|
Youngest daughter brought her boyfriend home last Friday
evening, and we all had a nice time over the weekend. They left
Tuesday morning to visit friends, then go see his parents.
Since neither I nor they had seen Mel Gibson's "The Passion", we
all went to the $3 matinee on Sunday. M decided it would be too
gory and stayed home. Having never seen a traditional passion
play like the original performed every 10 years since 1634 at
Oberammergau (Bavaria), I was curious what it would be like.
Gibson's version was definitely bloody and violent, and it had a
lot of clearly subjective interpretation of details and events.
Of course it isn't as if there are a lot of story details in the
Bible to work from either. As movies go, it was odd in that it
was more like a documentary than a story. If you didn't already
know the sequence of events surrounding the crucifixion, you
would be fairly lost. I'm thinking of an essay about it, to
frame some of the thoughts I had that haven't been in the press.
One of my ex-coworkers saw me as we were getting in the car and
stopped to say hello. It's always good to see old friends.
Son arrived Sunday evening, and we've spent every day since at
the lake. He fished all morning yesterday while I was working on
some things for the boat house. When he came back for
lunch with three nice-sized bass to show me, he asked what I had
brought for us to eat. Well, Ramen Noodles didn't sound as good
to him as it always does to me, so he released the bass and we
drove over to a nearby little restaurant for the lunch special -
a catfish dinner for $5 each. No wonder they were crowded!
After lunch, he helped me with some of the heavy lifting I
couldn't do by myself. Around 3:00, we reached a good stopping
point. He wanted to show me his new fishing spot, so we climbed
in the flat bottom and headed off down the river. I had never
seen this part of the lake, since it is well hidden from the
main channel. The place was full of some kind of exotic
plant I have never seen before, with non-woody stalks as big
around as your arm and an outside covering that almost looks
like bark, but isn't. At first we thought they were roots,
and we were afraid of hitting them with the boat motor, but it
was all soft plant tissue. Most peculiar indeed. That's
one of the things I like most about that place - always
something new.
I'm not very patient like he is when it comes to fishing, but it
was a really nice warm sunny day. The wind had kicked up and we
had to fight it a lot, but after a couple of hours of neither of
us catching anything, I finally landed a nice sized gar on a
tiny torpedo. I was more than ready to head back to the house,
so we declared the expedition a success as I set the
prehistoric-looking thing free.
I had a really nice e-mail from a high school teacher who had
taught all three of our kids. She just wanted to express her
support for me and tell me how much she enjoyed teaching all of
them. She also accused M and I of being good parents based on
the evidence of the successful kids! Made my day :)
This morning I need to catch up on recruiter calls, paperwork,
etc., and it is time to plant tomatoes. I'll be heading to
Houston again on Sunday for an interview next week. If this
doesn't work out, then it must be time to come up with plan B. |
