Tom & Alissa

It was kind of a weird weekend. I left work on Friday to buy tickets at the Angelika for Transsiberian, then spent a couple hours wading through a bunch of journal articles for my upcoming “midterm” paper (a bit of a misnomer, since it’s due two weeks before the final, but whatever). Thankfully, the Angelika’s cafe is large and has much seating, and I got an Orangina and sipped happily for a couple of hours.

The film itself wasn’t earth-shattering, but it was solid, and to our surprise, there was a Q&A afterwards with Brad Anderson, the writer & director. I am always annoyed at the end of Q&As in an relatively open forum. It’s not so much that people ask stupid questions as that they like to hear themselves talk. But, it was interesting. Anderson also directed The Machinist (also known as “the film for which Christian Bale lost an obscene amount of weight”) and he certainly has the whole indie director thing going on. He’s gotten a lot of funding from European countries - something worth exploring, I think. We headed to Angela’s afterward to hang out with some friends of hers who were visiting from Madrid (Spanish and Italian) and eat yummy pear mousse tart from Claude’s.

After a brunch on Saturday, I took off for midtown to interview an artist for an upcoming profile article, then went downtown to work on my midterm. The interview was interesting - her work is great - but the midterm was a dismal failure. I started writing one thing and wound up the afternoon by switching topics. It’s due a week from today, which would not normally be a problem, except there are many things going on this week and a wedding on Saturday. Oops. Wound up the day with the Zoae Series, a thoroughly enjoyable evening of music, performance poetry, and slightly sardonic art.

Yesterday I woke up feeling more exhausted than usual, and Tom decided we should stay home and relax, for which I was rather grateful. We made waffles and spent the day relaxing and resting, which is appropriate, I suppose, for the Sabbath. I’m very grateful; while I’m not exactly bouncing off the walls today, I don’t feel like crawling under my desk, and I’m accomplishing things. Hurrah!

We’ve yet to see “The Dark Knight”, and it’s looking like we may not this week either. On the bright side, that means we may get to see it at an IMAX theater when we do!