Curiouser and Curiouser

I awoke from a strange dream on Sunday morning. I was in a celebrity version of The Amazing Race, where a "real" person was paired with a celebrity. Mine was some middle aged woman writer... who, I still don't know.

We had to take these horse carts and drive them through a lake, and then down a long wooded path that now reminds me of the road from Versaille to the Hamlet of Antoinette. It ended in a rather fake sort of Sleepy Hollow area where we had to open a trap door in the floor of a barn with three walls. The was a big mirror set up in the middle of the structure, and I was stymied by the fact that when Antonio Banderas looked into the mirror, he had no reflection. So I dragged Brad Pitt over to the mirror to check. I think he did have a reflection.

The problem opening the trap door was that it was sealed with paper and tape and more layers of plastic. We had a little pocket knife that we used to tear the bloody thing open, but every time we got to a layer, there was another underneath. For a moment I thought we'd turned up a clue in the paper wrappings. Instead, it turned out to be mail from my school mailbox... stupid teachery junk mail things and memos. I remember one was a notice saying that the company that runs the new software program the school spent $80,000 on was bad and that we had to stop using it. And the attendance sheets. I thought, what the crap? Someone's going to have to send this back to the school. But not now. I've got to win this race.

We finally got the trap door open, and grabbed a torch and were just about to jump in when I woke up.

Watched a great foreign movie yesterday as well - Rosenstrasse. It was about a group of Aryan women during WWII who were married to Jewish men. It was told through a modern day story of a daughter who wants to understand her mother grieving after her father died.

Matt Damon is My Hero

Now I really never thought I'd say it, but Matt Damon is my newest hero. I watched the first half hour of Project Greenlight last night before I had to go off to choir. I had one of those moments where I actually wanted to jump into the television and give that man a hug.

As a participant of Project Greenlight, I told myself that I would not be disappointed that my script was not one of three out of 4,000, as long as the script that won was brilliant... or perhaps even slightly shiny.

Imagine how furious I was when they picked a piece of crap... over a definitely brilliant script... the... um... The One About Time Travel With The Really Long Title. Had they picked The One About Time Travel With The Really Long Title, I could have sat back and said, okay, I can live with this.

Matt Damon said some pretty harsh words on the episode last night. To paraphrase, "I've never picked a script because of how much money I think it's going to make," and "You're sitting next to the King of Horror, Wes Craven, and he says the script is a piece of crap."

Two Words: Train Wreck

Beware the Ides of March

So grades are done. Of course tomorrow I'll have ten kids come up to me and ask me to change their grades before the report cards. Half of their problem is that they don't listen.

Ever.

Sigh.

Now I can work on Miss Mathis's Fear Factor - St. Patrick's Day Style!

It's all Melissa's Fault

I created a monster.

A Japanese ball rolling monster. It all started simply enough.

Last week Liz and I went shopping at Ross... which just so happens to be next to Gamestop. We wandered in, perusing the used DVD's and I saw this game, Katamari Damacy, which Mel had mentioned earlier. I picked it up and later played it a few times.

The premise is simple. You're the son of the King of the Cosmos. On a whim your dad wiped out the stars, and it's your job to roll this ball around, picking stuff up with it. You start out with thumb tacks, caramels and dice, and progress to larger items, like sumo wrestlers and streetlights. I think I was hooked the first time it picked up a cat, and it stuck to the ball, legs out, wiggling.

I noticed it had a two player mode... so I convinced Liz that she should take a go at it. Despite her objections, I told her a five year old could play this game, so off we went.

And went.

And went.

Though not necessarily very skilled, Lizzie is very determined. I finally set her loose on the single player mode while I worked on the puzzle she started, or crocheted, or watched, almost snoozing on the couch. I think we played for about 4 hours straight.

"I think my thumbs are totally numb," she said as she finally headed to bed. Playstation finger!

I was in a bit of sensory overload last night, as all my dreams had to do with playing the game.

I got up this morning, took a nice long shower, then... you guessed it... played the game (before Lizzie came home from Marathon Practice and tried to steal the controller.)

Simple, silly, addictive.