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Staring At A Sea Of Brake Lights

After much frustration, gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair, etc., this schoolyear we decided to give up on the St. Paul school district entirely, and enroll the little man in a public charter school instead. Which has, for the most part, been wonderful. Unfortunately it is rather far away. So far from home that there is no bus service available for us. Our only options are a) for me to drive him directly from our house all the way to the school. Or b) to drive him from our house to a location nearly as far as the school, but not quite, where he can ride in a “bus” (which is really a mini-van) with some other students who live far away. At least there is a sort of camaraderie in that, so this is what we have begun doing. And the little man has been great about the whole deal. It’s mommy who is impatient and growling at the traffic and cursing aloud at other drivers before she can censor herself. The little man is mellow and easy-going and amuses himself with books or toys or observing the colors of things we pass along the way. But this morning…as we crawled along the on-ramp, and inched through the tunnel…and edged our way on to the freeway until we had merged with the bumper to bumper traffic, he had a quiet little announcement to make. He said, “mom.” Pause. “The freeway is bad.” I couldn’t agree more kid. And we haven’t even done this in winter-time yet.

Tomorrow night there are oh so many shows happening. I am crushed that I cannot attend The Arcade Fire show. It has been sold out for weeks and weeks and naturally I didn’t have the foresight to acquire tickets. It’s some small comfort that I made it to see them last November. But also tomorrow night, M.I.A. is at the Fine Line, and Architecture in Helsinki are/is (?) playing in the Entry. I could, conceivably, make it to one or the other, after my Arabic class. But what I really should do is go home and go to bed. Oh, my so called life.

But really, I need to save up all my energy for Friday night’s Serenity release. Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! The fans and the press are getting behind the picture, in a big way. Now we just need to get middle Americans to shell out for it in droves. You can’t stop the signal, yo!

Bonus: Another movie that opens this weekend, the Neil Gaiman / Dave McKean / Henson Productions collaboration MirrorMask (it doesn’t open in Minneapolis until October 14th, at the Lagoon Cinema).
Plus: Random Sharyn factoid…I check the weather sites compulsively, then promptly forget the local forecast for the forseeable future (and have to go back).