You've Got Mail

I watched You've Got Mail shortly before leaving for London, and when I saw that it was on TV tonight I had to watch it again. Sometimes you find that something in a book or a movie just somehow resonates with you (like Neil Gaiman poem I keep plugging) and this movie has three of those. Plus, it's just a really romantic movie.

The one is where she decides to close her bookstore, and her friend says to her that it's the brave to do. "You're imaging that your life could be different", and that's what I'm trying to accomplish by having moved to London. Something that was totally unlike me to do, and I don't think anyone believed that I actually would, until I did.

The second is when she and her boyfriend realise that they don't love each other. He's interested in another woman, and he says to her, what about you? Is there someone else? And she thinks, and says, "No. No, but there's the dream of someone else".

The third, I forget the exact phrasing, but she says something like, people always say that change is good, but what they really mean is that something that you didn't want to happen has happened. I'm not big on change, but one thing I've learned is that change is only bad when everything's good. When things aren't good, change can only make things better. When things are good, change can only make them worse. The difficult bit is when some things are good, but some things could do with improvement; how do you restrict change to the bad bits and keep the good bits stable?

Winnie The Pooh in New York

Some of you might know that I'm fairly into Winnie the Pooh - I've had my Pooh Quotes and Pooh's Poetry Corner sites up for about, oh, almost 10 years now!, and when I came to London in 2000 I made sure I went out to Pooh Country and played Pooh Sticks on the original bridge. And I'm planning to go back sometime soon, now that I'm actually living here in London.

But first, I'm going to New York next weekend. And something that I knew but had forgotten until I started looking for things to in New York over my one free weekend, is that the original toys are over there in the New York Public Library! So of course now my mission number 1 is to go and visit them and hopefully take some photos. Here's a photo of them from my Pooh Quotes page:
Even though I don't really maintain the sites any more, it'd be really nice to be able to put up my own photos of the toys. In fact, I could probably put up some photos of the Pooh Sticks bridge too, if I went and took some... hmmm :-)

I always thought it was a bit odd that the toys were in New York rather than Britain. Reading a bit on the net, I came up with some interesting things. From the wikipedia page (near the bottom), "Many people in Britain feel strongly that this crucial part of Britain's cultural heritage should be repatriated. There are strong comparisons between the toys and the Elgin Marbles and the matter was raised in Parliament as recently as 1998". I should think so! But the Americans don't seem to think so: "the response from the Big Apple to Mrs Dunwoody's request was: "Get stuffed!""

So that's my first mission in New York (apart from seeing the Statue of Liberty, and all that, but my hotel is right around there so I don't think I'll be able to miss it). My second mission is to somewhere that I barely realised was a real place, never mind in New York: Coney Island! I've read so many fantasy stories set there, that it'll be relally cool to see it in person. I imagine it as a run-down, seedy kind of amusement park, with bendy mirrors and giant clown faces, a big wheel, lots of candy floss and hotdogs, and freaky sideshows. Very much a past it's time, nostalgic for a different era sort of place. Hopefully it's maintained some of that character, and hasn't been remade into a slick disneyfied theme park. But I'm really excited about going. And even it isn't anything like I imagined, I'm way overdue for a rollercoaster ride! I went on a bunch of really cool rides in Florida (actually, Georgia - we went to Wild Adventures, and I went on the Double Shot and almost all the roller coasters, totally amazing myself), but I haven't been on any in the year and a half or so since, and I'm starting to go into withdrawal.

So it should be an awesome trip. I'll try to post some photos when I get back, but it's impossible to post them all, and very difficult to select just a few!

Four Second Fury

I came across this really great game called Four Second Fury - it's made up of a bunch of little games, each of which lasts 4 seconds (which fits my attention span for games). Some are crazy - you have to smash 8 little people with a fly swatter; some are easy - you have to not press the arrow keys or space bar; but they're all fun. I've managed to get up to 98 seconds so far, which probably isn't much but I'm proud of it :-) And because each game only lasts 4 seconds, you spend an amazingly long time playing (the 'just one more!' effect really kicks in).

Personal Ramblings

This is pretty much a content-free post - I'm having one of those days where I feel vaguely lonely, and feel like talking to people, but don't really have anything to say. So I'm basically going to ramble on here, talking to myself.

Actually, I have a 75% finished post on some apps that I want to write, which I started days ago and probably should finish off before I do another post, but I'm too lazy (that one actually requires some thought).

Went to watch MI: 3 with Dave and some of his friends last night - it's a really cool movie :-) And of course, any movie with Tom Cruise in it is worth watching... it was a good evening, got home about 1:30, which combined with an evening out for dinner on Thursday night, left me really tired today. Plus, I'm not really used to this whole concept of getting up early and going to work every single day :-(

Went to movies last Friday with Dave as well - we watched Scary Movie 4, which was actually quite funny, although in that really stupid way that you've come to expect from Scary Movie. Then last Saturday (or was it Sunday? I lose track of the days) I went wandering around London - did a loop from Charing Cross to Trafalgar Square, the Horse Guards Parade Ground, St James Park, Buckingham Palace, up to Picadilly, down Regent Street, Oxford Street, then down Charing Cross road to Leicester Square and back down to Charing Cross. It was a long walk, but it helped me to finally get some kind of idea of how all the bits fit together! That's the problem with travelling by tube - you know how to get places, but you have no idea where those places are in relation to each other (well, that's one of the problems - the others are worth a rant all of their own).

I think I've mentioned before that I like the song 'Bad Day' by Daniel Powter - well, I just saw the music video and I love it even more! It's really cool, and I'd love to download it except that iTunes music store doesn't seem to have it :-( (but I found somewhere you can watch it online). And while I'm talking about things I like, here's another gratuitous plug for my favourite poem 'The Day The Saucers Landed' by Neil Gaiman. Really, go read it. It's awesome.

Rambling back to movies, I'm about to watch 'How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days', since it's on TV and it's too early to go to bed. I expect it to be one of those silly yet enjoyable movies, something like My Best Friend's Wedding, and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, and all of those.

My cooking skills have really degraded since I moved to London - not only do I never cook anything beyond taking something out of the freezer and putting it the oven or microwave, I manage to mess up even that. I just totally ruined a frozen pizza, and the other day I managed to make inedible microwaved lasagne. What can I say, it's a gift.

Hmm... what else is there to say that I can say on a public blog? (This is actually one of those days that I think I should have an anonymous blog as well - one that can't be traced back to me. Sometimes there are just things that I want to talk about, get out of my system, but don't really want the people involved to know that they're the ones I'm talking about, or that I'm the one doing the talking!). I'm afraid I'm running out of things to say, though, which is a pity. It's silly, really, but while I'm typing a post I feel somehow connected to the rest of the world. Same as watching tv, sometimes - you feel more connected than if you're watching a dvd. It doesn't make sense, but it's true nonetheless.

Well, the movie's about to start, so I guess I should switch off my laptop and watch it.