First off: apologies for it having been over a week since I've blogged.
Last weekend Corbin and I saw Inception for.... yes... the third time. Shawn has us beat, though, with a grand total of seeing Inception four times in the theater. Anyway, I highly recommend seeing Inception three times, and here's why: the first time, you are totally along for the ride and though you may not understand every word that comes out of their mouths you feel as though you get the story; the second time, you're paying more attention to the details and you enjoy the viewing but you come out of it with questions; the third time, you've discussed your questions and theories with your friends and you seek (and find) the answers to your questions.
It's kind of crazy how much closure I had after the third viewing. The next night, on our drive home from Northern Virginia, we put James and Shawn on speakerphone and had long talks with each of them about our feelings. Then I didn't think about the movie for days. This movie that had been on my mind for a week since the first time I saw it - the questions that Corbin and I had been asking ourselves and each other over and over again every day - they were gone. And when I ran into my cousin on the street on Friday, and he asked if I'd seen Inception, it was like he'd dug up a memory. I'd almost forgotten about it.
Another great thing about our third viewing: we saw it in an IMAX theater. And not those fake IMAX theaters that regular theaters are boasting; I'm talking the science museum, huge, blow-you-away theater. This movie, unlike parts of The Dark Knight, was not filmed in IMAX, but the sheer size of it and the amazing sound made for a fantastic experience.
Moving on. Yesterday I did something I've only done once before and not in a very long time: I attempted to bake a loaf of bread from scratch. Wegman's grocery store has this amazing Rosemary Olive Oil bread that they make with sea salt on top, and I decided that for my (basically) first attempt at baking bread, I would attempt to make my favorite kind of bread. I scoured the interwebs for recipes and picked one out that seemed to make the most sense to me. Let me tell you something: watching bread rise is amazing. I don't mean actually sitting there watching it do its thing, but setting it in the corner to let it rise and checking it in 45 minutes is absolutely incredible. It gets so big! So fast! And then when you knead it and let it rise again, it does it again! It was amazing. But I think that the second time I let it rise, it collapsed a little bit. It expanded outward instead of up... sort of blobbed on the pan. Then when it was done, it was kind of dense. In addition, the recipe called for part whole wheat flour, which I didn't really think about, and the bread ended up being rosemary wheat bread. This is not what I was looking for. To give myself a little credit, it was pretty good - not a bad first attempt at all. But if I really want to perfect my rosemary bread, it's going to take a lot of tries.
If this rosemary wheat bread sounds good to you, here's the recipe.
For some reason, when I woke up yesterday morning, I wanted to have a fun day. This doesn't happen often. That's not to say that I don't want to have fun days, but usually if I want something from my day, it's productivity. Other days I might want to do "interesting" things. But yesterday, I really thought about what I would enjoy doing. That is why I baked the rosemary bread. I decided yesterday that I wanted to bake. I had the day free, and I wanted to make something new. I also decided yesterday that I wanted to bowl. So that's what I did. Last night Corbin, Will, Anne and I made our way to Shrader Lanes and bowled four games with two pitchers of Yuengling and all-you-can-eat pizza. Here's the thing I love about bowling: it's still fun even if you're bad. And believe me, I'm bad. I momentarily thought I might have a successful night when I bowled a strike on my very first turn of the night, but it went downhill from there. Luckily Anne, who wasn't bowling, was keeping track of "style points." I rocked those. It's been a very long time since I've been bowling... perhaps sophomore year of college?... so I definitely had a great time last night.
Here are a few little beans to end my post:
1. I'm on a mission to win a MacBook Pro for my sister on bidfire.com. We have agreed: I will not stop until I win one.
2. Corbin is leaving his position at Aromas (the coffee shop where we work). This is sad, because I love love love working with Corbin. This is interesting because now I have to hire somebody new and training somebody is stressful. This is awesome because losing the little bit of extra money he makes here will motivate him to find a new job by Thanksgiving (he still works at ABC). This is SUPER awesome because now that Corbin and I don't make up 2/3 of the employees who work here at Aromas, we can go on vacation at the end of August. YES!
3. If you're in Richmond, can you please look outside? Glorious. Another cloudy day. I'm not being sarcastic! After so much sun and heat, I love these cloudy - sometimes rainy - days. Yesterday afternoon it was 78 degrees outside. I'm going to pretend it won't be 101 on Thursday.
4. I resisted it, but I think I actually like the new USA show "Covert Affairs." That's tough for me to say because I am a die-hard fan of Alias. In fact, I'm in the middle of watching the series for the, oh, fifteenth time or so. Covert Affairs is basically the same thing but with Piper Perabo instead of Jennifer Garner. When I first saw the commercials I was resentful that this type of show would be on because they canceled Alias several years ago; I also thought it was dumb to make the same show again when the first was so fantastic. But I gave it a try, since I like White Collar so much, and I have to say I actually like it.
5. Between the time that I began writing this blog and now I have decided that this afternoon I'm going to give another go at the rosemary bread. Practice makes perfect, right?
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