Weekend Watches, Reads & Rides

Besides all the delicious food we ate, this weekend was...

Friday Night Lights. I've never watched the show before, but it's great to have on in the background. I let it play while I read and cooked and relaxed all weekend. Julie & Matt are my favorite...

Mud. We went to see the film on Saturday at our local indie movie theater - our first time there. It reminded me of the OLD Ragtag in Columbia, Mo., my college town. There weren't any couches in our theater, but I wouldn't put it past this place to have them hiding in another one.

Mud was filmed in the east Arkansas delta. It was beautiful and perfect and, yes, "coming of age". I liked it a lot. I thought the kid actors were fantastic, and it was fun to see a friend's name in the credits as a "location assistant". Also funny to see local, Arkansas things like Larry's Pizza in movies. God, I miss their loaded baked potato pizza.....

There was also lots of reading... I finished these books:

One I liked, one I hated. Guess which. Heh. The Lost Girls was probably the worst piece of travel trash that I'e ever read. It was written by three stuck up New York City women, but it sounds like it was just written by ONE stuck up, New York City woman. Anyway....

The Tin Drum was, of course, fantastic, as I expected it to be. I love Grass' voice. So unique. So perfect.

And we went on an almost 10-mile bike ride! Holy crap! Aaron finally got a bike last week, and we went on our first ride together on Wednesday. It was my first time out on the "street" ...the rural highway that starts just a mile from our house, past the adorable park... On Wednesday I was so nervous! I'm still not fully confident in my cycling abilities. We went six miles that day, and my legs didn't get sore, just my wrists and forearms from gripping my handlebars to death.

Our ride late Sunday morning was much, much better! Since nothing terrible happened to me on our first ride (And by that, I mean I didn't spontaneously fall over or get hit by a car), I decided to set out with a much more confident mindset. I did a much better job steering and staying inside the bike lane line, which feels tiny sometimes, even though it isn't. I didn't break going down big hills (mostly), and I even picked my left hand up a few times to signal.

These sound like silly little tiny victories, but I'm proud of myself. I have a love/hate relationship with the idea of bicycles, but I want to like them! And now I'm on the road - literally. Heh.

That's all folks.