur I had underneath my heel (which was a nice bonus!) and some scar tissue in the ankle that all stemmed from that college injury.

I’m currently in a hard cast up to my knee. I’ll have it for 2-3 weeks. I have to be completely non-weight bearing for a full 6 weeks, and then partial-weght bearing and using a cam-walker boot for another 6 weeks after that. Theoretically, I should be back on my feet in mid-October, walking and moving more normally. I’ll have to take it easy after that however – running, jumping, skiing… I won’t ski till at least 2012. Everything else will be a gradual shift – with no set time, but at least an extra 6 months sounds standard.

The past few months I’ve been distracted with doctor’s appointments, getting scans, finding a surgeon I like — and dealing with a great deal of discomfort. The ankle was making things hurt in my knee and up into my hip. I’ve been seeing my chiropractor every week to throw my hip back into alignment. 

I even had scans done of both my knees – in the late winter it was the worst. But I’ve since lost almost 30 lbs, and am still working slowly towards losing more. That has made a huge difference, but in the end – the surgery still needed to happen. My insurance is great right now, you recover better when you’re younger — and further damage needed to be prevented.

I have an 80% chance of a more ‘complete’ recovery. Fibrocartilage is never as good as the cartilage we’re born with, but if it grows in strong enough – it’ll be better than what I was working with injured. My doctor thinks I’ve got a good shot.

So here I am. And my list needs to be tweaked a little.
I’ve changed my skiing goals – it seems foolish to have skiing goals at this point, when I’ll simply be very happy to ever be able to ski again. I haven’t been able to go hiking because uneven terrain is excruciatingly painful for me. So my #24 (New England Double Black Challenge) and #88 (New Eqiupment) are going to be replaced with something different, and my more athletic goals may need to be tweaked — or saved for another day because of my 101 in 1001 timeline. I might be able to hike by next summer… but I wouldn’t make the deadline for my goals.

I may give myself an extension — by the simple fact that I’m losing 2 months for anything very active, and have lost several months due to sorting out my injury.

In the meantime I’m slamming at my 101 Movies list, and working on 101 Books and other less physical goals.

So we’ll see what happens. I’m out of work for 2 weeks – so I’m going to do my best to keep my chin up while I recover and get some things done in the meantime!

5/5 Stars

When Pride & Prejudice appeared on my high school reading list – I devoured it like a my life depended on it. And I bought a DVD version of the book sight unseen because I’d heard good things – a 5 hour adaptation of the text produced by the BBC in 1995.

Caution: May induce swooning

I ripped open the package & plopped down one Sunday afternoon: and I was in love. Colin Firth’s portrayal of Mr. Darcy for me might as well have been borderline pornographic. Ask any girl who’s into P&P… Words don’t do it justice – but his performance just smolders.

Over the years he has become more mainstream in American cinema – he hasn’t necessarily made the best film choices (he’s admitted it himself) but after great recognition for his work in films like A Single Man – my longstanding love for Colin Firth was finally justified on Sunday night.

The film The King’s Speech finally provided him the vehicle that earned him Best Actor at the Golden Globes (and my hope is that he’ll be rewarded much the same way come Oscar season.)

The King’s Speech is a British historical drama about King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth – and his struggle to overcome a stammer that threatens his image at a time when radio and film bring the monarchy off the printed page and into the homes of their subjects.

Firth plays George VI, aka Bertie or Prince Albert opposite the incredibly talented Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue, his speech therapist. The pair have a great onscreen chemistry, culminating in the final minutes of the film as the king must give a speech to declare war on Germany after only 40 minutes to rehearse. Firth’s portrayal of George VI is incredibly deep and believable. The slight speech impediment, the painful stammer – it all feels so real. Firth has a moment where he cracks and shares uncomfortable childhood memories that shaped his closed personality – and its just captivating.

Am I sad that he stammered his way to a major award? … a little.
But I’m extremely happy for him at the same time – so it’s all good.

Newsflash: Aging Happens!

 
(Also a weird moment – seeing Jennifer Ehle (who was a lovely & lovable Elizabeth to Firth’s Darcy in P&P — playing Logue’s wife ) onscreen together with Firth for about 12 seconds… basically: Darcy & Elizabeth go all middle-aged on me and my head spins…)

Anyway – The King’s Speech is an Oscar contender – so go and see it! You’ll learn a little history – watch some excellent British actors do their thing, and see why Firth stole so many hearts back in the day in P&P

3/5 Stars

My co-worker Shannon recommended to me Hector and the Search for Happiness, advertising it as a harmless piece of feel-good fluff that wasn’t too deep but had at least a little meaning.

I read this book every night before bedtime almost 10 pages at a time – if I was lucky. I was fighting a cold and could barely get through 10 pages before passing out. That alone can tell you – this isn’t a page turner.

But Shannon was right – it was a nice, feel good little book (it thankfully wasn’t too long – it’d have taken me forever to read it if it’d been longer at the rate I was reading!)

