I agree, c.i. We saw it Friday night. It was okay, but just okay.
i watched this movie called monster and it was so sad but an awesome movie!!!
Started my day in the provincial town of Z, and thus the list of things that made me smile:
--Middle-aged woman in a cigar shop, buying two boxes of cigars, speaking the local accent. How far off from my hometown are we here? Yet still I hardly understand a word she's saying.
When she leaves, the girl of the shop gives her a plastic bag, plus a "little handwarmer" - i.e., a lighter.
--The Wilgenstraat in Z., at the heart of a tidy little working-class neighbourhood with cute little houses from the twenties or thirties - where everyone clearly knows everyone - must be the single most Orange-mad street in Holland, these European Championships.
Not just are there the ubiquitous little orange flags stretched over the street, but also posters of the players on cardboard around the street lights, posters with the national anthem in the windows, windowsills wrapped in orange paper, headrests inside the parked cars wrapped in orange, hand-cut paper Dutch flags, newspaper cuttings with encouraging headlines and photos of players stuck on the doors ... everything. Amazing.
Street one neighbourhood down makes a good shot at second place, though, with homemade flags from all participating countries bannered over the street ...
--Bought a beautiful (I think) present for Anastasia - and one for me, in the bookshop.
--Two deer in a bright green field, seen from the train, down by the forest's seam ...
--A boy in Arnhem walking his three ferrets. I can assure you: three little ferrets hardly ever all want to go in the same direction. <grins>
--The Gypsy musicians at Arnhem train station decided to just sit down on that bench there, still bellowing out their horns and accordeon music. Why not - everyone has to pass by them anyway, rest of the area's broken up and being worked on.
--The farm-guy setting up shop by the roadside, selling cherries and apples straight from the field. Not just your sign-on-the-farmhouse "you can buy potatoes here" operation, no - he's got chairs and tables and bottled drinks and even a meters-long, fully-fledged, lurid-picture-adorned "cherry-pit-spit-course". How far can you spit 'em?
--Sitting outside at a table in the grass, elsewhere, by the river - having a sandwich, then cake - and having the ducks approach. The ducks there really have the routine down - quack-quacking into your direction, then standing right by your table, looking up at you pleadingly, minutes on end, impatiently wobbling on their feet. Begging better than any dog!
--One of those amazing, overwhelming Dutch skies.
--Standing on a bench to see no less than - yes, a new record - eight bunnies in the field, big and small, running after one another and playing and everything.
------
All in all, I guess, not bad for a day on which I
- woke up too late,
- decided to go down to one of two quaint, cute teahouses I'd seen downtown, and found them both closed on Mondays,
- was stopped by a sudden thunderstorm when I wanted to go out walking in the fields and woods instead,
- gave up and went to Arnhem, only to find the trains cancelled midway
- walked all the way across town to at least there check in with this spacious, cute cafe thing (where there'd been this girl, last time) - only to find it closed too ..
No?
nimh: sweet writing. Thanks. rjb
I love nimh's observations.
Hey rjb, you dont write too badly an observation yourself, Ive been missing yours!
I was on the south coast for the weekend, and came back to Sydney on Monday morning. I left at 6am, when it was still dark, and was driving north as the sun came up.
Just past the area where Wilso lives, there's a line of electricity pylons stretching in the distance east, going through to the steelworks. The sun was almost up, and the sky was a magic pink/red, and the pylons were all silhouettes. There was nothing else to be seen - pylons in an open field stretching into the distance.
Such an interesting, surreal view. It would have made a superb photo, but for 1) it was really, really cold outside, and 2) I was driving on the freeway. But a great sight, nonetheless.
speaking of surreal, Margo. I was quite certain that surrealjohnboy had vanished into that pylonistic sunset. <smile>
Made me smile to see D-Beck posting poetry. He's a newbie, and I hope that you all will encourage him and Dickster.
And to smiling Jacknimh, a wave towards the Netherlands.
Jack the Nimher (yes, he, the feared one) to you.
Margo, that sounds beautiful.
I certainly haven't stopped smiling. I just haven't had anything happen worth commenting on.
Until last night.
Surreal? True story.
Ben, one of my young employees, is volunteering this summer at an inner-city youth camp. He's teaching film-making to teenagers. One of the kids had arranged to do some filming last night but they had run into a snag with the transport of people and equipment. I offered to drive my company van in order to help out.
So off we go for a destination unknown to me.
The lady riding shotgun (ie in the passenger seat) is the mother of one of the kids. A black lady who drives a cab for a living. She keeps going a continuous chatter. Very amusing chatter.
In the back of the van (a cargo van with no seats) are four kids and Ben and their stuff.
