Quick Takes Friday

Joining Jen at Conversion Diary for Quick Takes Friday!

~ 1 ~
With the late Easter, WWD's two-week Easter break, and only 4 weeks to go, I have some serious senioritis, and I'm ready for school to be over. I can't wait to switch out of the schoolday routine (making lunches, helping with homework, driving all over the place) and into the summer routine (hanging out at the pool and more hanging out at the pool). I mean it--I am totally sick of school. I can only imagine how the kids must feel! :)

~ 2 ~
Speaking of driving all over the place, the girls now have soccer on Monday and Wednesday, running on Tuesday and Thursday, and gymnastics on Thursday and Friday. Seriously, I totally feel I spend hours and hours in the car every day. I think this is because I actually do spend hours and hours in the car every day. I need a better solution--audiobooks, or something, because I'm bored out of my mind and also quite tired of having MPD watching so many movies in the van.

The thing about audiobooks is that with so many different passengers in and out of the van at various times, I'm thinking that it would get really frustrating for people to try to keep up with the stories. (Not so for the movies, bc they're usually movies that only MPD cares about--Go Diego Go!--and they watch them in such endless loops that no one misses much anyway.

Got any advice for me on using car time more productively? The trips are actually pretty short--10-15 minutes each, round and round town, and I like to chat with the kids (not to mention being a safe driver), so talking on the phone isn't really a great option.

~ 3 ~
Was the Royal Wedding awesome or what? I wasn't particularly excited about it beforehand, but when we watched it last Friday night, I couldn't tear myself away from it. So magical--especially because the bride was just so unbelievably beautiful! That gorgeous carriage ride from Westminster Abbey through the spring-blooming streets to Buckingham Palace was the best part, I thought.

~ 4 ~
As a matter of fact, I think the last week of April is the absolute best time of the year for a wedding. Last Tuesday the 26th, Bill and I celebrated our 14th anniversary with lunch out (while WWD took great care of MPD for us--so great to have a big kid home on Spring Break!) and a movie. Happy Anniversary, Mr. Love of my Life! :)

~ 5 ~
We rarely go to movies, of course, but couldn't wait to see Atlas Shrugged after loving the book so much, like most people do. The book was one of those once-in-a-lifetime, you're-never-the-same-afterward great reads; I remember the dreamy time of reading it for the first time in 1993, when I was working on a rather intense project in Toronto that involved plenty of time back and forth on airplanes. Dagny Taggart was quite the inspiration for a career-minded girl like me, back in 1993.

But I'm not so sure quite what to think of the movie. I understand that it hasn't been getting great reviews, but I liked it because it was, so far, relatively true to the book, and there was plenty of fun eye candy with the main characters being so gorgeous and the stylized, historic/futuristic settings. But it also felt flat to me. I guess it's inevitable that any movie based on that majestic of a book would be disappointing. Most disappointing--that it ended so abruptly! I'd lost all sense of time and was completely unprepared for the end of Part 1. I almost wish I'd waited a few years for the box set so I could watch it all at once...nah, not really. I'll be lining up for the next part, no doubt.

What about you? Have you seen it? What did you think?

~ 6 ~
Actually, last weekend was a total emotional and sensory overload in many ways. As if Divine Mercy Sunday and JP2's beatification weren't exciting enough, there was the aforementioned Royal Wedding also, as well as the (pretty quiet this year) Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. And then, just when I was starting to relax, came the startling "We Got Osama Bin Laden" headline--how fortuitous for him, that he died on such a blessed day. But sheesh--with all this stuff going on, no wonder I haven't had much time to blog lately!

~ 7 ~
Speaking of St. Joseph the Worker, some interesting news is shaping up around here, that deserves a post of its own. Stay tuned for some news about our ch-ch-ch-changes!!

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Now go see Jen for lots of great Quick Takes!