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Titanic Poster

How do I write about Titanic?  Very few movies and books have a significant impact on my life (I’m looking at you, Ender’s Game, and LOTR).

Remember when Avatar came out the other year?  I was reading an article in Entertainment Weekly, an interview with James Cameron, and he was asked, what if Avatar passed Titanic to become the highest grossing film of all time?  He said, well, I’ll just rerelease Titanic.   My heart stopped briefly.

And then last year.  I was driving, and I heard on the radio that it was happening.  They were rereleasing Titanic.  In 3D.  Which, honestly, I didn’t care about at all.  Up until the other day, I hadn’t seen a 3D movie, nor did I have a real desire to see one.

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And if you are a follower of mine on twitter you’ll know that I rarely tweet in all caps.  Rarely.

Let me back up.  Titanic came out in 1997, in December.  This would have been my junior year in college.  I lived in a lovely apartment with 4 other people near my school.  I didn’t see Titanic until after Christmas break.  And then over a period of several months, I saw it 11 times.  I don’t remember specific details, for instance, did I ever see it twice in one day? More than once in a weekend?  I remember I went with my friend Scott most of the times, but not every time.  Not only did we see Titanic, we became experts at the history of the Titanic disaster.  We even went to the library and looked at microfilm of the newspapers around the time of the disaster.  We read books.  I listened to the soundtrack at night to fall asleep to.  I lived, breathed, and slept Titanic.  I don’t know how I managed to do anything else!  That movie is LONG.  And then I got  a bootleg copy on video, so then it was game over.  I basically have the entire movie memorized (please don’t judge me.)

11 times in the theater, and then who knows how many on video, DVD, and on Television?  Dozens more?  Hundreds?

And how am I no longer in touch with some of my friends from this time?  It’s a real shame facebook didn’t exist back in my college days.  Can you believe people used to lose touch, before email, cell phones, facebook, and twitter?

My sister Leslie has seen Titanic a couple or three times as well.  In fact, we quote Titanic more often than one might even realize—many of the words and phrases in our vernacular are indeed, from Titanic.  Either actual quotes, or quotes we made up. (many Airplane quotes fit into Titanic.)

So.  Last week as you know I was visiting my family and playing a concert in South Carolina.  And I stayed a day longer just to hang out.  A day, that just happened to be the day that Titanic came out in theaters.

I hate crowds.  I was worried there’d be crowds.  So we went to the 11:30 am show.  My father pointed out that some people do actually work during the day (no one in our house at that time) so it shouldn’t be busy.  We bought tickets in advance, just in case (it was an hour drive to the movie theater, and I figured I’d be too stressed out otherwise)…and that’s when I started getting, shall we say…

REALLY EXCITED

Like, I don’t get excited about stuff that often.  I am a bitter, cynical, jaded, optimist.  How does that work?  Well, basically it means I expect that stuff will work out and be fine in the end, but that getting there will be kind of a pain and not really go the way I want it to and nothing will be quite as fun or exciting as I thought it might be.  You know, I’m a typical adult.

But I was ready to go back to Titanic. 

And it did not disappoint. Oh, Kate and Leo.  You are both so beautiful.  And young.  When did we stop being young?

From the moment the movie actually started (after those awful awful previews)…I was completely engrossed.  I’ve seen the movie dozens (hundreds?) on times on my television since 1998…but really, nothing compares to the big screen.  What a wonderful movie.

Who wants to go see it again?

And yes, you’re welcome James Cameron.  I have helped you become a very wealthy man.

Fool me once, shame on you

I posted something similar on my blog awhile back.  Last night I was hanging out with a friend and she referenced it.  She said it made her think—maybe I was just mean.  Then on the way home (I was driving, and she lives on the way) I missed her turn.  I said, oh, I was just going to my house.  She said, of course you were, because you only think of yourself.  And then we laughed and laughed.

One of my students yesterday asked if I followed the Cardinals.  Evidently he knows the new manager because he lives next door to one of the coaches.  I told him I did but was really a Braves fan.  He looked at me incredulously.  I said, yes, really.  And then he made fun of me.  I posted that on twitter, and got this response.

october

Yep. 

tricked

And that too.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice…wait, if I recall W said it best:

"There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again." —

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjmjqlOPd6A)

More Dome Pictures

I decided to raid my family’s snapfish albums for a few more dome home pictures.  Here you are, enjoy!

You can see the cool triangle windows in this picture.

Carrie (a long time ago) sitting in her bedroom, which was my bedroom before.  You can see the wall triangles in a pentagon shape there.  Then my whole family in the dining room, good view of the shelves which are reverse triangle from the window.

{picture redacted by request of Carrie wearing an awesome vegetarian shirt}

Well, I know there are tons more pictures in print form, including albums with the work in progress, but not online or in digital form.  So that’s all you get for now, until we put all our prints online for me to share on the blog 😉

Home Sweet Dome

I missed blogging this week!  I was at home (that is to say, where I grew up) without regular wi-fi, and it just seemed easier to not worry about blogging at all, with the exception of a couple of posts from my phone.  At least we do have reliable cell coverage in Clinton—I recall many visits back in the earlier cell phone days where the sprint network did not seem to cover Clinton.

Clinton, South Carolina.  My hometown.  I moved there when I was a little girl with my family, and we lived in a lovely home near Presbyterian College.  After a couple of years my dad (who is evidently prone to long-term, grand idea type projects) decided to purchase some land on the outskirts of town on which he was going to build a dome house for us to live in.  This took awhile, as he also worked full time, but on his weekends and vacations he worked on the house.  About 10 years later we moved in. 

This is all just a naturally accepted part of life for me, and I sometimes forget that people aren’t used to living in dome houses.  So I figured I’d take a few pictures. 

Oh, one other note:  Either I looked pretty wretched all week (possible, due to the humidity) or my family just doesn’t take good pictures.  I also felt less comfortable making them take pictures of me than I do with Chris—with him, I just hand him the camera and he doesn’t argue, but my parents and sister seemed to think my insistence on a nice picture was a bit selfish and ridiculous of me.  I don’t know.  I just like to document things, and love looking back on pictures of…well…myself.  But there aren’t any pictures of me (or of oatmeal) in this post.  I apologize.

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The front door.  The "round" factor comes from a bunch of triangles that are made into hexagons and pentagons. 

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From the side.  I would have walked around the back, but it was pretty muddy from rain.  You can see the back porch, and the side door that was originally planned to lead to a wrap around porch.  You can also see the nice triangle window.  Basically there are three floors—a somewhat unfinished basement that includes an office and a bathroom, the main floor: with kitchen, living room, dining room (all connected), breakfast nook, and then also laundry room and master bedroom/bathroom, and the second floor: three small bedrooms and a bathroom.  We kids lived upstairs.  I forgot to take a picture, but the walls bend in on you—you have three walls, two flat and one rounded…oh, and no real ceiling.  One of the things that bothered me most growing up was the absolute utter lack of privacy.  The bathroom did have a ceiling though.

At the very top of the dome you see a little lookout room.  It’s called a cupola and it’s where bugs go to die.  It’s a small room that you can get to by a little ladder of sorts. 

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Looking up to the second floor—see the space between the walls and the ceiling?  That’s what I’m talking about.

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Inside of the dome.  All of the inside is that wood and you can see the triangles.  That’s a skylight to allow in light. 

And that’s all the pictures I took of the house this visit.  I hope you enjoyed your virtual tour of the house that my dad built ;)  Like I said, Dome sweet home.  Home sweet dome.