Today is some heritage foundation event in the UK where they are trying to collect a day in the life of the UK. I heard that on the radio while driving towards Needham this morning. They are planning on getting non-bloggers to write what they did today and submit it to their archive so that historians have the content in 100 years to learn things about how we lived today. It reminded me that I haven’t been able to write lately given all of the business of shuttling through life. So I’ll attempt to get back into the groove of things for the Brits. I might even send them some info from across the pond.

The last two days have been marked by a choice for movies that involved some depressing thoughts. The first was Interview with a Vampire. It was a pretty bad movie in terms of the acting or directing. It left me with the impression either that the book by Anne Rice must be much better than the movie OR that the book itself must be melodramatic and stupid. I just didn’t get into or feel any empathy for any of the characters. Then last night we watched Kids. Sarah had originally stated that we needed something less dramatic and a light comedy but changed her mind for whatever reason. Kids was the kind of movie where towards the middle of it I started to think to myself – I can’t wait for this to end. For me, the father of a soon to be one year old baby, watching children in New York with various drug usage and abusive sexual situations was very traumatic. I may have been better off watching a horror movie like Saw, Hostel, or some other graphic disturbing piece of content. Jeremy had asked me why I wanted to see it a few weeks back but I wasn’t dissuaded. I won’t try hard to dissuade other people from seeing it but it is quite a traumatic experience to watch it. In the interest of dissuading people from watching a movie I recommend that nobody rents the Butterfly Effect II. I saw the first one and when I saw that a sequel had been made at Hollywood Video I nearly went berserk running along the aisles knocking DVDs onto the floor or pulling the tape out of VHS cassettes. I refrained.

The main delay and hubbub causing my writing stoppage were the two weddings from the past two weeks combined with a trade show, marketing activities, and taking on some new work with Peter. Madeline hasn’t become the ideal sleeper that Ozzie and Harriet had yet. Last night she threw a little party for us at 11 PM to 1 AM. I got a chance to watch some TV on the recently hooked-up HD antennae on the roof. I don’t get channel 7 so I couldn’t watch Monday Night Football. Instead I watched some awful night version of a daytime television show where a video game developer was in love with some woman (good looking) about to marry a man (also good looking). The story had something to do with cheating on New Year’s Eve but I was mainly just trying to get Madeline to calm into sleep. Madeline is mobile enough to open doors and she opened the door to our bedroom while Sarah was trying to sleep. So Sarah went to nurse her as Seinfeld came on in the living room. I decided to go back to sleep rather than watch Seinfeld as a sign of solidarity with Sarah in our fight to achieve a regular sleep balance.

Saturday night was Hattie and Jose’s wedding. They were married at Trinity church in Copley. Madeline was sent out to Bedford for the night. The main result of that was a question from Sarah’s mother to ask us if we knew what “DaDaKiDa” meant. We don’t. But Madeline has picked-up some new language tricks. My favorite one is that the sign for time to go is to do the basketball traveling penalty sign followed by a tapping on an imaginary watch. I noticed when Madeline is a little bored or ready to leave where she is she will tap her wrist impatiently. It’s quite endearing to see and better than the normal squawks and shrieks we hear most of the time.

Today Annie Leibowitz was on the radio hawking her new book of photographs including a large number of personal photos of her family and Susan Sontag dying. It reminded me when Kate told me at the wedding that as a graphic designer that she shouldn’t be using stock photography but instead should use original photo art. At first I thought she felt that I should show her how to use a camera at which point I told her I could teach her everything I knew in a few minutes. Then she clarified that I should do some artistic photography and send her the photos as possible art for her graphic design work. I told her my main work is focused on countless shots of family members growing older and that I was less of an artist than someone who struggles with the concept of passing time, aging, and who clings to the positive or emotional memories of life. Maybe that’s what a photographer is anyways. I did let her know that I felt the plain blue stained glass with a shadow threefold of gargoyles at Trinity behind the pews would have made a good photograph if I had remembered to bring my camera into the church. Maybe I’d benefit greatly from some photography classes or to read a book about photography. I could benefit from almost anything to escape the humdrum of my regular routine.

My brand new Canon Elph camera broke only a day after I got it in the mail. It is already on it’s way back to Canon-land for repairs. It may not have been a great idea to take it out at Lisa and Dave’s wedding while partying hard near the dance floor but I’ll stick by the story that they should fix it because it is under warrantee and I didn’t even jump into the Colorado river or go caving with it.

Lisa and Dave’s wedding was a beautiful sunny fall day. The ceremony was in the Newton Centre Playground. Having it there made it hard for me not to raise memories from being 10-18. I basically used that park as a backyard for those years and remember meeting girls I had crushes on while sitting on a bench only a few feet away from where the ceremony was across from the hut where I had gone to camp one summer. We had swung on the swings cross country skied over jumps on the sledding hill. I ran home sweaty in my father’s button-up shirt after singing “Cheese glorious cheese” with the chorus of the Mason Rice School. I walked both alone and with friends on fences . Ray, our German shepherd jumped over the fence repeatedly. Some Chinese kid threatened to make me eat a worm. So I was thinking of these things along with random thoughts of what to say during my role as a toast giver during the backyard reception. The reception did borrow my well crafted and invented description of the meaning of the Chuppah.
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As always.. I ran out of time to chronicle things. Maybe next time…It’ll all be clear in the pictures of the weddings as soon as I can get them out.