Now Showing: Movies I Missed

I was amused at how much I enjoyed writing and posting yesterday's entry. I suppose I shouldn't be; I know I'm a cyclical kind of person and the things I like to do wax and wane during a year.

But this morning I knew I needed to cross one thing off the list (already, yay!) and add one thing to it, seeing as how they're related.

Crossing off: Find a volunteer position
Adding: Watch as many of the movies that "everyone" has seen that I haven't

"How can these possibly be related?" you may ask. It's a fair question, but they actually are.

Since it was a list of goals for the year, I went ahead and included the finding of a volunteer position. In actuality, I'd already found one and it just started. I'm volunteering at a local library, doing one of my favorite things: looking for books and other library materials when they are requested by patrons. There's nothing I love more than a treasure hunt, and it's like a new treasure hunt every time I go. It's like a little win when I find a title that's on the "We've looked before but haven't found it" list, I must say.

Among the things I get to hunt down are videos (yes, there are still some) and DVDs. When I spent a little more time in the DVD section, I was amazed at how many recent movies were there, as well as many that have been in my "meaning to see" category for ages. That, of course, spawns another list. You might be surprised by some of the movies on it, but there are many popular movies that I don't go to see, especially if everyone is hyping it up. I'm also one of the few people in the country who doesn't use Netflix, or many of these would have been ones I'd have had in my queue and probably would have seen while I was waiting for the newer movies.

List 2: Movies I've Been Meaning To See

• All About Eve
• Almost Famous
• Annie Hall
• Atonement
• Bonnie and Clyde
• Borat
• Breaking Away
• Brokeback Mountain
• Bullitt
• Burn After Reading
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
• Casino
• Chinatown (I tried to watch this once before, but I fell asleep)
• Cold Mountain
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Dr. Strangelove
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Fame (original)
• Fast Times at Ridgemont High (I know, I know, but I haven't seen it)
• Finding Neverland
• Flags of Our Fathers
• Frost/Nixon
• Garden State
• Giant
• Glengarry Glen Ross
• The Godfather Part II
• Goodfellas
• Gorillas in the Mist
• Grand Hotel
• Harold and Maude
• Hotel Rwanda
• The Hustler
• An Inconvenient Truth
• Letters From Iwo Jima
• L.A. Confidential
• The Manchurian Candidate (original)
• Midnight Cowboy
• Michael Clayton
• Meet Me In St. Louis
• Monster's Ball
• Moonstruck
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
• Mulholland Drive
• Napoleon Dynamite
• Network
• An Officer and a Gentleman
• The Queen
• The Pianist
• The Producers (both versions)
• Ratatouille
• Ray
• Rebel Without a Cause
• Reservoir Dogs
• The Right Stuff
• Rushmore
• Saving Private Ryan
• Schindler's List
• Seven
• Slap Shot
• Some Like It Hot
• Taxi Driver
• Terms of Endearment
• This Is Spinal Tap
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• 12 Angry Men
• The Usual Suspects
• Young Frankenstein

All over the map, isn't it? It's a lot longer than I anticipated, but once I got started, I decided to go all out. I don't know how many of these the library actually has, and there's no way I'm going to fit them all in this year, but at least I've finally got them down in one place.

She's alive!

I've been mulling over how to jump back into posting here, having written dozens of posts in my head that never made it to the computer. But when even your mother (who was an infrequent visitor, at best) is asking if you're ever going to blog again, it's time to consider it.

To jumpstart me, I visited the page to re-read my last post and was astonished to see that people were still coming by and two people had commented in the last week! So, yes, Joe, I am alive and I'm back. Thank you for asking; it was just the impetus I needed.

Consider the ice broken. A year is a long time to be gone, and I'm going to have to re-learn the very little I knew about HTML and making things work here. Like that blog list over there, "Mo Pings." I have a feeling half of them probably don't work, and it will take me time to go through it and update it. So be patient, because I've found a bunch of new links to add that I hope will make it worth your while. And labels; I assume those are the same as "tags" and I can add them, though I have no idea what purpose it will serve here. I've popped some in there for the heck of it. I'm terribly behind on what Blogger can now do, but it will be fun to figure it out.

I don't have a really good reason for why I've been M.I.A., other than I've realized I'm a very cyclical person. (Not cynical, though I may be that too; cyclical as in I do things in cycles.) I do things a lot when I'm interested in them, then I need a break and I hibernate from the thing I really still do enjoy. Cross-stitching is a good example of this. I'll go at it like there's no tomorrow, and there's nothing else I'd rather be doing, then I don't pick up a project for months or even years at a time.

What has been occupying much of my free time lately is playing games on Pogo. I really enjoy the challenge of playing for badges (check out the site if you don't know what I mean, and if you like it and want a guest pass, let me know) and the games are generally relaxing to me, which is often exactly what I need at the end of the workday. But I suppose it's time to exercise a different part of my brain for a little while.

Things are going to be a little different, however. This post feels just like old times, me running off at the keyboard with whatever's in my head, but sometimes the pressure I put on myself to post something complete and well thought-out and meaningful sidetracks the intention. So I think that most posts are going to be shorter and more about what on the Web is interesting me right now. I don't feel very behind any "cause" right now and there's nothing I feel passionate about sharing with the world. That may change, of course, but for the time being that's where I am.

I hope a few old friends will see that this blog has been revived from the near-dead and will pop in to say hi. I will do the same as I work my way through that list of links to see who's still around. And new friends, please feel free to say hi, too, and I'll stop by for a visit when I can. In between games of Lottso, that is.