Tom, who isn’t feeling well, got home relatively early last night - before me - and had to be back at work at 3am this morning, and he had gone to bed early, so when I came home I just turned on a tiny strand of twinkly Christmas lights, put some of the barbecue chicken from the Crock-Pot in a bowl and ripped off a piece of a baguette, and watched Masculin feminin on my laptop, which I thoroughly enjoyed (plus, I was like, “Hey! That’s the kid from 400 Blows!” and felt all smart and savvy). Am obviously a huge sucker for the French New Wave. Thank God that I live in New York, where you can still regularly see Truffaut and Godard on the big screen.
Also, the chicken was yummy, if a tiny bit overcooked. It was dark meat, though, so it worked out fine.
Tonight I am heading to a screening of Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park. My Van Sant watchage is relatively low, but I’ll remedy that before writing the review.
My last grad school recommendation came in this morning, after a lot of finagling and biting of nails. One huge load off my shoulders. Also, after reading the HR guide, it appears that the tuition for my first semester of class may not be counted as taxable income, which would make me very happy. (Tuition is entirely tax-free if the class relates to your job, but in my case, that’s unlikely.)
Was excited to unexpectedly see a mention of our friend Danai’s 2005 play in this New York magazine article this morning. I usually read New York while I’m doing other things in the morning. And enjoyed this short piece on Ellen Page, star of the upcoming Juno, which I am dying to see. She sounds like the kind of actress I can admire.
I made a scrumptious curry turkey sandwich on a baguette for lunch this morning before I left for work. Very easy and very delicious. The recipe is from the Chocolate & Zucchini recipe book (see the equally scrumptious blog here) that my in-laws sent me for my birthday. It still sounds weird to say that I have in-laws, even after more than a year.
Anyhow. Highly recommended, especially if you’re kind of like me and obsessed with simple French food.
Along with plenty of French books, Laura gave me Coralie Clement’s CD Salle Des Pas Perdus (something like “Room of Lost Steps”), which I am greatly enjoying. Turns out French jazz is precisely what I need to move happily through my workday. Who knew?
Tom came home last night with lots of stories about the paparazzi in Central Park which he got to ward off with other production people as Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz shot some scene involving rolling in the grass. I hope I’m allowed to talk about that here. Anyhow, doesn’t that just sound like a peachy way to spend your day? Fighting paparazzi? Good times.
Tonight’s my first copy-editing class at NYU (continuing ed). I really don’t know what’s going to be covered, which is delightful. Ten weeks sounds like an enormous amount of time to spend on copy editing, which pretty much proves that I am a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants editor, and it’s probably amazing that I even do it for a living now. But! This will make me better at it, and possibly bring in more work, which is always good.
Also, tonight, we’re planning to go see Darjeeling Limited. Will let you know how that goes.
Today I feel like a real domestic goddess or something like that; I managed to go buy a week’s worth of groceries (including veggies and meat), make a salad for my lunch, run a mile and a half, shower, and eat breakfast all before I left for work. It helps that the coop is half a block away. :)
We saw the French new wave classic The 400 Blows last night at Film Forum. I enjoyed it, and Tom was just glad to have seen the whole thing, since he’d seen pieces in film school but never the whole thing altogether. Crazy that it was so revolutionary in its time.
Tom got a call last night to work on the Ashton Kutcher/Queen Latifah/Rip Torn film that’s been shooting all over town since August, so that’s where he is today. We were trying to figure out how big the production is. Actually, last week, I was coming back from lunch and ran into a huge production right outside my building, on Astor Place. They had a crane over the 6 train stop outside my Starbucks. That subway stop shows up in a lot of films and TV shows (including the Office Season 3 finale, which had to be mostly shot right outside my building) because the sidewalk is pretty wide around it and they don’t have to shut down any streets to shoot.
I am ideally picking up many and varied French materials from my French-major friend Laura tonight when I’m at their apartment for small group. I also picked up a couple sets of flashcards that came pre-punched and ring-bound when we were at Messiah last weekend to use for French vocabulary. I don’t have any more time to take French classes, but I figure if I start early, I may have a chance at fluency by the time I’m a second-year Ph.D. candidate. (Heh heh heh.)