Saturday, the Pop Culture Edition

We get up for our usual Saturday morning routine. On the TV at the step machine at the gym I find surf quite a bit, trying to find something to watch. I find some B-movie noir thing that were I really a hipster I would totally dig, but I just find it lame. This scene set at a police station is so static, all exposition, and complicated at that. The camera moves all of once, panning to the left to show a suspect coming into the detective's office. Then pan back to the right as suspect sits down. Then more yakking. I can't stand it, so on I surf. (Turns out it's Destination Murder, from 1950, with Joyce MacKenzie, Stanley Clements, and Hurd Hatfield, and directed by Edward L. Cahn.) On another channel I find the remake of Thomas Crown Affair, the one with Pierce Brosnan. Nah. Then I find Ben Affleck in what must be Reindeer Games. Ugh. Then some western with Gregory Peck and Richard Widmark, but I'm not in the mood. (That turns out to be Yellow Sky from 1948.)

I end up watching Darshan TV, on the MHz Network, the segment where Shilpa Hart and Ramesh Butani discuss current events n' stuff. Ramesh says in thirty years the world won't have religious differences. Shilpa declares this to be the most optimistic thing she's ever heard from him, although she politely disagrees. I finish my twenty-two minutes on the stepper before the Bollywood video segment. And I don't see Shanti Aranha, whom I've met, back when she also worked at our software vendor TMA Resources. Her sister Suzi is our customer service rep.

I feel better lifting weights than I did last week. Maybe it's because this week I skip the chest press. Last week I did that first and was really tired doing everything else, although to be fair I was also still somewhat depressed. But I do the overhead press and then the regular pec fly and then the curls and then tricep curls and then the delt fly machines. I think I need to up the weight a little on the triceps; I forgot to stop at 15 during the second set. Must not be working hard enough then.

We take Rock Creek Parkway on the way home and end up driving by the cherry blossoms. Today's the Cherry Blossom Parade. Sadly, the blossoms themselves have long since peaked and are gone. And it's pissing down rain all day, so that's not good for the parade either.

We drive to ballet rehearsal. Dawn does the actual driving. She's thinking more about her driving now, now that she's getting more comfortable doing it, rather than just sort of doing it and not thinking so much, so she overthinks her technique when we get to St. Mark's and she has to parallel park. She ends up way on the curb. Then she's all back & forth and back & forth trying to correct it, before pulling out and trying again. I start yelling "stop stop stop" when she hits the curb again, and she snaps at me not to yell at her. I just jump out of the car and stomp off and go up to the studio. Dawn follows a few minutes later. We kiss and make up before dancing.

On the way home from ballet we stop at the frame shop to get Dawn's latest cross-stitch framed. It's a lovely scene with the prayer of St. Francis on it: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference. I generally try to wander around and look at things, but Dawn makes me help choose the frame. I like the look of oak, so I suggest that, knowing that my ideas are always only indicative of my own bad taste and are summarily rejected. But oddly, this time, she agrees with me and goes with the oak. Then I get to go wandering and checking out the framers' tools. They have them around the shop on magnetic bars, just like the one I have in my workshop at home. Except theirs aren't as pretty as mine, but they are a lot heftier, stronger. There's a cool Stanley scratch awl at each station, with a wooden handle, much nicer than my plastic handled Sears Craftsman. Dawn ends up choosing a pink linen matting. The total for the framing comes to an astonishing two-hundred dollars. I suddenly feel a whole lot better about the Ryobi saw I've been wanting. I'm grinning, and teasing Dawn, when we leave.

We go to the Saturday Vigil Mass, since the Cardinal is celebrating Palm Sunday the next morning at ten instead of our usual Novus Ordo. Traffic is bad and we're only a little late, but for Palm Sunday Mass the procession starts in the back of the nave, right where we come in. Everybody's turning around and holding up their palms, and I feel very very conspicuous coming in. We make our way up to our usual pews before it really starts though. (And more on the Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord tomorrow.)

We have fondue for dinner, since we had gone out to Tortilla Cafe last night. And we watched Office Space last night as well. Dawn had ordered it, thinking it was something else, although we can't figure out what that something else was. I had seen bits and pieces of it on TV like a million times, but never the whole thing in one sitting. And I had never seen the very end after the building goes up in flames. Dawn is underwhelmed by Jennifer Aniston.

And tonight we watch another Horatio, this one about a mutiny. Except it's only part one of two, so we're left hanging. David Warner plays the legendary but evil Capt. James Sawyer. I think David Warner is really the poor man's Michael Caine; like Michael Caine he is pretty much ubiquitous, but unlike him he's always in lame stuff, rather than just sometimes. Dawn thinks David Warner is handsome. And Dawn is mighty pleased by Horatio's nude scene, which I kindly rewind and freeze-frame for her.

(And later research reveals that that's not the Prayer of St. Francis. It's actually called the Serenity Prayer, written by one Reinhold Niebuhr and used & made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous.)