Saturday was highlighted by a cookout dinner at some friends' house and a pleasant summer night conversation on the back deck.
I started Sunday by clearing the garden space of a weed jungle. It took longer than I thought, and I flushed out a small zoo of yard critters including a praying mantis and a frog. The town was oddly quiet, but the cooler cloudy weather may have kept the tourists at bay. Your Sis, still cold-ridden, slept a lot. I washed both cars before grabbing a pizza and DVDs.
The Lives of Others is a German film that won the best foreign language Oscar this year. It concerns a Stasi agent monitoring a writer/actress tandem in the last days of East Germany. It's very good. We see the monitoring agent transition from strident interrogator to a quiet co-conspirator without the knowledge of his bosses or the couple. It didn't go where I expected it to, and I'm relieved for that. If this was a domestic film, there are dozens of places you could pinpoint where the film would go badly.
Monday morning we kayaked down the French Broad, from Rosman this time. I believe this was the same company you and Your Sis used a few years back. We chose the four-hour trip and saw dozens of animals we normally don't get to see: herons, kingfishers, ducks, two flocks of geese (which produce an enormous amount of horsepower when they take off en masse a few feet from your kayak), and bugs by the truckload. The trip would have been quicker had we not run aground so often on the riverbed. Once we dropped off the boats and drove back to Mayberry, we inhaled pub food. Your Sis, shock of shocks, then napped. This morning, I am a wee bit sore from all the work. I'm also guzzling Gatorade to fix my sun-roasted hangover.
Picture of the DayMount Fuji
In the NewsYou could practically hear the celebration in Boone
all weekend. I watched my ECU Pirates hold off Virginia Tech for most of their game.
