Another Weekend Whizzes By

The weekend had it's ups & downs. The smoothie and soup project is proving more difficult than I expected ... there seems to be an awful lot of preparation before you get to actually blend a soup. Pout.

Friday night Varen & I got Ghazal's takeout and watched more House ... whatever will we watch once Season 2 is done? Saturday morning was fairly lazy and after he made me lovely French Toast for breakfast we watched Memento on dvd (we'd started the night before but quickly fallen asleep ... a little too much House, I guess)

Memento is a neo-noir–psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on his brother Jonathan's short story "Memento Mori". The film stars Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, a former insurance fraud investigator hunting for his wife's murderer. During the attack on his wife, Leonard suffered severe head trauma and lost the ability to make new memories. To cope with his condition, he keeps a collection of notes, photographs, and tattoos to remind himself of people, places, and events he cannot remember. He is aided in his investigation by "Teddy" (Joe Pantoliano) and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), neither of whom Leonard can trust.

I loved this movie when I saw it originally on big-screen back in the day. Luckily it's a complicated enough movie that a second viewing is not out of the question, and best of all, I watched it so long ago that I couldn't even spoil the ending for myself :)

Then we went out and bought more fish ... well, 2 new koi for me. I decided the other's needed some friends and the bowl is certainly big enough. Unfortunately one has gone the way of the toilet already :( Varen got very fancy and got some new fish and filters, pumps, lights and other fish-tank paraphernalia. After that, I went home to introduce the new additions and begin my smoothie experimentation.

That evening Varen had booked our dinner at a new restaurant, The Singing Fig. The restaurant was nice, side from the paintings hung thru-out. Now I really don't mind the "all the art you see is for sale" concept in a restaurant, I actually usually quite like it. But the art was particularly random and hung willy-nilly on every available wall-space. Which leaves an almost cozy venue feeling cluttered. The food was lovely, I chose my 2 dishes from the specials menu. And then there was the opera. Now I do enjoy a little live entertainment ... but opera? Perhaps we should've read a little more into the "singing" bit of the Singing Fig? It was a little loud but impressive, none the less, I guess ... apparently that sort of thing takes training. At least they ended with a song from my fav, Phantom :)

Then on Sunday, after more House, we went and lazed at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens for the afternoon. I love that place, it's so relaxing, if you can get past all the screeching kids ;) And then we dashed off to Rosebank to watch Stranger than Fiction.

Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is a droll auditor in an unnamed city (actually Chicago) for the Internal Revenue Service who is awakened alone each morning by his Timex T56371 watch. He eats alone, counts the number of steps he walks for fun, focuses on ways to save time tying his tie, and brushes his teeth exactly 76 times (38 vertical strokes, 38 horizontal). One day, Harold begins to hear the voice of a British woman (Emma Thompson), describing his thoughts and actions in real-time as if he were a character in a book. Harold attempts to communicate with the speaker, but soon realizes the voice does not know that he can hear it. His bewilderment soon turns to anxiety when the voice narrates that his watch has set in motion a series of events that will result in his imminent death.

I thought it was fab. I enjoyed it more that The Truman Show - which it has regularly been compared with. I thought it was more like Kaufman's Adaptation, which I enjoyed immensely and far more than Being John Malkovich.

And that was pretty much the weekend, without all the emotional up & down removed.

I spent some time going thru pictures that I need to get printed ... from my holiday in Egypt with Bean last June. And then I ended up upset and angry with him. And then there is the bizarre state of my relationship with Varen right now. We seem to have some lovely moments when it's an absolute pleasure to be around each other and then there are moments when we just irritate each other and get annoyed and frustrated.

I'm not too sure what will happen there ... I guess that's the nature of things. Everyday we both get to make a choice about whether we want to keep doing this or not. I feel like a lot of it is because when you break up with someone, you aren't supposed to start dating someone else quite so quickly after. I don't know if everyone is like me, but after a break-up I tend to go on a bit of an overly zealous independent journey. One where you need to re-affirm who you are by yourself and without the ex. One where you remind yourself why you like who you are and try all those things you always wanted to do, but never had the time while you were embroiled in a relationship. And I certainly don't have the time right now either ... I guess I end up feeling a little trapped. And I react pretty much how all trapped things react ... picture trying to put a cat in a bucket of water ;) I know this isn't easy for Varen and at the moment he's choosing to put up with a far amount of emotional nonsense. But it doesn't make for a very stable or relaxed relationship ... except in those in-between good moments :)

And now you have the up-and-down bit of the story too.