The Return of Indiana Jones

Spoiler Alert: I am going to give away what happens in the movie. If you don't want to know, stop reading now!

I saw 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' over the long holiday weekend (does attending blockbuster movies count as ways we celebrate Memorial Day?). I'd actually heard mostly good things about it before I went, with the negative being that the third act was a mess, so I was cautiously optimistic going.

I went into knowing very little about the movie except that Karen Allen was back and that Shia LeBeouf played Indy's son. After seeing it, I wondered how the movie would have been different without that relationship knowledge. It would have been nice to see it that way.

Overall it was an Indiana Jones movie, and a pretty good one at that. Part of it is the fact it is so well-made, in terms of the richness of Spielberg's world. The script, at least in terms of dialog, was also good quality, and it retained the charm of the first and third (I loathe the second in the series, largely because the screeching of the now Mrs. Spielberg overwhelmed any charms it had).

The story, of course, has issues (I won't even bother going into everything wrong the nuclear blast or vine-swinging monkey scenes). The double-crossing friend of Indy's has an appetite for money and riches that should have set alarm bells off about his trustworthiness years ago. The main villain is inexplicably disintegrated during the movie's climax, evoking the famous face-melting scene of the first movie. The CIA men who with McCarthy-esque zeal are pursuing Indy as unAmerican at the beginning of the movie have vanished by its end with not even a throw away line to explain their evaporation or Indy's return to his university; certainly what he accomplished in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull wasn't anything to save him from the accusations of being unAmerican (although the main villain and the traitor were annihilated, but not in a "here are the bodies" sort of way).

Of course, the flying saucer just made me feel like Spielberg was tying together his legacies. At least there was no 'Close Encounters' in the soundtrack. The third act wasn't quite the mess I'd been warned against, but it definitely wasn't as tight as the rest of the movie. And really, do pan-dimensional beings need a flying saucer? I wouldn't think so, but where's Douglas Adams when you need him?

Memorial Day

I read something the other day about one of the first Memorial Days happening in the years following the Civil War with the decoration of Union and Confederate soldiers' graves. I wanted to know more about the history of the day, so I checked out Wikipedia.

I was surprised to learn that the holiday was known as Decoration Day until officially changed in 1967, that it was celebrated on May 30th (since that was not an anniversary of a Civil War battle) until 1969 when the holiday was moved to create a 3-day weekend, and that that change has opponents who believe it "has undermined the very meaning of the day".

Hard to dispute that, given I was unaware of its history and have only celebrated it by not working and maybe doing some sort of barbecue. It's mostly known as the start of summer, despite the fact that, even here in Seattle, summer has already arrived.

I'm not sure what we can do to change how we celebrate this holiday. Given that our country is currently fighting in several countries around the world, with hundreds of soldiers dying in active service every year, it seems like we should be doing more. Of course, it would make more sense to me to honor those still serving our country, and by doing something more than the recent trend to say it with automotive decorations.

My friend Dan sent me a URL awhile ago, http://www.letssaythanks.com/Home1280.html. It's a site that allows you to send messages to those serving out country today. Maybe in this electronic age, reaching out one on one is more meaningful than the parades or wreath-layings of the past.

Flamingos, finally!

Today the Woodland Park Zoo had its members preview of the new flamingo exhibit, the ads for which are all over town. I never quite managed to ask for the morning off to go first thing and then meetings were scheduled. Fortunately, I was able to run out over the lunch hour to go see them.

I was expecting the flamingos to be indoors, enjoying tropical warmth and humidity. Instead, they were outdoors, huddled together, in the cool grayness (while Seattle had a record-breaking 88 degree day last Saturday, it's back down 60 or so of late).

The flamingos are Chilean flamingos, which live from Chile's coastal salt marshes to high altitude salt lakes up to 14,000 feet. Despite this less-than-tropical range, the flock today looked cold and a little pissed. They definitely seemed cranky, even going after each other now and then. I took a number of pictures, working especially hard to get a shot of their black under feathers. The results made me realize that great wildlife photography (or maybe even great photography in general) is bringing order (or meaning) out of chaos. Cranky flamingos have no interest in order.

The Breakup

I figure since it has been 8 weeks since the breakup I should say a little more about it.

The first thing is that for the first five+ weeks, I couldn't even talk about it without crying, which meant I didn't talk about it very much, or at least with very many people. I'm still not really sure why I fell apart like that. I don't recall it being so bad with other relationships, and I felt like intellectually I understood this one and could accept it.

Daniel and I broke up because we don't want the same things right now. Maybe I cried so much because it is such a hard reality to face, to accept. I'm ready to settle down, to be creating a life and maybe a family together with someone. Daniel is ready to do his self-exploration, now that he is done with school (again) and has a decently-paying job that allows him to explore interests he's not been able to before. He's also not sure about children, and decided long ago not to pass on his own genes.

