Mmmm...molasses cookie. Went to the airport with Alyssa and mumbled along with the Shins, and finished up the night in my own bed. I think I'll read all day. I'm about at page 200 of MC, which still hasn't really grabbed me, it seems about as self-indulgent as "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" and not as fun. He only just got to the point in the last chapter, and showed us what's so special about the character that he's been talking about for 200 pages. Still, I think I'll finish it, since I made the effort of starting it again. It's not bad, it's just not spectacular. Brigid says she 150 pages into Cloudsplitter; I didn't even know we were supposed to be reading it.

Alyssa and I read up until the end of October break the other night; far enough to get past all the real drama, although I wonder what she'll think about some of what comes later. We had a nice talk afterwards, the sort where you feel like you can say anything. Not that we usually hold back, it was just more to the point. She read several selections from her journal. It's funny, even though this is a publicly-accessible journal, I still feel like I'm sharing something somewhat private when we're sitting here reading this together. It comes out differently if you read it all at once rather than in daily chunks, I think. My little twinges of embarassment were just as likely in my transgressions against spelling and grammar as against moral decency though. I'll maybe read the rest of it today, or at least over the next few days. It's fun for me, at least.

Yesterday at 1:30 Julian called and asked if we wanted to do something at 2:30. By 3:30, he and Morgan and we were at a converted factory on Blossom that now houses the METAL museum (that stands for Museum of the Elizabeth Collection of Twentieth Century American Laborers) which is the private collection of this presumably somewhat eccentric art patron. I'd never heard of it before, and the others were all very bemused by the fact that it was here in Rochester. We went in through the frame shop, which had paintings all over the place. Then we passed through a few stairwells with art all over the place, and through the guy's apartment, which has art all over the place, and a few more stairwells. And then we entered the museum proper. At this point (the plans and space for expansion seem quite extensive) it consists of one humongous two-story room and a series of corriders adjoining it, one of which is set up to look like a "Parisian boulevard." The walls, floor, and ceiling house everything from countless paintings (Feldmans, Santiagos, some Dali prints) to a series of gigantic wooden renditions of old-fashioned implements (a stapler, a telephone) to colorfully metalwrought benches, a couple of the paraded horses, an architect's model of the Strasenburgh planetarium, an intricate three-dimensional and musical representation of the internet, and the amusing Christ Portraits. It was basically sensory overload, especially with the soundtrack, which was mostly some classical thing but mixed with fragments of Little Richard, piano jazz, and dialogue from a movie someone was watching upstairs. Definitely cool, though, as promised.

"I'm hungry," said Morgan so we drove over, Zep II cassette blasting, to the Village Gate for a visit to Crock Rock sub shop, Morgans once and occasional place of employment ("I'm on call" she explained.) A lot of the shops have closed or moved, although a few seem to be doing well: the Bop Shop added an additional room and Ricky's Deco Plus moved to a much larger location downstairs. We spent a while browsing the always entertaining funky antique clothes there, and then in a new vintage shop across the way called Velouria, which has almost entirely seventies stuff. No Beatles-fan thick cat-eye glasses frames though.

Back home, we watched "Blood Simple," which moves slowly enough that I could follow it even falling asleep periodically. It's very obviously a Coen brothers movie, and not just because it features an amazingly young Frances McDormand. One great moment has a tense conversation interrupted by what sounds like a gunshot - actually it's just a newspaper striking a glass pane in the door. There's some trademark Coen gore too. Ordered too much food from Great Northern (leftovers for today, tomorrow, next week!) and listened to "Hello Nasty" to clean up. Over Russian Banks we decided Jesse into coming to see Amelie with us. It was almost as good the second time, a little less because I wasn't in quite the right mood I think. Still the best film I've seen in a while. And I've seen ten in the past week or so.

I'm the king of Boggle there is no higher
I get eleven points from the word "quagmire"