TToT: Crocs, Gators, and Peg Dope – Wil It Fly? #Podcast #10Thankful

I have no philosophical quotes or music to include here, to share, to start my TToT this week.

My head is just so full of thoughts. It feels crammed and ready to burst.

I returned to Lake Erie the other day and I just stood out in the water, up to my waist, and I looked out to the horizon.

TEN THINGS OF THANKFUL

That the podcast is finally out there.

Here is our Facebook page.

If you follow such pages, give it a like. That’s where we will be announcing, every time a new one comes out for now.

We are still playing around with place to host it and such.

Go here to listen to us directly.

Come on. You know you’re curious.

😉

Any feedback is very much appreciated.

For all the support people have shown so far for this project.

Thank you to all of you. This project has meant a lot to me and I hope it keeps going.

I thank every one of you who’ve liked our Facebook page and took some time, out of your busy lives and schedules, to give it a listen.

Hope you found id amusing or entertaining. What did you think?

That someone shared a book with me and it was the best book I’ve come across in a long time.

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

I heard it was a book about time travel and immediately, my first instinct was to move along, but I’m glad I didn’t.

Time travel isn’t all about science fiction. It means history. I love history.

It also had a lot to do with today and the issues we’re still seeing around matters of racial divides and those who’ve overcome such prejudices and defied those odds.

That I am headed to Mexico for a very special writing workshop.

This just sort of happened suddenly. I received the invite from my writing mentor. She is running the workshop and she made it possible for me to participate.

I will be traveling to Mexico this winter, for a whole week, to learn about writing and literary travel writing.

This is a huge thing for me, traveling so far away from home and family. It is scary, I won’t lie, but at some point, I have to go for my dreams and experience more of the world.

I’ll admit, it’s still far enough away that it doesn’t yet feel real. It’s such a big deal that I am still in some shock that it’s happening at all. Things like that don’t happen to me.

That I have those in my life who support my writing and believe in me, wanting me to have experiences and stories to tell.

I owe it all to my writing mentor, my family, and friends.

It’s months away yet, but I am so excited that I had to share the news on Facebook. Everyone seemed excited for me.

My family know what it means for me and to me, traveling by myself like that, but that I need a chance to grow as a writer and to experience life. They want all that for me and are making it possible.

Also, to my writing mentor, who is in my corner and, as a writer, believes in my abilities.

For another year with a working kidney for my brother.

It’s been three years now, but somehow feels longer.

I guess the whole experience was so new to us all, felt so gigantic, that three years later I look back in wonder.

For my violin teacher’s ability to fix what the music store got wrong.

So, remember, some of you, a few weeks back when I broke a string on my violin?

Well, it took three store employees to figure out why it wouldn’t fit.

So when I got back to my lessons this week, my teacher looked at it and said it was on sideways.

And so, she fixed it, telling me about a product known as peg dope, in the violin world, made for violin peg adjustment.

🙂

I just love these new terms I’m learning. I’m also glad I have a teacher who knows what she’s talking about. No offence meant to those hard working guys in the store, but I think I’ll let my violin teacher replace my strings from now on.

That my mother is a pro at sewing.

I hate bathing suit shopping and finding one that fits at all.

I know, as a woman, I am not alone on this one. It used to be that I needed to find one that would cover up any surgical scars I have. Now I was left with one that tied in the back, right below my head, which was uncomfortable and gave me headaches.

Well, when stores failed me and time became a factor, in came my trusty mother and her sewing kit. She transformed a halter top into a bathing suit where the straps actually now go over my shoulders, instead of around my neck.

For a lovely beach day with family.

Okay, so the weather wasn’t ideal. It was cool and cloudy for most of the day. The sun did finally show itself by late afternoon.

The water was still pretty cold, which didn’t stop my mother. She’s the tough one in the family, but my niece braved it with her. My nephew enjoyed the air mattress as a floating device.

My brother had his handy portable grill and we had enough food and snacks to go around.

I was thankful for that grill, as a makeshift fire to sit around, as a way of keeping warm before the sun made its appearance later on.

There was a washed out little stream up on the beach and a log across, which my niece used as a balance beam. Sand castles were made. My brother is a design man, an artist, and it’s possibly being passed on to his little girl. She also loved feeding the sea gulls, which is something I like to think she got from me. That was my favourite thing to do as a little girl, though now I felt rather uneasy when they were flocking all around our group. I prefer them off in the distance, hearing their cries against a backdrop of waves, but my niece was enjoying having them so close, she could almost reach out and touch them. She even put a piece of bread on her head to see if one would take it. They aren’t that bold.

The water was much calmer than the last time. The birthday cupcakes were peanut butter with Spider Man, The Hulk, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for the birthday boys.

We had a bit of vehicle trouble in the family to end off the night, a flat tire, but luckily, the guy who ran the chip wagon knew about flat tires. All and all, a nice day all together.

That I was invited by another blogger to write about

A Day in the Life of a Blogger

Thank you, Life Through My Bioscope, for the invitation.

And there you have it. Lots of big things, memories (old and new), and I couldn’t sleep again last night, thinking over everything that happened this week.

