Sonatas Harrison and Tea

I listened to beautiful sonatas and George Harrison today. Made some lovely Chai and worked on trees and highlights with squiggly brush strokes and played with Coco.

The painting moves now. Even the trees. Not so much in a tree-like fashion. But in the way that felt right at the end of my brush.

Coco has been wonderfully patient. It has been rainy and especially windy for the past two days. Some waves along Lake Michigan were over twenty feet high. Coco has been content to chill out in the back yard. But she checks in to make sure I'm not up to any trouble. It's so cute the way she comes in and then tosses one of her bones toward me so I throw it. I get such a kick out of the way she initiates play with me. It's too cute.

I'll be working on one of the library speaking engagement for most of the evening. It's coming right along. In the next day or so they should be all set and uploaded.

I think I'll try to get names of owners of small businesses around here and see if I can do some small readings and book signings during November and through December. I have a lot of work to do to get the next 2-3 books formatted. They are finished. One is completely edited. The other two may need a little editing but not much. If I can get those all set through amazon.com by spring then that will be great. So we'll see how it goes.

For now, I think it is time to watch Casablanca and relax. Oh, I saw a movie through Netflix entitled, "Wild Target." I so enjoyed it. I have become so bored with american films. The ones I've seen lately have been so self-indulgent, pathetic and trite that most of them I've turned off before the first fifteen minutes are through. And I have always been a person who reads the whole book and watches the whole movie. But I've discovered that movies that start out this way, don't go anywhere. And they have been a waste of my time. The writing has been "shi'et" and the characters have been unengaged in well, just about everything but how awkward they feel, every day, all of the time.

But British film and foreign flicks from Japan and France and Brazil and China and Italy, those I have been thoroughly enjoying. I like seeing actors that haven't had their lips pumped, their faces pulled and who actually have expressions that look - real. And the stories are about people and relationships and life. And whether they are dramatic or ironic or just plain entertaining, they are so much better than anything I'm seeing here.

All that said, I really enjoyed the performances of Bill Nighy, Emily Blunt and one of my faves Rupert Grint. It reminded me of the film, "The Whole Nine Yards." In that movie, by the way, was one of the best awkward moments I've ever seen (or heard). And it was hysterical.

Here are a few of my favorite foreign flicks:
The Road Home
Grave of the Fireflies
Cherry Blossoms ~ Doris Dorrie
Shower ~ Zhang Yang
Burnt Oranges ~ Silvia Malagrino
Most mysteries from British TV or Films and just about anything British I've seen on PBS.