Month: May 2009

The Fast Runner

As all you parents out there know, young children have a way of placing certain restrictions upon one’s social life. Dinner and a movie. What’s that? Pam and I can easily count on one hand the number of times we’ve been to the theater since L was born. I’m sure that won’t change much after the arrival of #2 in October.

We’ve learned to make do with Blockbuster. We tell Blockbuster which movies we want to see and they send them to us in the mail. Sometimes, we take the mailed movies to the store where we can exchange them for an in-store rental. It’s actually a pretty good deal. The average cost for renting a movie this way is about half of what I remember paying for a rental 10 years ago. Anyway, we end up watching about 1 to 2 movies a week. Last weekend, Blockbuster informed us that it was shutting down its website for a day to do maintenance. They compensated their mailout customers by giving each of them a coupon for a free “Favorites” rental in store. (“Favorites” is actually code for “movies that nobody ever wanted to watch or wants to watch anymore.”) So we decided to take advantage of the free rental.

The movie we chose was a genuine, made-in-Canada film called ‘Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner‘. It’s “Canada’s first feature-length fiction film written, produced, directed, and acted by Inuit.” It’s one of the most unique movies I’ve ever seen. It’s a movie that feels like a documentary of Inuit life and culture. I highly recommend it.

Warning: If you aren’t comfortable watching a nude Inuit man run for his life across the partially melted ice of the arctic–yes, you get to/have to watch his “manhood” wave in the chilly breeze for the whole scene–then this movie is not for you.

I’m so sorry…

…Western Manitoba. This picture was taken May 15th near Riding Mountain after receiving 1 foot of snow overnight.

Thankfully Western Massachusetts is having different weather. Today L and I did some gardening. I posted a request for unused garden space on a community board. I had a few offers of “come make a garden out of our lawn”, but someone was willing to let me use a piece of his market garden. The garden is a 15min drive which isn’t ideal, but it seems like a good spot. The garden is also at a higher elevation, so even though the lilacs are blooming it was recommended to me not to put out plants until the 25th of May even here in Massachusetts.

L and I both had a great time playing in the dirt. I have to admit that seeding is the most exciting part, after that comes the work. It will still be good to be outside out of town this summer. L was perfectly content to dig in his big sandbox, look for worms and drop in the occasional seed.