The book is written by a psychiatrist — About a psychiatrist who sets out on a journey that leads him around the globe as he searches for the things in life that make people happy so that he might catalogue them. These truths aren’t any mystery – some of these things are just plain common sense. But the book is a quirky little delivery system to give you this list that Hector ultimately generates. And his list isn’t wrong. In fact, it’s a nice basic guide to leading a happier life.

5/5 Stars

When I think “John Wayne” – a very particular style of film comes to mind.
Wayne, as a middle aged cowboy defending the weak with his staged swagger, his slow as molasses drawl.

Stagecoach is SO not that movie.

Actually, it’s a 1939 John Ford classic, with John Wayne starring in his breakout role as Ringo Kid, a rugged outlaw with a good heart (and an intro that could make any woman swoon.)

The plot is fairly basic – an interesting bunch of folks all board the stagecoach bound for Lordsburg while the Apache Nation lead by Geronimo is on a warpath across the territory.

Stagecoach is full of interesting characters, the most lovable being the outcasts of the group. It’s one of those classic movies you can watch over and over because it’s got a bit of everything, and a really sweet story at its core.

The film is John Ford’s first sound western – he’d made silent westerns up until Stagecoach. And he went all out on this one – it’s got an epic chase/fight scene in the last half of the film that has some great stunts orchestrated by Yakima Canutt (who created and perfected many methods of getting stunts on film in westerns… he loses points for the creation of the Running W method – but he orchestrated huge movie moments like the chariot sequence in Ben-Hur…)

John Ford packs a lot into an hour and a half – and I would recommend this movie as the perfect rainy day activity. Go ahead – curl up with a bowl of popcorn & find yourself transported to the wild west for a little while!

I’m one year into my 1001 Day journey today.

Circumstances with my new job make it harder to update my blog (which have me shamefully realizing how much time I spent updating at my old job… though I did do it on a lot of evening shifts where I was working shows… but still…)

I’m working on ways to improve my blogging stats… I’m thinking that I’m going to steal my mom’s laptop once a week and take it to work, and commit to writing posts through lunch that day.

Anyway, I can’t say I had a goal for where I’d be at this point in my goal list.
Technically I only have 9 goals fully completed – which isn’t all that upsetting since so many of my goals are not one time events or items. Some of them take practice. Multiple steps. So while the number is small now – as long as I keep whittling away at things, I know many of my goals will be completed.

Actually, upon reviewing my list of goals today… I think that I can safely say I’m going to complete several in the next few months.

I’m 43 films into my 101 movies to watch by day 1001. Technically, I’ve watched more than I’ve listed… but some I’ve felt haven’t been worth rating, or even admitting that I actually watched (New version of Clash of the Titans? You don’t even exist in my book!) I’m going to start focusing more on my AFI films on the list, and foreign films as well.

I’m 23 books into my 101 books list – this one I thought might be a little higher, but I haven’t found a book series to fall in love with recently, which usually has me reading 8-9 books playing catchup in a short span of time. I’m going to try and step this up soon – but I’ve been sort of falling into watching some new TV series… like watching Dexter from season one. (sooo Good!) So I’ve got to really commit to cranking out a few books and get in the habit again.

Some great things have happened for me in the past 365. My #1 likely being the fact that I got a new job – a new job with great benefits, stable vacation guarantees, and a nearly 40% pay increase. My bills are down, my savings are up, and I can buy better ski equipment for this season without a single ounce of guilt. I was able to put a huge chunk of change towards my student loans, which will have me finishing sooner & saving over $2500 in interest.

I’ve had some adventures like skiing vacation, whitewater rafting, trying a new beach in MD, and 10 days of awesome freeness in Disney World andvisited with 2 great old friends. I’ve tried new foods, gotten locked in the habit of seeing certain friends for brunch no matter how busy we are, and started learning how to do some new things.

I’ve gotten things under way to try and get my feet sorted out, gotten in the habit of taking vitamins every single day, am taking better care of my fingernails, and finally got my shit together for excercise. I’m working out almost an hour every day with P90X and doing some serious strength training doing assisted pull-ups and push-ups. Already I’m wakeful in the morning, have more energy and feeling stronger. Weight is coming off slowly because of the muscle build – but I’m losing some inches in my midsection that have me committed to the program just because feeling stronger is worth it.

Certain friendships in my life have gotten stronger, gotten better, grown more open & honest, with more laughs and plans for the future. Certain ones need some extra lovin’ – that has been acknowledged on both sides and will hopefully have some QT soon. Others are just as good as ever, my constants just getting, well, more constant as time goes by. One that was old and cracked ended with one quick blow that happened months after its actual demise. One steady with much hilarious history was celebrated and I stood by him as he took wedding vows. A great friend, and little sister also took the plunge earlier this year… and I couldn’t be happier for either couple.  Other friends ended long relationships, in droves it seems – bringing many of us back together for some serious therapy sessions through laughter and tears. We’ve all learned alot, moved forward, and were there to lean on one another through it all.

Beyond a doubt, it’s been a great year. I’ve learned a lot, gotten more focused, and I’m looking forward to the next one – long and short term. There are some pretty awesome things on the horizon. Even just in the next couple of weeks… I’m not sure how I’m cramming in so much awesome in the next month actually.
The random Canadian road trip is finally going to happen, a paintball trip in the Poconos, the Colbert/Stewart March/Rally in DC, Halloween, hiking…
There’s more skiing to plan, trips to plan, things to learn, and experience…

Here’s looking forward to the next 525,600 minutes!

