Well, Axel, my son, warned me that guys his age don’t go for talking dogs and singing in movies.  I found the talking dogs in Sn*w B*dies perfectly charming and there was no singing.  I did take exception to some of the concepts of Alaska (a town without moose? come on and the type of huskies that were used and the fact that the mushers kept yelling hike and gee and on bye–I think there was one haw in the whole film.  For those of you unfamiliar with mushing, well, gee is telling your dogs to turn right and on bye is usually used when you’re overtaking another team and you don’t want your dogs to stop and get in a fight with the other dogs about who the master of the trail is.  Oops, I digress).

Anyway, I liked this movie, until I found that animals were injured during the making of it.  Ugh.  Puppies.  Little golden retriever puppies.  How could this happen?  How?  How?  How?

Sn*w B*dies, #7

We Own the Night.  Wow, this one only rated two stars.  It was too long.  There were long intervals where I had no idea what was happening, or how a scene contributed to the story line or who the hero was.  Okay, I still don’t know who the good guy was.  I still don’t know where the title came from or how it relates to the movie, which is almost always a bad sign (like when I kept getting Michael Clayton confused with Michael Collins–didn’t we see that one already, honey?).

Chris, a good friend in Seattle, was teasing me today about watching so much television.  She and her husband don’t even own a television.  She said we could be friends, even if I did have one.  Wonder what she’d say if I told her about the queue.  I’m back up to 360 on the active list.  I don’t think the people on the red and white website are doing me any favors.  When I log on, the site gives me suggestions.  I don’t think I really need any.

Mellita is watching: Gone Baby Gone.  Category: recent release, available.  Rating: three stars.

As I mentioned, I am incredibly dependent on those little red and white envelopes that come in the mail every so often.  My active queue is back up to 359 movies.  I nearly fainted the other night when my husband asked me to add a movie to the queue.  As if we have a chance of watching it in this decade.

We like to watch the more recent releases first.  Not only do we have to wait for them to be released to DVD, we have to wait for the DVDs to become available and sometimes, that can be quite a long interval.  That’s why I’ll never tell you what’s on my list, just what I’ve watched.  I don’t want the list to get all jammed up.

We finished Michael Clayton last night.  I’m not into to spoilers (try the IMDB).  I was pleasantly surprised and that’s why I gave it 4 stars out of five.

I know I should write about my daily job search but nothing much is happening on that front.  I tried C*list, and was an unsuccess story.  Actually, what happened there made me feel quite uncomfortable.

On a daily basis, I check the UW website, I check the Childrens Hospital website, and when I get to school in a few minutes, I’ll scan the Daily.  I did try asking someone last week and she said she’d get back to me via e-mail, but nothing came of it.  So, my advice is–whatever I am doing, do the opposite.

I am a UW student.  I am looking for a job.  I am always looking for a job, even when I have one, because you never know when the old career will head south.  Or east.  Or west. Or simply out of town, never to return.

I went upstairs to the HUB Ballroom.  It was incredibly full, especially with people in suits, which must be the standard interview garb.  I had three employers I wanted to check out–Aerotek, LabTemps, and the intelligence community.  I found the 1st two.  It was pretty much a draw.  I want to work part time and for the most part, that is not available.  So the upshot is, despite my graduate degree from the University of Washington, I’m back to scanning the UW Daily for my daily job search–must stop looking at nanny ads–and sending resumes into the void.

What’s at home:  Michael Clayton, We Own the Night.  Number of movies in the queue: 356.  I haven’t been shopping.  Some were tranferred from the unreleased zone onto the active list.

I went to see the Dalai Lama yesterday.  It was very moving.  It’s hard to continue to be critical about movies after an event like that.  Several UW students had questions for him.  I had the opportunity, along with several thousand of my peers, to ask him a question.  I couldn’t think of one.  Only about 60 people did, and of these, only 14 or 15 were chosen (the UW wanted to stay away from political questions), and then only about 8 people were able to ask their questions before the time was up.

What I ask myself every day is how do I practice compassion?  I was sitting with my son, Axel, the other day, helping him to identify goals for school.  He is working on his organizational skills, so he can figure out what to do there, but I asked him to think about a spiritual goal, like practicing compassion.  His response: “Mom, writing that makes me sound like I’m not a very nice person.”

