I had a fantastic, laid-back, entertaining, productive, and slothful day all at once. I actually got up relatively early for an unemployed person on a Sunday, and made it down to Palo Alto by eleven a.m., where I spent a couple of hours working at my formerly-favorite tea place (Tea Time in Palo Alto). I say formerly-favorite because I began to doubt why I ever loved it; I've now had two bad experiences there, and given that I'm moving to the city, there's no reason why I would go back. My first bad experience was months ago, when I had just sat down with a whole pot of tea when the owner rather rudely informed me that I would have to leave because they were booked for a private party later in the afternoon. Then today, I'd been there for awhile, using the internet for which I had been given their access code, when the internet died. The owner was rather bitterly complaining about how there were always too many people using the internet and that it prevented her from working on her computer. Rather than wait to see how this resolved, I cleared out and went to Borders instead, but given that I am not a fan of the staff, the service is slow, and the food is ridiculously overpriced, I will go to other places instead.
But I was productive while I was there -- I made it through some research questions on forms of address and certain points about the Napoleonic Wars, so I was happy with that. At Borders, I bought a comprehensive history of 19th century Britain, a book of maps of London for the past few centuries, Suze Orman's book on personal finance for women, and 'Whitney, My Love,' a romance novel by Judith McNaught that Priyanka rather forcefully recommended to me. I read the intro to the history book at Starbucks, and am looking forward to delving into it more over the next few days.
I met Marco (Claude's brother) at the movie theatre for an afternoon showing of 'The Dark Knight'. I have to say that I loved it -- I thought that it was just a tad too long, but Heath Ledger's performance was truly outstanding, and I think he would have been up for an Oscar for it even if the Oscar campaign wasn't being driven by all the nostalgia over giving him a posthumous Oscar. I'm also a big fan of Christian Bale (in the 'lusting after' sense, not in the 'admiring of his work' sense), so that was another plus. That's true of Aaron Eckhart too, for that matter, although not quite as lustily as Christian Bale. And I thought the storyline was unexpectedly dark and thought-provoking, so it exceeded my expectations. But, I did laugh at the waste of advertising dollars when they actually showed a trailer for 'The Dark Knight' in the promo clips leading up to the actual pre-movie trailers. And the trailers got me excited for all sorts of ridiculous action movies coming out in the next year -- 'Quantum of Solace' is going to be great, and I'm strangely excited about the third 'Mummy' movie. Now if I can just find new friends who weren't burned by 'King Arthur' or any of my other movie fiascos....
After the movie, I grabbed a burrito, came back to dirty Berkeley (sssss), and proceeded to read all of 'Whitney, My Love', which is why I'm blogging after my parents have probably awoken in the central time zone. It was pretty good, although I found out after purchasing that this is a republished version of the original 1980s novel, and the author took the opportunity to 'enhance' the ending, which I felt was similar to the ending of the final 'Lord of the Rings' movie -- you know they all live happily ever after, but it just drags on, and on, and on, with small skirmishes well past the point where you know everything is fine. However, I liked the characters, and it was entertaining to go back in time to the 1980s/early 1990s-style romances, which is what I first started reading; back when men were men, women were women, and there were a lot of almost-beatings and near-rapes on their paths to happiness.
Seriously, the change in romance novel structure and conventions has been quite interesting over the past twenty years; almost all of the 1980s novels were about abductions, forced marriages, and very dominant alpha-male heroes set in poorly-researched 'historical' settings, often medieval castles, Viking strongholds, pirate ships, or exotic Arab harems. By comparison, the historical novels of the 2000s have been primarily lighter-hearted society farces, and the settings themselves are more accurate, but the characters in them are complete anachronisms -- sensitive politically-correct heroes and headstrong, independent heroines who are thoroughly modern, but dropped into a Regency setting in which the intricacies of the historical setting merely serve as luscious backdrop. My conflict-avoidant self prefers the banter of the more recent books, since the constant fighting in the 1980s romances is at odds with my passive-aggressive nature and tends to give me a headache, but I'd forgotten how much fun it is to read a knock-down, drag-out battle of the wills between two over-the-top characters. 'Whitney, My Love' has that in spades, even if it could have ended about a hundred pages earlier. I was even able to get over the fact that the hero's name was Clayton, which is the same name that one of my high school classmates had; the Clayton I've known since kindergarten is a funny guy, but he's about as far from the arrogant Duke of Westmoreland as you can get.
Now, though, it's almost four a.m., and I should really go to bed if I hope to get anything done tomorrow!
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