Film Festival, Saturday Morning

We spent most of today attending filmfest offerings, beginning with an animation showcase this morning. We were impressed with a couple of them, particularly one titled "Food Fight," a six-minute film using foods to depict the history of war from WWII to the present.

Audience members, including us, considered it a comical spoof on war and laughed at the ridiculousness of hamburger tanks chucking pickles at French fry soldiers, etc...until the part where flying food crashed into two tall stacks of hamburgers. Suddenly, the audience became sober and remained that way to the end of the film. This thought-provoking film is currently showing on You Tube and is worth seeing.

In another film, the animator created written language for a variety of birds, with symbols dancing on pages in rhythm to the twittering and chirping of those birds. Crow language was depicted as loud, raucous, white symbols pulsating against a black background.

A few films addressed global warming and other serious issues, while others were simply playful and lighthearted. We enjoyed some of them, weren't crazy about others, and one left us wondering what message the animator meant to impart.

Film Festival

It's film festival weekend in our town. We've attended the festival every year, and usually enjoy most of it. We loved it best during the years that silent films were offered, sometimes with musical accompaniment performed by a live band. Silent films are such a lot of fun to watch, especially the comedies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, whose brand of humor is still hilarious today.



But we've enjoyed other film and concert offerings too. Today, we went to the museum to see two humorous short films. One centered on an eccentric and rather reclusive lady who baffled her community in the southern part of our state during the Great Depression and for years afterward. The other film was an animated spoof on strange historical events in another state. Both were very funny.

Tonight a band well known in our state performed the music of a famed 1940s musician, also from our state, who influenced creators of rock n' roll and blues. More people should have turned out to hear this excellent group. Maybe the chilly, rainy weather kept folks at home. Whatever the reason, those who missed this concert missed a musical treat.

Say What?

Lately, Mother and I have been making greeting cards from scrapbooking scraps.

"Why is it that yours always turn out so much better than mine?" Mother asked, as she shuffled through her stack of cards today. "Look at this one," she said, holding one up. "It's ugly as sin."

"Mother, I made that one," I said. "It must have accidently gotten into your stack."

"You made it? Oh...well, I just mean it doesn't look finished yet," she stammered.

I laughed. "Actually, I think you really mean that it's as ugly as sin."

"Well, you know my eyesight isn't as good as it used to be...all those dark colors and everything. It just doesn't look like your usual work. It'll look better after you finish it."

Except for lettering it, I thought it was finished. Guess I'd better re-think it!

Tulips

The crocus' are gone, and the daffodills are fading, but the tulips are in full swing, now. Sadly, as with the other flowers, they won't last long, so we have to feast our eyes on them before they, too, go away. The wonderful thing about spring, summer, and fall seasons, though, is that there is usually something in bloom. It's just that I don't quite get my fill of one variety of flower before it's gone and another takes its place.

Fortunately, though, Hubbie continually looks for flowering plants that keep the yard interesting and colorful most of the year, which in turn gives me plenty of subject matter for my camera.

Computers...Boon and Bane

Computers are great when they work, and the pits when they don't. Mine has been in the shop a couple of times in the past several weeks, with complications arising each time. A few weeks ago, I found that I had run out of hard drive space, which required cloning my hard drive to a new one. Of course, my computer tech didn't have a hard drive on hand and had to order one, which took several days in arriving. Then, after the work was done, I found that the USB ports on the front of the tower didn't work.

Computer tech came by my house to check the ports. They were fried, thanks to my ignorance in not shutting them off before removing hardware. Fortunately, I still had a port at the back that I could use.

Since my anti-virus software was due to be updated, and my computer guy recommended a different, more powerful package than the one I had been using, I decided to let him load the new software, and see if he could fix/replace the USB ports while he was at it.

I took the computer in last Friday, and he loaded the anti-virus software and checked the ports. He couldn't fix them. So I brought the computer home, with the understanding that computer guy was to receive registration info from California that I would need to enter before the software would operate properly. I was to call him in a couple of hours to get this info.

In the meantime, computer guy got called away to take care of downed computers at a nursing home. He didn't return before business closing time. So it would be Monday before I could talk with him. He gave me the information that morning, but I was unable to access the Internet to complete it. In fact, we discovered that the computer didn't recognize our speakers or printer, either.

He apologized, but said he would be out of town the rest of Monday, as well as yesterday, taking care of a major job, and that it would be yesterday evening after work before he could come by my house to check things out. He came by about 5:30 p.m., and found a disconnected wire in the computer that was preventing our being able to access the Internet or use the speakers and printer.

Once he found the problem, he was able to complete the anti-virus setup, and now, after five interminably long days, I'm good to go again. Whew.