Friends, I hope you had a good Easter weekend. Janice and I hope to see our families in Pennsylvania and Virginia, respectively, later this spring. The weather is still cold here in New England, but at least the rain has passed for now. Spring was heralded by some wildlife in our neighborhood, including rabbits, a flock of large wild turkeys, a fox, and hawks. I've seen all of these animals in the past few weeks.
My fellow participants in the recent Jeopardy-style trivia tournament at work are pictured above. After CW won several business-journalism awards, we celebrated with ice cream from Lizzy's. Later last week, the copy desk belatedly celebrated Bob R.'s birthday with dessert at Finale in the Natick Collection.
On Friday, 21 March 2008, Janice and I went to Acapulco's in Newton, Massacusetts, for a Mexican dinner. After that, we stopped in at Newbury Comics. I had picked up the CD of Raising Sand, the excellent collaboration between Led Zepplin's Robert Plant and bluegrass musician Alison Kraus.
On Saturday, we went to T.G.I.Friday's in Norwood, Mass. We had not been to that restaurant in a while. Since we've been watching the Food Network's Ultimate Recipe Showdown, I tried the new Boricua steak-and-plantain sandwich, which was tasty. We also enjoyed the chocolate fudge cupcakes.
Janice and I began our spring cleaning with going through our books. We found enough excess mysteries, textbooks, and gaming supplements to fill four large cardboard boxes, which we'll try to donate or sell. More filing, painting, and yard work remain.
In addition to our usual weekend television, we took adavantage of HBO's free preview weekend to catch most of that network's John Adams miniseries, based on David McCullough's book. While the casting of Paul Giamatti as the titular (and oft-overlooked) founding father and David Morse as George Washington was odd, the acting was good, particularly by Laura Linney as patient Abigail Adams and Tom Wilkinson as Ben Franklin. I'm not sure how historically accurate the miniseries is, but the human drama of the American Revolution is still compelling.
I was pleasantly surprised to like the re-remake of Mel Brooks' The Producers, and was righteously indignant after watching Who Killed the Electric Car? I also saw some of Anne Hathaway in the comedy The Devil Wears Prada and the violent assassination flick Smokin' Aces, as well as bits of The "L" Word and The Tudors on Showtime.
I had previously watched but forgot to review the interesting adaptation of Neil Gaiman's surrealist fantasy Mirrormask. As friends with TiVo or NetFlix subscriptions have noted, picking which movies and TV shows to keep up with can be a challenge.
Gene's Worlds 