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Brief movie review: The Talented Mr. Ripley
I'd heard good things about this movie, but somehow had forgotten it was set among the wealthy expatriate community in the 1950s in Italy. That alone would make it worth seeing for me. But it had other redeeming features, too.
Matt Damon as the young man who thought being a fake somebody was better than being a real nobody was stunning. He'll deserve the Academy Award nomination he'll surely get, and he might even deserve the Oscar itself. Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Blanchet as competing American women in Italy were good, but surely not as stunning as in their last respective performances. And the supporting male actors, including Jude Law, were solid and definitely "swoon material".
It might be a chick flick, but for anyone who likes psychodramas and Italy, it shouldn't be missed.

January 3 Uneventful transitions

I'm willing to bet we'll never know whether the electrical engineers and computer scientists had us on, as the Brits would say, or whether the billions we spent were a good investment in the face of a real risk. In fact, I'm sure some of the work that they did was contructive and productive and without it, the transition would not have been so uneventful.
I raise this not only because it is a timely thing to discuss, but because it was a personal issue, as well, for me. We (my life partner and I) spent New Year's Eve day in the bookstore run by the daughter of a friend of ours, trying to make sure that her old computers would still provide sales records and other information important to the business the next day. She, the daughter, was willing to leave it to the fates. Her mother was not. Will we ever know what would have happened had we not spent our day thus? Nope. And just as well. The only truly annoying part of the whole affair was that I was trapped in a bookstore having forgotten my glasses. I couldn't read! Arrghhhhh! Oh well.. it's a century ago now.
By the time we got that task completed, and dropped in on friends for a friendly millenial toast, and got home, we decided to stay put. Some party animals we turned out to be. So many parties, and we didn't get to any of them. But it's nice to be wanted, right? And so far, we think those we disappointed by not attending are still talking to us. We hope.
In general, given that we didn't get to "down time" until yesterday and today, the holiday feels like it's been both too short and too long. I'm ready to get past this everyone-being-off-work-but-wanting-everything-instantly-on-their-return point that will come tomorrow and Tuesday depending on who the employer is. On the other hand, I feel like I had so much to do over the holidays, and I got almost none of it done, and now everyone will want everything instantly.
To make matters worse, I'm stuck in the trees, a stage in which I cannot for the life of me see the forest of the whole body of the work I do, and can only see the tedium of each specific project's next steps. This is never an inspirational point to be at. At an open house today, when I was describing what I was doing to others, it sounded exciting. Interesting. Bleeding edge, even. And to me, it seems like so many "things to do". The blahs, my mother might have called it, and she'd have been right. And for no reason I can discern.
Maybe I needed more than an uneventful transition to shake me out of this, but it didn't happen. Something else will have to do. If only I knew what.