Friday, December 07, 2007

Poem for Friday

Envoi: Waking After Snow
By David Baker


When did we drift into each other's arms?
Snow, blue as morning, shakes down
in the branches, not a breath among them.
I can't tell if we're one body or two.
As soon as he's settled, the redbird puffs up
his whole heart to the cold. Don't move.

--------

My children had a two hour delay due to the snow on the ground before school started this morning, which of course means that I was up earlier than usual rather than getting to sleep late, trying to find out whether and when they needed to wake up! Paul agreed to drive Daniel to the bus so I didn't have to fight with our as-usual not-plowed neighborhood streets. After sending Adam off, I did some more cleaning/rearranging -- Purple Heart is collecting tomorrow, we have a bunch of stuff I wanted to get organized and bagged for them -- folded laundry and watched a Next Gen episode I need to review on Friday. Please try not to envy my exciting life.


At the Fairfax Station Railroad Museum, the old telegraph room. (You can also see Santa in his sleigh out the window.


Like the sign says, this is a Civil War pass from the station to the nearby courthouse.


The station was moved from its original location on the Manassas line to its current location to become a museum. These were found at the original site.


A display of railway lanterns.


This is an N-scale model of the original line on which the Fairfax Station stood.


A model of a West Virginia and Ohio car crosses a bridge in a model layout.


And here are working modern miniature Amtrak passenger cars made of Legos.


We had dinner with my parents because they're going to a farewell dinner for our shul's Hebrew school teacher tomorrow night (sounds like there were some nasty politics in his replacement, I stay out of that), so we had latkes and roast chicken and lit the candles there. We also watched most of the awesome POTC3 extras -- one reason I don't at all begrudge anything Jerry Bruckheimer does is that his DVD packages are wonderful. This one isn't quite as awesome as the first in terms of actual history of pirates in the Caribbean, but it uses the history of the pieces of eight from the film as an excuse to explore the history of the fictional pirates and a bit of real piracy -- I gather that some of this information was included in the video game, but I never played that. Plus the two-disc set has featurettes on Johnny Depp's crush on the casting of Keith Richards, how the maelstrom sequence was filmed, the composition of "Hoist the Colours" with Verbinski playing guitar, and more extras on the filming and design.

The extra Best Buy exclusive disc, though, might be my favorite; that one has featurettes on with how the HMS Endeavour met its fate, how Davy Jones' Locker was created in the Bonneville Salt Flats, how the underwater acting sequences were filmed, how Orlando Bloom was turned into a wax museum figure and how much fun everyone had at the premieres. (Tom Hollander says nobody knows who he is, so he doesn't get the screaming.) I am so glad we got the three-disc set, but impressed that they put the bloopers on the disc with the main movie so anyone who wants those can see them!

And the Redskins just beat the Bears, huzzah, and I avoided the news all day because it seemed to be all Omaha shooter, all the time (man says he wants to die famous, TV gives him his posthumous fantasy), so I think I shall go to sleep while I'm ahead. Have a good day which will live in infamy.

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