Mad Zoo House

I feel like frickin Elphaba. I'm melting. Melting! It's been in the triple digits for a few days now here in the "temperate" (coughbullshitcough) Pacific Northwest. I've been holed up in our finished basement with one or two fans blowing directly on me at all times. Whenever I have to move, it immediately feels like I'm in a sauna and I become a whiny pisspot. :P

Forget about keeping up the house. It took me three days to finish all the laundry - much of it was sitting around unfolded in laundry baskets for a day or two. It's about all I can do to unload and load the dishwasher before I start to feel the vapors and have to sit down in front of a fan. And what is it about heatwaves that make animals want to be RIGHT UP NEXT TO YOU at all times? Too much fur in my house.

Movies I have watched in said basement:

• You've Got Mail. Yes, again. So? I think it was the first time I'd actually seen it from the beginning and all the way through without interruption. I'd never seen the part where Tom Hanks is in his father's office and asks what kind of fabric the couch is covered with and Dabney Coleman says "Money." Maybe it's the heat, but it made me chuckle. I had also never noticed that Meg Ryan walks so funny before.
  

• My Life Without Me. Loved it. Loved it! To read the synopsis (a 23-year-old mom of 2 with a slacker husband finding out she has a terminal illness) you'd think it would be totally depressing, but if anything, and at the risk of sounding totally cheesy, I found it life-affirming.

• In Good Company. What you would expect. But worth it despite the over-exposed Scarlet Johanssen (is there a movie in the last few years that she ISN'T in?). Dennis Quaid is hot. Enough said.

• Lady in the Water. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would (we basically just wanted to enjoy being in air-conditioning for a few hours). Normally I'm not a fan of M. Night Shamalamadingdong's movies, but I think that's due to the fact that they're typically marketed as horror/thrillers when really they're about something else, so I always ended up pissed off. Or, I just love Paul Giamatti.
  

• Amelie. Sometimes I think people say they "loved" foreign films because they think they're supposed to. Or, because they think if they don't really get it or follow it, it must mean that it's good. Kind of like how I feel walking through art museums at times. :P I felt like I was watching this movie for 4 hours. I know it wasn't that long. But it felt like it. Maybe I was feeling too hot and sleepy to keep up with the subtitles. Maybe that makes me a stupid American. Maybe I can accept that. I did enjoy it, otherwise I wouldn't have finished it (see my Netflix rating of "You and Me and Everyone We Know"). I thought it was very sweet. And about 45 minutes too long. :O
  

In the few sporadic moments over the weekend that I had some clarity, I tried to brainstorm how to afford installing central air before next summer. Stay tuned.