Love, As Always, Pete

The Weekly Letters, by A. Pedersen Wood

December 4, 2002

Dear Everyone:

My printer chose this evening to decide that it doesn’t like the taste of the new self-sealing envelopes (but which tasted just fine last week), so a lot of Letter-writing time has been wasted on un-jamming the printer.  Such is life.

Monday night, “Jeannie’s” very old, but much loved cat, Monroe came to stay with me.  Last night, I drove “Jeannie” and “Marshall” to a hotel near the San Francisco airport as their flight to New York (and on to Rome) was scheduled to depart at 8:00 this morning.  I frankly balked at the idea of taking them to the airport at 5:00 in the morning.  I even offered to pay for the hotel room.  But the most it’s going to cost me is gas money and some cat food.

Monroe has already settled in.  She has her favorite place:  The futon in the guest room / home office.  The futon is low to the floor, thus making it easy for very old kitty to get up on it.  And it has a down comforter thrown on it that makes a cozy nest.

Her second favorite place is the exact geographical center of my bed.  This is usually her favorite place at night.  However, she beats a hasty retreat when the alarm goes off in the morning.

In other news…

Tomorrow is our company “End of the Year Celebration”.  This used to be called the “Christmas Party”, but that no longer “values diversity”.  Somebody finally figured out that not everyone observes Christmas.  I remember years ago when a guy in our office always declined to attend because his religious affiliation didn’t celebrate any holidays.  He preferred to leave at the same time as everyone else in the office on the day of the Luncheon, but just not come to the lunch.

Then one year some particularly Scrooge-ish manager proclaimed that anyone who didn’t come for the free lunch had to stay and work the rest of the day.  So it’s probably better that the “End of the Year Celebration” doesn’t honor Christmas, Hanukkah, or Druid’s Rites.  It’s just a coincidence that it happens around the same time.

In the meantime, they’ve asked everyone to bring a “Toys for Tots” toy, to be given out at Christmas, Hanukkah, Druid’s Rites or whatever.  So I picked up something at the store last week.  It’s an Elmo guitar that plays three different songs and is guaranteed to drive some three-year-old’s mother over the edge in time for Christmas (or Hanukkah, or Druid’s Rites) Dinner.

But I also read about some of the toy drives that really need things for the older kids.  They can always get enough teddy bears for the little ones.  But a ten-year-old probably doesn’t want a teddy bear.  So I stopped at a bookstore, one of the national chains, and got a couple of gift cards to put into the bin as well.

On to movies…

“Jeannie’s” been so busy working lately that I decided to go by myself (having some free time between earthquakes last week) and see Bowling for Columbine.  This is a documentary written, produced by, and starring Michael Moore.  He starts out by wondering why the two teenagers who shot up Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado spent that morning at a bowling alley.

He soon moves on to why there are so many guns in the United States compared to other countries.  It’s not that he has any real answers, but he asks some very thought-provoking questions.  And he doesn’t flinch at walking up to the front door of the current president of the National Rifle Association, Charlton Heston, and basically ambushing him.

Like I said:  Not a lot of answers, but some darned good questions.  Worth taking a look at.

For Thanksgiving, I got tickets for “Jeannie” and me to see Treasure Planet at the new Imax theater in Dublin.  I’d never been to an Imax theater and was curious to see what it was about.  And the critic who reviewed the movie recommended seeing it in an Imax, if possible.  I also figured that the cost of the tickets would deter some people from wasting the money on really small children.  I was wrong on that score.

The story is the same one it’s always been since Robert Louis Stevenson wrote it.  The folks at Disney just “updated” it to outer space.  They also appear to have realized that they no longer have the market cornered in animation and went all out on this one.  An Imax screen is simply a really, really large screen.  So you tend to feel like you’re right in the middle of things.

No annoying songs, the usual celebrity voices (Patrick McGoohan, Emma Thompson, Roscoe Lee Brown, etc.), and a jolly good plot.  “Jeannie” still thinks she doesn’t like animated movies.  Except for Monsters, Inc., of course.

After the movie, having agreed that we weren’t going to do the traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings, “Jeannie” decided that she did want to have turkey after all.  So we stopped at the grocery store to get some sliced turkey from the deli counter (sort of skipping the dinner and going straight for “leftover” sandwiches), but by that time she’d changed her mind again.  So we ended up at my place, watching some of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon on TV and eating the traditional Thanksgiving French Dip Sandwiches with Potato Chips.

To each his own…

Love, as always,

 

Pete

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