I want to find the perfect quote or song, something that comforts me and something I could look to for confirmation that I am doing all the right things and that it will turn out the way I hope it will.

I just don’t think there is such a thing. I guess I can be thankful for mistakes and for nature and for the lessons of travel and life experience. I can be thankful for anonymous organ donation and for people willing to take a chance on little old me.

Can Men and Women Really Be Just Friends?

Note: Possible spoilers ahead, but I try to stick mostly to vagueness and hinting, preferring to speak mostly on character and theme. Hope you enjoy my review.

***

This movie sets out to answer the question: can two people of the opposite sex really be just friends?

I suppose this is why I really wanted to see this movie. Sure, Harry Potter himself stars in it, but I don’t think that was my main driving force for watching.

I have always been baffled and fascinated by the above question. Everyone has their own opinions and experiences with this. I’m not just talking friendly or occasional acquaintances though. I mean more like best friends who hang out together on a weekly basis, one-on-one.

Daniel and Zoe play two such friends.

Daniel Radcliffe’s character Wallace is a med school drop-out who stopped trying, in his career and in love.

After catching his x with someone else he dropped out of a valuable future in medicine. The mistakes of his parents were ones he was afraid he was doomed, himself, to end up making.

Now he lives in his sister’s attic, does not get out much, and is his nephew’s only male role model.

His luck changes when he meets a girl at a party, thrown by his friend and college roommate, played by Adam Driver (Hannah’s on-again off-again love interest on the hit HBO series Girls).

Wallace and Chantry (played by Zoe Kazan) strike up a conversation and it turns out their connection is instant, rare, and undeniable.

All goes well, until the walk home when, after exchanging numbers, she casually mentions her boyfriend will be wondering what happened to her.

Against his better judgment, Wallace agrees to be just friends, but tells himself he won’t see this girl again.

Fate has other plans for these two when they meet up at a showing of The Princess Bride, two of them each seeing a movie alone and during the week. They decide to be friends from then on and spend the rest of the film trying to balance their growing and disguised feelings for one another with their expectations on life and on love. After all, Chantry is in a long-term relationship and, after losing her mother at a young age, does not believe in giving up, all while trying to go by the lessons her mother’s death have taught her on holding on to what’s truly good in your life.

Wallace has learned that love is messy and complex, but to intrude on other people’s relationships is just plain wrong. His hard lessons from his previous relationship and his parents’ have made him unwilling to do what it would take to win his best friend’s affections.

Allan is the best friend you’d want to have, (except maybe when he leaves you naked on a beach overnight). He is sarcastic and funny and full of great advice about the messiness of love and relationships. Some of his advice goes something like this:

“Love is messy and complex. If it’s simple you don’t try and if you don’t try you won’t.”

If you follow? 🙂

I may have misquoted a little, but something about that line from Adam’s character struck a cord with me. Maybe you have to hear him saying it to understand. I would recommend you check out the movie, just to hear him say those particular lines. They were touching, uplifting, and so strangely true (emphasis on the strangely).

I will admit that some of the dialogue in this film was all over the place and hard to get at times. At certain points, when watching, I had to ask myself and my sister sitting next to me, “What?” and she could no better explain it to me, but this is what made this particular movie experience so pleasant and different.

Sure, the story of a young guy and girl trying to hide their feelings from one another is not new; however, this romantic comedy delivered on heart and fun. We laughed uncontrollably several times: my sister from a few of the physically humorous scenes and myself from just the sheer oddness of what I was seeing. I was drawn in and Daniel does a good job, although admittedly it is hard to see him in any other roles, without my mind going back to his once-in-a-lifetime role as Harry Potter. That is something, undoubtedly, that he is working to distance himself from for both his audience and for himself.

His character in The F Word is smart and witty and a good guy, just the kind you might want as a best friend or possibly more. I left the theatre smiling and laughing. The writing really is bazaar and a bit out-there at times, but I found that pleasing and a refreshing change from the usual. I still didn’t have any final answers to the question of whether or not girls and guys can be just friends, but I suppose the best questions in life have no true answers.

The F Word originally premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and the city of Toronto is the setting for this story. With a distinct homey feel (for me) with backgrounds such as The CN Tower and familiar streets and other locations, I somehow felt at home when watching. The F Word is up against such blockbusters as Guardians of the Galaxy and the updated version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. For a somewhat smaller movie by comparison, this film comes across nicely and is more my cup of tea.

Check out a small taste

Here.

***

I couldn’t believe it when I read how this movie is called one thing in Canada, where I live, and another in the States. Daniel seems to have a problem with having his movie titles altered: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and now The F Word to What If?

WHAT IF the title had been left alone? What horrors would have befallen, I wonder? What would you think if I had titled this post The F Word? Would you automatically jump to the wrong conclusion? Would that have prevented you from reading or have been just the thing to grab your attention and want to read more?

What do you think about this change in titles? Do you think it necessary?

Also: what do you think? In your own experience, can men and women be just friends, or is their almost always more going on?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these matters.