juggernauts

Well, it's official. Matthew is our family's fundraising juggernaut. With one e-mail, and some timely consulting and clerical services from mom, he has raised over $200 dollars for cancer research this week, and he and Julie are part of a team that's walking all night tonight (that's right, all night) as part of the Relay for Life.

I'm not walking, but somehow I still got a T-shirt - allegedly for helping a bit with sound for the Rouge River Connection who played earlier in the evening (and whom we had the honour and delight of hosting for their tune-up and rehearsal on our front porch).

What a week. Various important meetings and conversations among our church community, two full days of recording with some wonderful folks, ludicrous amounts of time spent on the highway to and from the studio, learning to empathize with those who are driven to a life of commuting... A big week for Julie as well, with report cards and Willowgrove Primary School's graduation and spring concert. Can you name another school that celebrates its big year-end bash with a potluck supper, graduation and concert outdoors in a pavilion, and wagon rides for everyone afterwards?

Oh, and somewhere in the middle of all that, our 15th wedding anniversary.

We're figuring on celebrating a bit later, when we can catch our breath, but speaking of juggernauts, we did decide to take in a certain new Pirates of the Caribbean movie... a bit of a strange choice, I know, to mark 15 years of marriage, but we haven't gotten to 15 years by always making conventional choices... still crazy after all these years, indeed...

In any case, the movie was GREAT... as a half-hour sitcom. I was astonished at how much I could enjoy a film that was utterly incomprehensible and seemingly interminable. I'm old enough to remember the days when movie-making involved editing, and a three hour movie ("Gandhi" comes to mind) included an intermission. No such luck here. Batten down the hatches, take no prisoners, give no quarter, and all the rest. If Johnny Depp weren't so maddeningly brilliant, hysterically funny, and oddly mesmerizing I would have fallen asleep or made a break for the exits I don't know how many times...

And oh that song...