So, we're trying to build a new relationship as friends. It's hard though since our feelings for each other haven't really changed.

Bowie

There was a trivia question on the radio the other day: What band gets its name from a 1970-something (they gave the actual year) David Bowie song? The answer was the kooks, and it made me miss my old, home-made David Bowie tape and think that I should buy some Bowie. I looked in the CD section of Fred Meyer Thursday and there were collections that could work, but I figured I'd look around. It was only later that I remembered that I do have a Bowie CD with many of those songs: Changes. I think it was one of my original CD purchases, when we went to Tower after a trip to Video Only where I bought a television (which I just replaced), VCR, CD player (long dead), receiver, and speakers. I'm listening to Changes as I write. I should dig out the tape, though, because I know it had some other songs, like Kooks, that I'd like to hear again.

Perspective

Today begins my fourth week in our new building (although only my 13th day working). It's given me a very different perspective on many things (in addition to those provided by my recent break up). Here's a picture I took the Friday before my day 1 from my window.

Since I moved closer to work back at the beginning of 2007, my daily world got much smaller. Work and boyfriend went from being 12+ miles to 1.7 and 2.6 miles away, respectively. I no longer saw downtown on a regular basis, so I'm glad to have that back with the new building.

The other perspective the new building offers is the cubicle environment. My department is used to offices, even if the doors and/or walls are sometimes made of glass. Space was at a premium in our old building, so I never had my own office with this department, but I was in a space where the door could be closed when needed.

One of my coworkers quoted another coworker as saying our new building offers isolation without privacy. It's really weird. Sometimes it feels like a ghost town, you hardly see anyone around, much less so than with the old building, but you can hear them--usually on the phone but I had to ask one of our student workers to turn down his headphones the other day.

And, while my cube is not small or cramped, it does lack a sense of coziness. It seems somehow sterile and cold. The one plant I inherited from my old office mate has already succumb to the new environment. It looked green and fine, but it had gotten totally dried out, maybe even the first weekend it was in the building since the cooling system wasn't on and I heard from those setting up our computers that it had gotten into the 90's in the building (and Daniel had put it by the window and I forgot to water it).

Writing this, it seems that the outer world has gotten closer but my coworkers have gotten farther away, even though many of us are in the same building for the first time ever. The new culture needs work, and hopefully my department's Community Building Committee (which I am a member of) can help.

Mushroom Mania

It's a lovely day in Seattle: near 70 and sunny. I'd planned to go to Mushroom Mania at the Burke Museum today and decided I might as well walk.

Mushroom mania is put on by the Puget Sound Mycological Society and deals with how fungi fit into the ecosystem, as well as cultivating and cooking mushrooms. I learned that plants and fungi have a symbiotic relationship that benefits the plants tremendously. I also learned that mushrooms are the reproductive organs of certain fungi, but I guess eating them is no different than eating fruit.

Walking home, it seemed cooler but I suspect it was just that the wind had picked up. I'd zipped up my light-weight fleece jacket. As I crossed 15th at 45th, some male yelled out his car window that he liked my nipples. I ignored him. It's not behavior to be encouraged; his opinion or even noticing of my nipples is unimportant.

Fortune Cookies

I've had Chinese food twice in the past couple of days (both times it was hand-shaved spicy noodles, although the two dishes themselves were quite different), and neither of my fortune cookie's fortunes was very satisfactory. The first was the typical descriptive type found too often these days:

You have a wise spirit, an advanced intellect and faith in human nature.

I recall the fortunes used to be more mysterious and less fawning. Today's was more of a fortune, but annoyingly uncertain in its prediction:

You have an ambitious nature and may make a name for yourself.

It's disappointing to me that fortune cookie fortunes have lost the charm they held when I was younger. Not even adding "in bed" helps these out. Well, maybe on the second one.

Flamingo Failure

A year ago, I got Daniel and I a membership to the Woodland Park Zoo. The membership includes a quarterly magazine, that neither of us read until the Spring 2008 issue, which included an announcement of the Membership Day for the new Chilean flamingo exhibit on May 1st. We'd agreed to go at that time, although in planning our trip to Texas, it wound up that I would have still be in Texas today. But then we had our break up and I was no longer going to Texas. I kept today and tomorrow off from work, in part to be able to go to the flamingo exhibit opening.

Thus, I was bummed when I went online yesterday and discovered the event had been moved to the 23rd (!), although it hardly stood in the way of my enjoying my day off.

I'm realizing that I have been approaching alone time differently as a part of a couple than I had previously. Today, was old-school alone time: I took myself out to breakfast at the Original Pancake House (amazing pumpkin pancakes, especially when covered in their tropical syrup) and read a book, I ran errands and went shopping; it was a good day.