Someone stop him

Why do they keep letting James Cameron write screenplays?  Oh, that's right - he makes gazillions of dollars on his movies.  Just watched Avatar, which I hadn't planned to do ever (not after sitting through Titanic) - probably I missed a lot seeing it on a 13-year-old TV's relatively small screen, definitely 2-D, but oh my God, as I've bellowed on Facebook, the man cannot write.  At least not in any way resembling the way normal people talk who aren't flat stereotypes of good guys and bad guys with the vocabulary of not very bright 12-year-old boys, or maybe those 12-year-old boys' ideas of what a movie character should sound like.  Cringed my way through the entire thing.  Ah, and a quick Google reveals that yes, Sam Worthington is indeed Australian, which explains some weird accent things that started happening in the last third of the movie.  I know most people are just bowled over by the environment and creatures, and I do think perhaps if I'd seen it on the large screen, and in 3D, I might feel a bit different.  But between the dialogue and the total one-dimensional cardboardness of the bad guys and it taking Our Hero to rally the Blue Meanies, I mean Na'vi, it was just a bit of a slog.

OK, maybe between this, Facebook, and an e-mail message in the middle of the movie, I've gotten this out of my system.

Just had a heart-pounding episode, which is still not quite past yet.  Sort of like, the movie is over and Jerry still isn't here, so a mild panic attack ensues.  Just what I need.

Steve was here this morning, and thank heavens he had that wire to take down, because if he'd just come to the house, looked in the brine tank and said "You don't have any salt," I would have been mortified.  Not sure if putting the salt into the tank this afternoon will fix the problem - if it doesn't, and the water softener doesn't go through its process at some point soon, I'll call the guy who fixed it last time - as it happens, two years ago tomorrow, according to a receipt I found in Jerry's water softener folder.

I went off to the local Gap store this afternoon with "old denim," as they put it, to be recycled - they're collecting it and it gets used to make insulation for low income housing... or something like that.  So I gathered up jeans that are too young for me, too big, too tight, and brought them over, then found they didn't have the ones I wanted to buy on sale in my size, so I fired up the GPS and headed out to the big mall in this area, Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg.  Between the GPS and the trips to Midway and to Alabama I've made since August, I do have to say that one thing that's different about me since Jerry died is that I'm less hesitant to drive places by myself that involve getting on expressways around here.  Still not entirely thrilled with it, but I'd only ever gone to Woodfield once in the 11 years I've been here, and today I just decided on the spot to go.  Ended up getting the jeans one size smaller than I'd planned, after being told by the sales clerk who looked at me in them that if I got the larger size they'd fall off me.  Uh, yeah... that's what the other pair I already have does, in fact, but they're really comfortable...  so now I have a pair for when I'm feeling, uh, bigger, and one for when I'm feeling smaller, I guess. (I'm also guessing they didn't actually have the size I was asking for in stock after all.)

Yup, heart still pounding.