Sunday, July 20, 2008

Dark Knight, Bright New Day

Friday wasn't exactly a promising opening act to a wonderful weekend. Rae was still feeling dark and moody, but perked up when I handed her a glass of wine and a promise ring (of sorts) from Ireland. Tyler had already opted to spend the night at Uncle Gavin's, so our nuclear family was short one neutron. But then Dan & Trish had their evening cut short and called to see if movies were still on the agenda (well... YEAH), and so they arrived with pie.

Raechelle happier, Dan & Trish bring pie - weekend just got better.

After showing Hellboy, the Heinrichs left, Kayleigh went to bed, and Rae and I talked late into the night, mostly about the stuff I mentioned in the last post. It's amazing how valuable a very detailed discussion like that can be. So now she knows my history and understands me more fully, and it's much easier for me to break it down and put it away this time, because I've already done it once before. So that's good.

Raechelle and Todd back in sync - weekend got even better.

Saturday was a whirlwind of activity. Up for coffee and croissants at Starbucks, then we all piled into Sportacus and looked at three houses in the local area. It was kind of a primer, a dipping of the toe in the pool. We're in no hurry, but if we find the perfect home in this soft market, I want to take advantage of the opportunity. Our agent is a woman from the local Keller Williams office, whom my mom referred. She's also Dan & Trish's agent.

Looking at houses with my kids and my girl - better and better.

Then a quick lunch at Subway, and over to Gavin's to drop the kids for the afternoon and evening. They had their regular Star Wars RPG going on, and Kayleigh was invited to join in, so they were quite happy to ditch Dad for the day. Raechelle and I headed back up into north Seattle for Milo's 1st birthday party. He's a cutie, for sure. And it was cool meeting his parents and a handful of folks from Raechelle's crowd. Met The Ex (Steve), which was not nearly as awkward as it could have been, as we'd already done some preliminary handshaking through email, and the fact that his girlfriend lives blocks away from me and knows my son's school principal socially certainly didn't hurt matters.

Meeting The Ex not turning out awkward or messy - better and better.

We hung out for an hour and a half, then came home to change and head downtown to grab some Mexican at Mama's with JD, then over to The Big Picture for a showing of The Dark Knight, with alcohol. Good movie - no, great movie, in that it took Batman out of the comics and made a solid action movie with compelling characters and a decent plot. I kinda thought it ran a little long and ended too many times, but I see what they were trying to accomplish, so really can't fault the production too much. I still think Iron Man is the best comic book movie made to date, but The Dark Knight is probably the best "break out" movie based on a comic.

Mexican food + Batman + alcohol = better and better.

Came back and got the kids from Gavin's, then came home and everyone crashed hard. Let Raechelle sleep in while I went to grab coffee with Ron. Came back to find a couple cute chicks (one of them a hot brunette I've been dating and for whom I brought a latte) making French toast in my kitchen. I partook of the goodness.

Hot brunette making me French toast - so much better.

I could tell Raechelle had a plan. She gets this look in her eyes that says, "I'm going to organize something." Well today it was my entire downstairs hallway. Some of you who have followed the old blog may remember that it had been lined on either side with fire salvage boxes and culminated at the giant pile o' laundry. In four hours with the kids at friends' houses and/or grandparents' swimming pools, she and I totally transformed the lower hall, reduced the number of boxes by about 95%, and decimated the laundry pile.

My girlfriend is a cleaning/organizing fiend, and it inspires me - just gets better and better.

We took a break from the cleaning and went back up to Ballard, as we had to pick up Kayleigh and drop by Rae's so she could get some clothes for work tomorrow. Because she still had a project to do at my house and was taking another step by staying an additional night... a work night.

She's taking steps - better than better!

Took Raechelle and Kayleigh to dinner at a newish Italian place in Ballard, headed home to fold laundry and finsih R's organizational project, and she finally declared herself "done". Then she went to take a well-deserved jacuzzi. I'm tired out, but sooooo very happy at how we transformed my downstairs in a single day!

Yep, this just keeps getting better and better.

PSBTW (that's "P.S. By The Way, a fun little redundancy we throw around down our way), I realize the prior post was full of emotional whatever, and I want my readers to know that a: I'm doing great; and b: I'm not going to be spilling my emotional guts on the Life 2.0 blog like I did with Rhymes With Drowning. RWD was my therapy blog. Life 2.0 is my What's Going on in Todd's Life Right Now blog, and from here on out I intend to stick pretty much to the simple facts.

2 comments:

Maisy said...

I thought The Dark Knight ended lots of times too - yet I was glad it didn't end before the real ending as it was tied up nicely in the end. I forgot the Joker was played by Heath Ledger - have to agree with every review I read, he made the movie great.

I watched the movie with a couple of girlfriends in a cinema full of teenagers - mostly boys. That added another dimension to the cinematic experience too!

Ali

Lucy Leadskin said...

You should check out Wired's article re Dark Knight in last month's issue.