Dune, by Frank Herbert. Actually, I haven't started it yet. Keith and I are going to finish reading The Shadow of the Torturer aloud to each other, and then we're going to start Dune. I've read it before, but I want to read it again, because last time I didn't finish the series, and this time I really want to. But I don't want to start in the middle of the series where I left off last time, because there's too much detail I've forgotten.
October 4, 1999
Yesterday was disappointing and surprisingly good, in that order.
We'd planned to go sailing with Dave. This was the rain date, since we'd originally planned the sailing date for a week earlier, but Dave hadn't been able to reserve a boat. I was excited, because I've never been sailing before, and it was really a beautiful day for it.
We were supposed to meet Dave, et al. at 1PM at Pier J, but unfortunately we were about fifteen minutes late getting there. We figured they wouldn't have left without us, since we were only fifteen minutes late, so we thought THEY must be late. No big whoop, it was a pretty day, we hung out by the boats and waited.
And waited. Around 2 PM, Keith went over to the marina offices to see if Dave had ever showed up to check out his boat. They said, yeah, he was here at 1PM to pick up the keys.
Hm. Well, since it was an hour past our meeting time, Dave and the boat were nowhere to be found, and we were tired of waiting, we headed home. Keith and I both sort of wanted to be mad, and yet we didn't want to be angry until we'd found out what had happened. Dave is a really nice guy, and I had a hard time believing that he would have just left without us for no reason.
When we got home there was a message from him on the answering machine that had been left at 1:10 PM, saying "Hey, you guys aren't home so I hope you're on the way here.. hope to see you soon". I thought that was pretty weird, since we were there at 1:15 PM, but again, we figured we'd wait until we found out what happened.
Dave called later that night and it turns out he'd thought we said we'd be there at 12:45 PM. Therefore at 1:10 PM when he called, we were already almost half an hour late in his mind, so they didn't wait much longer before taking off. We must have just missed them. Keith and I were both disappointed, but not too angry -- it was just a big misunderstanding. Yes, they could have waited for us a little bit longer than they did, but honestly, if I were on the sailboat waiting for people to show up, and they were half an hour late and I couldn't reach them..
OK, I probably would have given us a little more time. But not much more time. Dave did invite us to go sailing again next weekend, which is cool except that Keith has an Ars Magica game scheduled. He doesn't know whether they're actually going to play or not, but if they do, he'll feel bad about canceling on Ars Magica to go sailing. Apparently his character has a big role in the Ars Magica game.
I'm trying really hard to be understanding. I really really want to go sailing, but I don't feel like I know Dave well enough to go sailing with him without Keith along. So if Keith goes to Ars, I won't get to go sailing. Yet, I think about how I would feel if I had something previously scheduled that was important that I show up for (ah, what good grammar she has), and there was all this pressure on me to cancel on it and go do something else.
I can tell that Keith is sort of torn about this. Either way, it'll work out, though. If we go sailing, that'll be good, and if not, I'll find something else to do and I'm sure we'll go sailing eventually. It's not a one-shot deal.
In other news. Since we didn't go sailing like we'd expected to, Keith and me had the whole afternoon/evening free. Naturally, we headed to the movies. We went to go see American Beauty, because I love Kevin Spacey and we'd both heard it was a really good flick.
American Beauty spoilers in the next paragraph or so. They'll be meaningless to you unless you've seen the movie, so if you haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend you skip them.
Man, was it ever. It really blew my mind. The whole movie was so well-constructed and non-fake in every way. I remarked to Keith on the way out that I thought it was really cool that most of the characters started out as caricatures, but by the end of the movie, they'd become realistic and deep. I think the biggest change was in the daughter's best friend. When I first saw her character, it was obvious to me that she was supposed to be this teenaged seductress that only thought of sex and was very shallow and transparent in her motives.
Yet, by the end of the movie, I thought of her as just another confused teenager who resorted to sex to make herself feel better about her insecurities -- and of course, it turned out that she wasn't really having all the sex she talked about anyway.
Keith and me thought that the two biggest surprises in the movie (seriously, if you haven't seen it, quit reading) were 1) when the next door neighbor tries to kiss Kevin Spacey, and 2) when it turns out it's NOT his wife who kills him.
Keith commented that although both those were big surprises, they weren't unrealistic within the context of the movie. It was completely believable for the next-door neighbor to have done both those things. And that's one of the reasons this is such a great movie.
The next movie I want to see is Plunkett & MacLeane, and after that I want to see Fight Club. Yes, I know it's not a chick movie, but how can I pass up all those half-naked men with broad shoulders who are glistening with sweat? OK, maybe this IS a chick movie. At any rate, I want to go see it.
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