A Day of Small Accomplishments

Never has so little been done for so long! Actually I can't say that to be entirely true. My Saturday plan to stay home and get projects done was only semi-accomplished. I did get a fair amount done, including moving my Christmas tree to the garage. The tree was in its box, just not put out to the garage yet. That's quite an accomplishment for those who have seen my Christmas tree easily become an Easter tree :-)

I went out to the Premium Outlets to do a bit of window shopping. I found an Anne Klein pocketbook that was marked down 75% and a Coach wallet for $29. Coach! It's cute and was nearly free. Anne Klein I always thought was an expensive brand, but it seems to have moderated substantially. I looked in Burberry and it's amazing what they can sell in there for $400 a pop. Like a $100 umbrella.. As if! My lovely tartan brolly from Boots in London has been with me nearly ten years now, still functioning and looking very smart as always. If Boots in London sounds posh to ye yankee ears, it's not. It's their equivalent of Walgreens or CVS.

I got home and managed to clean the kitchen, do more organizational spring cleaning type stuff. I managed to fit a nap in there and watch two movies.

First one was The Constant Gardener, with my sweetie Ralph Fiennes. He's not really my sweetie, because if he was I would not be blogging about him unless I was his tacky idiot sweetie. I met him in NYC years back when he was in Hamlet on Broadway. I got his autograph on my Playbill - which might be worth something since he ended up winning a Tony Award for that performance. Anyway, I've completely blown the sincerity of this movie by squeeing over the lead actor. This, in my opinion, was a very good movie in its own right but a movie I reckon everyone should see. I'm sure on some scale or another what happens in this film is true and continues to point out the attitude of other continents that Africa is a disposable population. If we worked half as hard to ensure the health and human rights of Africans as we do finding ways to be politically correct on how to refer to people of color, who knows what we could accomplish. Our focus is entirely in the wrong place. In some ways, I wonder if Africa could be lifted out of the 19th century if it would not bring along tolerance and respect for the descendants living in other countries and continents. Who knows, I've just woken up and my mind is foggy so I can hardly come up with any socioeconomic plan to tidy up race relations.

But it makes me thing about the time I had as a kid and a minority. When I was five years old, the Vietnam war had very recently ended. The parents of the soldiers who were sent to Vietnam had fought in WWII or Korea. Though the issue was with Japanese, Vietnamese and Koreans, all Asians were lumped into the slanty eyed gook category. It hasn't been until the late 1990's that Asians are viewed more as a part of society rather than an insane kamikaze race. I don't think it's coincidental to the relative stability and economic growth of Asia specifically to Japan. When I was five, anything made in Japan was an utter joke today it's quite the opposite. Russians living in America in the 1980's were heroes, brave defectors who shared our beliefs. Now Russians living in America are associated with organized crime and hookers or porn stars. Not coincidentally, that's the association with Russia and all the former Soviet provinces as well. So I do think that if Africa could stabilize, grow and become an economic force then the overall view of what Africans of any country can do would be greatly changed.

I might be drawing apples to kumquats and back to bananas here, but I do think our perception of people does have some correlation to how we few their ex-pats living here. Much like anyone who is British is automatically intelligent and well read. How not true!

Conversely, I finally saw Napoleon Dynamite. Omg, what a stupid movie. Made me remember High School pretty vividly though. I thought it was good but not a life changing cult movie like some have said it is.

So today I have a full day ahead. A guy is coming over around 9 to look at my car to buy it. I got my insurance payment on it down to $50/month which isn't bad at all. So if this guy doesn't buy it I'm going to pull it off the market and end up donating it towards the end of this year so I can get a tax write off. Then I'm off to Grandmother's house, I go, to visit with her and my Aunt & Uncle who are staying with her. We're just planning to do lunch and who knows. I need to be home by late afternoon so I can finish up my projects (namely, laundry!) and to see the Academy Awards tonight. I always enjoy watching that but the last few years I've fallen asleep in the last half hour.

And finally:

New addition to Murphy's Law: When deliberately clicking a link on a webpage, it takes hours to load. When accidentally clicking a link, it's a tenth of a second to load.