Primary colors

Tomorrow is the primary and the caucus in Texas. I’m not an eligible voter, so I can only watch these proceedings with interest. Early voting ended on Friday evening. I took my wife over to vote after she got off work and it took her an hour to get through the line, which extended from the front of the community center halfway across the field to the library next door. I would take that as a sign that voter interest is high.

This was one of those glorious weekends where we spent a day doing almost nothing. A little business after breakfast, then we sat out on the back deck, played cards, watched the squirrels, barbecued and listened to the radio. Then we went in and watched In the Valley of Elah and Martian Child. The former was very well done. Tommy Lee Jones was his reliable self, but what I liked about the story is that they didn’t flinch away from exploring the possibility that a favorite son might do some reprehensible things. That, and the fact that the drug-dealer with the long criminal history who runs away at the sight of the police might not be guilty of what we think he is. Charlize Theron had a very nice part, too. Dressed down and downtrodden, but still determined to do the right thing.

Martian Child was cute, with widower John Cusak adopting a boy with abandonment issues. It’s a little like K-PAX turned on its head. Cusak had to be a successful writer so he could have tons of money and get away with not doing much work so he could spend lots of time with the kid. They went a little overboard in making it seem like there was a chance the kid really was extraterrestrial, I thought, and Oliver Platt was the kind of literary agent that you only ever see in movies, not in real life. Angelica Houston had a funny bit part, the dragon lady of publishing. Is there a rule somewhere that Joan Cusak has to be in just about everything her brother does? I’m not complaining or anything, it’s just that if it’s a rule, it should be written down somewhere. Amanda Peet was charming and the chemistry between her and Cusak was palpable from the beginning. Simply a cute movie.

I got a lot of work done on the short story I started last week. I’m up over 4000 words and starting to panic because I’m not sure how I’m going to wrap the plot up in about 1000 words, which is all I have left if I want to stay within the guidelines. Maybe I’ll be able to trim some material from the earlier sections to streamline it when I get finished. I’ve had the two words that inspired the story and are its McGuffin on my deskpad for a couple of years now, so I’m glad to see them turn into a story. I think there’s a chance it might turn into something far longer down the road, which is sort of what I always intended, I think.

It took me a while to switch gears this morning and get back to the novel, but I finally managed to kickstart my brain and wrote a good section of the next chapter. I’m nearing the 3/4 point of the estimated word count, and that seems just about right, even though the estimated word count was an arbitrary selection made two months ago.

I watched Eli Stone last night. I think he should ditch his fiance and take up with the cute legal associate, but that’s just me. I like the “twist” revelation near the end concerning his administrative assistant. I didn’t see that coming. Big Brother continues to be high drama, with lots of yelling and screaming. I think Josh (is that his name, the current male HoH) is trying to outscream Howie from a few seasons back. I know there’s supposed to be a big twist coming this week. If they don’t do something, they’re going to run out of teams pretty soon. The HoHs only had four to choose two from this time, and we’re only a few weeks into the season.