A week of movies, a weekend of classes

For the last week I have been home alone. I flew home after Michigan while my family drove to western New York. I came home so I could work on my DSP class which ends on Saturday. I have enjoyed having the house to myself, even if I did less work than I wanted.

While everyone has been gone, I have been watching movies. It is hard to watch movies on the big TV when people are home. I am the only person here who appreciates the finer points of cinema. Using the wonders of Netflix, in the last week I watched:

• Black Swan This was a descent into a dark world. My only complaint is how they tried to show Nina becoming the Black Swan using computer graphics. Any performance good enough to win an Oscar does not need to be cgied up.


• The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day I wanted to see this because I enjoyed the original. That was a bad idea. This movie copied too much from The Boondock Saints without retaining the same charm.


• Easy A This was fun to watch. I have also seen signs for Ojai, CA where it was set and filmed off the 101.


• Mystic River I spent more time keeping the characters and their stories straight than I wanted to.


• X-Men One of the few comic based movies I have seen.


• Juno Juno as well as Ellen Page's character of Ariadne in Inception are both named for classical mythological figures.

If that were not enough, I also watched Love and Other Drugs during a platelet appointment.

Via a link from AFJ's blog, (I hope it is OK with Aden if I call him AFJ) I also checked out the shorts listed under film on a friend's website. She wrote and directed them.

While everyone is gone I have been enjoying making and eating food. I have made everything from French toast and omelets for breakfast to quesadillas with tomatoes, olives, onions, chicken, and cheese for lunch. I even had a bacon, avocado, and cheese burger from Sammy's Burgers. As advertised, they have the best burgers in town (according to Sammy). Then there were the coupons for free food stuff with the purchase of other food stuff.

Saturday
On this coming Saturday I will be attending a class that will tech me light search and rescue as well as how to extinguish fires. It is part of a program called Community Emergency Response Team, or CERT. The idea is to train normal people how to respond to a massive earthquake. Since the regular first responders will be overwhelmed in a large scale disaster, CERT prepares people to help their neighbors in an emergency. On Saturday I will be at a fire training station to learn and practice how to rescue people in damaged buildings and deal with fires. It should be fun.

Also on Saturday night the final for my DSP class is due online. I will be very happy when the class is over.

Sunday
Then I get to wake up early and drive to Berkeley. I am working to get an alumni group for Newman people up and running and we will be holding an event at 1 PM on Sunday. I think it is a horrible day for an event for a couple of reasons, but the people who are doing the work for the event are the ones who picked the day.

This should be taken as an official announcement I will be in and around Berkeley from Sunday until around Wednesday (plans are still amorphous) and want to see all of you who are near there. If you want to do something Sunday night, Monday night, or anytime Tuesday let me know.