We get to where we are supposed to be. I'm thinking that this was a project by a 15-year old black girl so it's probably going to be about dirt-farming or about church.
They meet the director of the hall and set up their cameras.
A half-hour later, the players come in. Men in coats and tails; women in beautiful dresses. It was the monthly meeting of the ballroom dancing club that was the subject of this film.
I don't know what the young film-maker has in mind, but it made me smile that she is into it. I wish her well.
A wonderful story, rjb! That is just great!
Thanks, Eva. Sorry about posting two stories so close together but...
My employees were busy today and I seemed a bit
redundant so I drove down to the glass place to pick up stuff my picture framers needed.
There was a bunch of construction work going on so I came back via a different route than I would normally take. I ended up on Rugby Avenue which is a residential street but with quite a bit of traffic. It was 10 am.
Two kids, perhaps 10 or 12 years old , had set up a table on the sidewalk and were enthusiastically flashing signs that read LEMONADE.
I mentioned this image to some of my customers who, like I, am older. They had lemonade stands as kids but couldn't conceive of doing it now. Liability insurance, one man mentioned. Two 10-year-olds standing on a sidewalk without an adult next to them, said another person. Too dangerous.
My smile at youthful exuberance gave way to a certain sadness. I wish I had taken the time to turn the truck around and gone back to buy a couple bucks worth of lemonade. -rjb-
I love this thread! It definitely makes me smile... My smile today came when I had to brush sand off my 5-yr.-old's feet. He's SO ticklish. He was laughing and wiggling. I couldn't help but laugh myself.
Actually, what made me smile yesterday was the fact that I got my new Epson 1280 printer to start working. It's a beaut~! Made my first 11X14 print. WOW! is all I can say.
Hehheh ... the anticipation grows. When I slam the frontdoor behind me, one of the two teenagers smoking their joints out front asks me: "Is Holland going to win, mister?". Sure, I say, and cycle down to the flowermarket, where one of the salesmen calls out to the guy in front of me, "What's it gonna be with the game tonight?". 2-1, they agree, for Holland of course. In the Blokkershop, the clerk wishes the customers "have a good game", and in the AH supermarket, they've exchanged the usual muzak with the schlager "Netherlands, Oh Netherlands", the national anthem and the Dutch version of "We Are The Champions".
Crazy country.
Meanwhile, on my way home I come upon a demonstration down by the canal - well, a gaggle of punks with police in front and in the back that is, and car drivers impatiently grumbling till they've passed by. Practically impossible to make out what they're for or against - so I crossed by till I find out that it was the plEUROp parade. "Pleurop" means "bugger off", xcept you can pun in the Euro there. All in all some sixty punks and squatters and the odd sympathiser, and it struck me (especially on a day like today - and, noteworthy, a week or two after the European election campaigns and accompanying publicity finished and dissapeared from interest), how completely ensconced in their own bubble of a community they are, just - no connect with surrounding reality. The odd feeling of course being strengthened by how it was a mystrery to by-standers what they were being for or against.
Bunch a punks out front, with little blue flags with hard-to-read texts, a guy with a sandwichboard saying "I want freedom for future generations"; then an open truck with two white kids (drummer and a guy with a microphone) improvising dubby reggea sounds and chants and political-sounding hip hop ("It's the dictatorship of security! The dictatorship of security!"); though the guy interrupted himself when they passed the hashboat, going, "Oh yeah, and I also want the coffeeshops to stay open!" (which got him the cheers from the gabbas on the steps there); then a coupla boomboxes on a carriage-bicycle playing loopy acid or trance, behind which another bunch of punks and crusties half-heartedly did the street rave thing. Then, another carriage bycicle with posters advertizing the "give away shop" in the Vredenburg squat (every tuesdayafternoon). Then the cops on horses.
<blinks>
Well, it was cute. Totally opaque, but cute, heh. Though they made me feel very, very yuppie suddenly, gawking there with my Crusts & Crumbs bag of expensive goodies. <grins>
ebeth is visiting with bailey and cleo. today we had some grilled WEISSWURST and their faces lit up when mrs h made them a nice dish of dogfood with chunks of weisswurst. of course, no matter how well one mixes the sausage into the (dry) dogfood, cleo and bailey manage to pick put the tidbits first; seems to make the process of filling their tummies more of a game for them. (they can expertly flick pieces of unwanted dogfood out of their feeding bowls - or even spit them out if they should have missed a piece inthe "sorting" process.) smart little buggers ! hbg
My train was on time today - a first for me! That definitely made me smile.
brimstone, Were your fellow passengers also smiling?
Nope, they were pretty grumpy!
if train was taking u to work then i'd probably be grumpy too.
after it hailed all morning(i was working) and the sun came that made me smile.
