
I have another Hayao Miyazaki movie for you. Yes that should be enough for you to run out and get this movie, but if not I’ll prattle on. This is a great movie, beautifully animated, a fun excited story with chases and mystery, and fun Miyazaki steampunk going on.
If that’s not enough o tempt you, Cloris Leachman does the voice of the airship pirate captain, and of course she fabulous. There is also the voice talents of James Van Der Beek, Mandy Patinkin, Andy Dick, Mark Hamill, and Anna Paquin.
This is a fun movie for the whole family and one I enjoy enough to own.
Castle in the Sky
Saving Grace
This is one of those movies that I own. It’s funny, sweet, charming, and has a great ending. Grace’s husband commits suicide, leaving her alone and shockingly horribly in debt, so she does what any normal middle aged house wife would do, she grows pot. Craig Ferguson plays her partner in crime, and as always the small village she lives in is filled with fun quirky characters.
Old Loves

I love reading old books and not just because it makes me feel good to have read another “classic”, but because they are windows into our past. I love learning about how a day went one hundred years ago. Or that in the 50s moms would have homemade baked goods waiting for their children at the end of the school day, and you didn’t wear underwear under your pj’s because you’d get too hot.

I love learning about how they would eat, address each other, or get themselves to work. What was important, what morals and values did the author feel were important to show. Men in romance stories didn’t have rippling abs, they had money, manners, and status. Woman didn’t have big boobs and the abilities to deep throat; they had grace, modesty, and charm that could make a man forget himself *swoons*. Not that I don’t enjoy smut, because abs and deep throating are great things, but sometimes it’s fun to go back and read about a time when even the raciest book would be rated PG by today’s standards.
I also miss the innocence of children that is found in older books. I just finished reading Tom Sawyer. In one passage he and two other boys are down by the river. They run around naked and swim and wrestle, and it’s fine, because they are children. The general population would never have thought of it as sexual at all, because they are children and they didn’t equate children with sex. Yes, there were monsters back then as they are now, but the general population, the healthy people, wouldn’t have thought anything of it.

Old books tend to have a slow cadence to them that modern books don’t have. It’s not bad that new books don’t have it, I don’t think my book has it, but I enjoy reading something with a good rhythm to it.
One other thing I love about older books is the words. Whenever I switch from a book written fifty or more years ago to today I’m saddened by the words we’ve lost and how simple our words are today. Some of the words I miss that I’m going to try and sneak into my work include: vexed, ponder, spectacles, diligence, crossly, gaily, queer, and my favorite – presently.
I found this video via another writer- it’s amazing. Let’s celebrate old books!
Do you read older books? What do you love about them, other then the old book smell? BTW someone needs to make old book smell air freshener for those of us with Kindles and no room for new books.
Zombie Apocalypse Training
For years I’ve been attempting to lose weight and get in shape. Last year I joined a gym with a friend who signed up for personal training then “forgot” to cancel it when we realized we couldn’t afford it.
So anyway our trainer is evil, as all trainers apparently have to be, and as one can tell by my years of trying and failing to get into shape I’m not good at sticking to things especially when they are uncomfortable or down-right painful.
So how am I getting through this? I think if it as zombie apocalypse training. Because you know escaping zombies is a bit more urgent then fitting into a smaller size of jeans. I think of squats as building leg muscles to run and kick with, push ups for climbing and carrying, and the evil abs exercises for building core strength for swinging axes, machetes, and cricket bats. It’s easier to force myself to do one more of the damn things when I think of protecting myself from hungry rotting zombies.
How do you get through things you don’t like to do? And yes once I am a vision of buff-ness I will be on your zombie killing team.
The Secret of Kells
This is a beautifully animated movie from Ireland. The art is so amazing you could turn the sound off and be completely captivated for the full length of the movie. But don’t do that because the story is a great one. I rarely give plot synopsis because I suck at them and it sounds all fake and stupid. I will say this movie makes me think, as I struggle to protect myself and my family for the dangers in life, am I forgetting any of the important things? Am I so caught up in my worries and fears that like the Abbot I have forgotten the beauty and joy in life I’m trying to protect?
The Secret of Kells has everything you want in a childrens/ family movie; a great story, fun characters, history, and a lesson without being preachy.
Okay this trailer highlights the more suspenseful parts of the movie, but there is also a lot of humor and fun.