Have finally broken down and am seeing a podiatrist.
For privacy sake, and until I’ve reached my true opinion of said podiatrist – let’s call him Doctor X.

Doctor X’s office likes to overbook appointment times, and he has atrocious handwriting — but he seems to listen to me, and wants me to not have foot pain — so that’s in his favor. He’s told me that I have over-pronation and supination when I walk… which isn’t surprsing, but hey – now it’s official.
I’ve had X-rays of both feet, and am going for an MRI on Monday to get a scan of my left knee and ankle joint.
He said I’m a difficult case because my pain really can’t be pinpointed to one particular thing, hence my getting an MRI in addition to the X-Rays.
My left ankle is the problem at the moment, and I’ve got a small bone spur on my right heel that thankfully isn’t giving me any problems right now.

I’ve gone out and spent far too much money on closed toe dress flats for work, and a pair of sassy yet engineered for the flat-footed type boots. Hooray Clarks shoes!

I’m hoping that Doctor X is going to see something telling on the MRI when I see him next Thursday.
I also hope that he sends me to physical therapy for the one ankle to see if that might help. (Really trying to avoid a cortisone shot here…)

I’m also going to ask him to recommend a brand of shoe he finds to make the best athletic sneakers for flat-footers.
I bought an awesome pair of ‘sneakers’ yesterday that feel like they’ll be very comfortable for me for walking – but they don’t have any kind of ankle support, so I don’t think they’re practical for running. So hopefully I’ll be able to have #13 completed in the next few weeks as well!

3.5/5 Stars

Duck Soup is an oldie but a goodie. The tiny country of Freedonia is facing financial disaster. Mrs. Teasdale will donate $20 Million to rescue the nation – on the condition that Rufus T. Firefly is made President. Firefly is a fine Groucho creation – a crazy and flighty dictator dropped in the strangest of circumstances. While trying to woo the rich widow Teasdale, Ambassador Trentino from neighboring Sylvania swoops in with the same idea. When the competition comes to blows – war breaks out between the two nations with hilarious results.

So – there’s a scene that apparently has become known simply as ‘the mirror scene’ in this movie film that as soon as it came onscreen I realized two things – 1. How so many cartoon references from Bugs Bunny to Family Guy have used it! and 2. That THIS is what inspired all that. It’s the original (or at least, most famous) and its definitely the best.
Pinky (Harpo) is caught by President Rufus dressed exactly to match on the other side of an archway where a mirror normally rest (Pinky of course broke said mirror moments earlier.) What ensues is a brilliant miming piece – at least 3 minutes of complete silence – where Pinky matches Rufus move for move as Rufus suspiciously eyes himself in the mirror. He even leaps out from either side of the archway in attempts to catch his reflection as an imposter – but Pinky nails the most complex and silliest of actions until the tail end of the scene.

Also memorable is the final war scene – where President Rufus in all his military splendor - appears in a different military outfit in each scene, wearing both Confederate and Union Civil War Uniforms, British Palace Guard Uniforms – even a Davey Crockett inspired uniform as the chaotic war unfolds.

All in all, Duck Soup only runs 68 minutes, and is well worth your time if you’d like another glimpse at the foundations of comedy

4/5 Stars

Gallipoli is an amazing movie.

Mel Gibson… was both startlingly cute and talented in the film. He leaves poor Mark Lee’s Archy Hamilton in the dust (…even if Mel’s character’s lack of speed in running is literally what kills Archy in the film… ohh… spoiler?)

Really though – anyone who knows some World War I history hears the word ‘Gallipoli’ and they know its going to be followed by something bad.
Basically it’s where a bunch of Australian (and New Zealand) soldiers are pitted against the Turkish in the name of Mother England and get slaughtered. Alot.
And the film Gallipoli builds up to this – giving viewers a look at the lives of a group of young men who enlist in the war and their experiences leading up to their time in the trenches at the Battle of the Nek in Turkey as part of the Gallipoli campaign.
And then shit gets real.

If you don’t like war films – don’t see it. You will not be pleased. You are introduced to characters – their hopes, their dreams, their day to day lives and little quirks — and then there’s a very good chance that they’re going to die by the end of the movie. Peter Weir really knows what he’s doing.
However, if you can stomach a war film — it’s totally worth it.

As I’m probably considered an annoying Australia fan by my friends since my semester there – it’s no surprise that I sought this film out to watch it.
What’s more though, is that after seeing it, I really do feel sad about Mel Gibson. He’s been on the decline for the past several years in terms of sanity – and seeing Gallipoli  just reminded me of how swoon-worthy he was when I was younger. (And boy did I swoon over him… such swoon time I wasted!)
And now with a little more experience, and film appreciation under my belt… I can also see how much potential he had when he was younger…(Mel’s final scene in Gallipoli is raw and totally gut-wrenching)  and that talent  sort of just…faded….into crazy…. 

As pretty as you both are... Don't expect a happy ending.