I tried to explain, and maybe I didn’t do such a great job, because I hurt his feelings, but this practice governs much of my life.  It’s like my own situational compass.  On Saturday, I had a very rocky day.  Axel was late to a rehearsal, the brake cable on my bike broke suddenly (not just the cable, the brake was messed up), I was supposed to work with someone, but our timing was off–he had to work an hour later than he thought, so I spent time picking him up twice.  It was a much busier Saturday than I usually like to have.  I was so lucky.  I didn’t get mad when the whole day went in its own direction at its own pace.  And at the end of the day, we went to the Quad on the UW campus, to see the mature cherry trees in bloom (before they cut them down).

The point is, I did occasionally ask myself, is this worth getting mad about?  Will it change anything?  It’s much easier to ask those questions, than to get angry and say something wrong and apologize.

So, if I know this, if I know to practice compassion, why did I spend all yesterday afternoon going to see the Dalai Lama?  Because for two hours yesterday, I was in the presence of one of the great minds of our century.  I never saw Obama or Clinton or McCain when they came through Seattle.  I don’t think I move in the right circles for that and I’m fine with that.  But seeing the Dalai Lama and hearing him speak changed my life.

All right.  I am part of the way through Margot at the Wedding which so far seems to be one of those generic quirky dysfunctional family movies that keep getting made.  Dan in Real Life, anyone?  Something has to happen…

Okay, I have to confess, I’m getting a little bummed about not working.  I used to tell my family everytime I applied for a job.  Last year, I applied for a volunteer position as a spider collection assistant at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington in Seattle.  You know, the old cover letter and curriculum vitae to nowhere.  I never heard back.  Did they find someone else who wanted to sit in the basement and catalog spiders?

The sad thing, is that my kid, Axel, reminded me the other day that I was unable to even get a volunteer job as a spider collection assistant.  Yeah, rub it in kid.  Just remember who gets you to volleyball three or four times a week and makes sure you have clean clothes.

I did actually try volunteering a couple of other places.  I have a background in health sciences (graduate degree, post-grad work), so I looked at the list that the UW had for research opportunities for undergraduates and sent out a feeler (a little spidey feeler) to a researcher.  No luck with that either.

Is it any wonder my movie queue is up to 355 movies? 

I stopped reading books a couple of years ago.  I checked a book out from the library and it was so bad that I stopped reading it after about 75 pages.  I turned it back in on a Saturday, couldn’t find any other books to read, and left.  When I went back to the library on Monday, I tried to check out more books, and the librarian referred me to the head librarian, who came out of her vanilla candle scented office, wearing her fall (it’s quite a nice one, brown, past her shoulders, but disconcerting when she doesn’t wear it) and guns ablazing.

Basically I was accused of bending a page.  I pretty much admitted fault, saying that it was possible that I had done it, but that it had not been deliberate and could I check out books, please?  Oh, well, I was being fined, and I didn’t have the two bucks I needed.  I did point out that I had patronized the library for ten years and had never bent a page before, so it wasn’t as though I made a habit of it.  I didn’t point out that there were apparently people in the community who read books by underlining in them in pen and pencil (kinda hard to erase those ink marks), and that I had never done that either.  I also mentioned that I had made regular donations to the library, not that it excused the bent page.

I guess she was thinking that I had bent the page to mark my place.  The page was clearly bent.  I was willing to pay the fine, but I didn’t have my wallet with me, and they refused to let me have any books.  The head librarian even followed me out into the parking lot to discuss it further, but the bottom line, is that I never went back.  Their book selection wasn’t so hot anyway.  It was getting to the point where I was checking books out twice by accident.  Yeah–how many years can you leave a book in the new books section before it becomes, um, an old book?

But, the bottom line is, I became much more aggressive about managing my DVD movie by mail service.  Everytime I see one of those little red and white envelopes in my mailbox, I know that a night spent with a book is now a night spent watching a movie.  No more quiet dozy afternoons.

So, I have a confession to make.  My DVD queue is up to 355 movies.  I can get movies online, but it’s hard to watch the foreign ones–I prefer original language with subtitles to dubbed.  So many movies!  So far this week: 30 Days of Night (wow, how can you leave an entire indigenous people out of your movie and put the pipeline in Barrow?); last night, Dan in Real Life; tonight, Margot at the Wedding.

This is Mellita, and I am watching.