I seem to have a little bit of an obsession.

The moon, which has been ripening as I watch night by night, rose this evening at the top of our hill, huge. I often forget that it can appear so large as it rises, particularly when it's full. This was at 5 pm. I had gone out to sit on the front stoop in the dying light, realizing that I had been inside all day trying to pull together information for the family gift exchange and doing laundry and so on. I wrote (in my phone notepad) that "the road noise is so much louder with the leaves off the trees. It's a constant low roar now, underscoring the late-season crickets, the distant church bells, the dogs barking, the squirrels chattering and dislodging dry leaves. A territorial little round brown bird is furious with me for sitting on the front steps--too close to her roost, maybe? She is the kind of bird whose voice sounds hoarse, and somewhat less than mellifluous."

Then my mother pulled up, and together we watched the swollen moon hang over our street. It was appropriate timing too, as we had watched "Moonstruck" earlier in the day. It was Cosmo's moon.


Tonight Junior, David, Kelly, Maggie and I went to see HP 7.0. Though (obviously) dark, I think it is the best of the bunch thus far. I attribute this to the fact that they finally cut one of the books in half when making the movies, rather than trying to stuff a five-hundred-plus page book into the same time frame they used when the books were only two or three hundred pages. I read an article in the paper recently, yesterday maybe, whose author accused Warner Brothers of splitting the book only in an effort to extend the franchise. I'm sure that the extension of the franchise is an attractive idea for WB, but honestly, I've been wishing they'd cut the books into multiple movies for several years now. The amount of material left out is really ridiculous at some points. It's comparable* to trying to fit the entire Count of Monte Cristo book into two hours. That was skillfully done, but the story was stripped to the bones.

Anyway, the point is, go see the movie. I thought it was pretty great. If any movie is worth your $10 for a theater viewing (arguable), then this is.






















*Please don't hate me for saying this. I am not trying to argue that the HP series will end up on Barnes and Noble's "old timey pleather-bound books you'll probably never read but want in your house so you can look intelligent" shelf.