I slept until 11:30 this morning, which is about four hours later than I usually sleep on the weekends. I attributed that to staying up late last night to watch the DVD of 28 Days Later... (great film, but more creepy than terrifying) and the Pilsner Urquell I drank while watching it.

We went to The Neptune this afternoon to see Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (I LOVED this film, and so did Phillip). When we got to the theater, I had to pee. Then, partway into the film, I had to pee again. Then, at the very end, I had to pee again. This is very unusual behavior for me - even with a large Coke, I pee before a movie, and I'm fine until we get home.

As we walked from the theater back to our car, Phillip and I talked about the film, and our favorite scenes. I had trouble putting my opinions into words, which I attributed to the fact that we'd just seen a very original, genre-bending film.

On the drive home, Phillip asked about the subtitle, "The 4th film by Quentin Tarantino." What were the other three? Answer: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown. I told Phillip about a reference in Pulp Fiction to Kill Bill, and I suddenly had trouble remembering the names Pulp Fiction, Uma Thurman, and John Travolta. I wondered what was going on with me. Sure, I had had trouble coming up with Jackie Brown, but that was understandable. It was the film itself I couldn't come up with - and I had never seen the film. But it was names I was blanking out on - and I had just said "Pulp Fiction" minutes earlier.

On the ride up the elevator, I suddenly felt extremely exhausted. My whole body felt weak and rubbery. I went right to bed and slept for three hours. I dreamt that I was writing a post for this blog. I was making an analogy to watching a documentary. I needed an exotic place for the documentary to be about, so I closed my eyes and put my finger on a wall map. I found a little village on the "sole" of Italy.

I'm still very, very tired. I remember now that I've been tired since Thursday - I fell sound asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow after Thursday night playtime. I'm having trouble typing this post. I re-read what I've written, find typos, fix them, and discover that I've replaced typos with bigger typos. I don't know if I'm making sense.

From the Why didn't I think of this earlier? department: I've been getting emails lately from Lark In The Morning about specials they're having. So I went to their site last night to see if they had any djembe books on sale. They had one - it was one I'd seen on African Drum Beat - but it wasn't on sale. I didn't want to buy it until I can see more of it. Then it occured to me to check the Seattle Public Library. Sure enough, there it was. I put it on hold.

Every once in a while, the thought crosses my mind that an iPod (or some similar MP3 player) would be fun to have. I think about it at times like this morning when, riding in with Phillip, David Gray's "Babylon" comes on the radio - or when we're driving home from the ocean along Highway 101, and I wish I had a couple of hours of steady music to drive to.

But then I think about the reality of the setup. The iPod holds something like 100,000 songs. Great. Then the iPod breaks and I've lost my entire music collection. Imagine that. My stereo breaks and every CD I own vanishes. My bookshelf cracks and all my books suddenly turn to dust. There are CDs and cassettes I've owned that seemed terrific at the time, but then one day I listen to them and wonder what I was thinking. They get filed away and lost. Then they just take up space. With an MP3, I can erase it and its gone. Cool! Then a couple of years later, I found some lost CD and listen to it, and I discover it all over again - it may even sound good again. But the MP3 is still erased forever.

The last word at Blogstop this morning was Sacramento, and I posted South American communists rode around my estate, needing to obey. I wasn't crazy about the last part of my post, but I couldn't think of a better "O" word. Later, Phillip suggested organize. I wish I'd thought of that. It would have made much more sense.

The Ford Escape Hybrid arrives next year. I look at this news like I'd react to McDonald's selling vegan burgers. I like that an American car company is trying out a gas/electric hybrid model. I wish it wasn't an SUV, but I appreciate that Ford is offering a Super Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle (and does it say it's also a Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle? I'm not sure) in a popular model. I like that it's following the Toyota technology - a true hybrid vehicle - instead of the Honda technology - a gasoline car with an electric motor to assist - but I think it's odd that, according to the web site, the Escape's gasoline engine will always start when the ignition key is turned, and then shut off.

Squirrel, what was so interesting under the dirt this morning? There must have been an extra special prize buried there. Two peanuts landed right next to you, and you didn't even flinch. You just kept digging and digging like a mad mammal.

I went over to Nowhere Girl tonight to check for updates. I didn't have much hope for finding the next chapter up - it hasn't been updated since I discovered it, and I didn't discover it when it was new. What I found was worse than I was expecting. The updates have been "suspended indefinitely." The author wrote that she might start working on it again in Spring 2004. It was going so good.

There are currently 34 members of Blogstop. Fourteen members joined after I did, and seven joined after Phillip. I've been feeling today that the site has become overcrowded. Twice today, I checked the site and found over a dozen consecutive entries deleted. (I mean a different set of deletions each time.) I'd never seen so many deletions before. What seems to be happening is that with so many members posting, the administrators can't catch the errors fast enough. It's getting tough for me to keep up. I'm wondering if this game is over for me.

Phillip corrected me this morning: My coffee maker is not older than our relationship. He says he helped me pick that coffee maker out at The Bon Marché. The more I think about, the more I believe I remember that.

We rented two great DVDs this weekend.

I was prepared to write a comparison of The Italian Job to the original, but what I discovered is that the new version is not actually a remake. It's more of an homage to the original. There are gold bars, an armored car, a traffic jam, and three Minis, but other than that and the title, there isn't much in common between the two movies. The stories are quite different. Phillip made an observation that I agree with. He said the new version is more like a sequel than anything else. The original ended with an "Italian job" and the getaway bus hanging over a cliff. This new version begins with an "Italian job" and the getaway bus over a cliff, and takes off from there. It would be tough to compare these two different movies. (Truth be told, I'm not wild about the original, except for the Mini chase at the end. The rest of the movie is too slow moving, and not as funny as I suspect it wants to be.) I love the new Mini, by the way - I love small cars. If it weren't for the Prius, there would be a Mini in our parking stall right now.

Then there was Bend It Like Beckham, a film I enjoyed a whole lot. This film is proof that great writing and strong character development can overcome a familiar plot (girl struggles to follow her dream despite her strict parents' objections). I cared a lot for all the characters, and understood each of their viewpoints.