Apparently, at this early hour after the sun has risen, a sliver of light does manage to hit at just the right angle to illuminate my wall. Pretty neat, right? Now I know why my plants (which can be seen in the 'window') are still alive.
Yesterday I watched the TV miniseries 'Earthsea', based on Ursula LeGuin's books. I had gotten this on VCD in Hong Kong (it's legal, although the VCD format is unpopular in the US, probably because DVDs are higher quality). It turned out to be overdubbed in Cantonese. Whoops! Fortunately, the English was carried primarily in the right channel, so listening only to the right channel made it just barely tolerable (if the English and Cantonese speakers' voices were at different pitches, I could fairly readily 'bandpass' the audio in my head). I remembered loving those books back when I read them, but I did not love this miniseries. It borrowed way too much from Lord of the Rings (the movie), including nearly literal copies of underwater scenes (swamp struggle) and musical atmosphere (remember the wooden flute music that evoked the Shire?). It was like they flipped through the book looking for scenes that resembled something from LotR, filmed them in one take, and stuck them together randomly. And the CGI was worse than a video game. Anyway, I couldn't believe how bad it was, so I Googled it and found that Ursula LeGuin had posted some entertaining criticisms of the miniseries. Sigh. I suppose my expectations were high, given how well the LoTR movies had captured the spirit of the books.
I was just listening to the Obauguration celebration on the radio; HBO and NPR music sponsored a concert. I have to say that hearing millions of people sing 'This land is your land, this land is my land' with Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen made me feel pretty good.
Finally:
Good news: temperature today in the double digits
Bad news: snow
My street this morning:
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