Hey, watcha been doin, Junie?

I've been on vacation for a week, and my brother Noah stayed with us for awhile. Dude, you know it's a great house guest who you are SORRY to see go at the end of ten days! We miss you, man, and your sweet family too. Come back any old time.

So besides walking on the beach, soaking at the spa, and basking the coolness of my bro, I've also been catching up on my reading and watching.

At the hotel room, watched J and E's new favorite TV show, Dirty Jobs. Including one episode which contained the line, "But we have to, otherwise the rats will take. over." Ok, I dont need to see any more of THAT.

Fortunately, also watched my perennial favorite, HGTV. Which is so 2007. Let's listen in, shall we? "We bought our house for 245,000, but after you help us fix it up, we're planning to sell it for 670,000. Which we have to do, because all our mortgage money is going to the new business we just bought on credit." Seriously, I love that show where the real estate mother and daughter team (Which I cant find a link to right now, but did you know that full HGTV episodes are available online? Oh, my life is so totally over.) come in and tell them what they have to do to sell the house, which is basically to take down or paint over all the stuff they did by following the other 23.5 hours/day of programming, such as getting rid of that brick red wall in the living room.

In old stuff, till working our way through Stargate SG1, and now about half way through season 2, and introduced brother Noah to Amelie, which he had never seen, and which is so good even the 14th time.

Saw two newish movies: Pineapple Express which you are NEVER going to get me to admit how much I secretly liked. Also, Ghost Town, (thanks for the rec, revmother) which I openly like because it has a real sweetness about it, and still manages to be hilarious and not too treacly. Tea Leoni kind of broke my heart, though, as the widow of a philanderer, a part which seemed like maybe a little too close to home, which I know all about because

I have totally read all the way through the most recent Us Weekly and People.

I also read some real books and listened to some on tape in the car. Listened to more Freddy The Pig. Really, will we never tire of Freddy? Evidently not. Am almost all the way through The Castle Corona, also on tape. Read it to your kids. It's lots of fun.
Also read His Illegal Self in one big gulp. I cant say I LIKED it exactly, but it sure was compelling. The man can really put a sentence together, but Peter Carey's descriptions of bodily functions and smells can be unsettling, even for someone as totally into the incarnation as I am. I remember that from Oscar and Lucinda, too, the only other Carey book I've read.
Also reading A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, which I'm enjoying in a shallow sort of way, and ditto with Portugese Irregular Verbs (shallow, enjoyable).
For churchy reading, I'm sort of skipping around in Sundays In America (which is interesting but doesnt hang together enough to be read all the way through) and I'm finishing Though the Fig Tree Does not Blossom: Toward a Responsible Theology of Christian Hope, which I bought one time on the recommendation of the KEWP and am just now getting to. Worth it, by the way, although (true confessions) I did skip that bit about Augustine.

But, Juniper, what about the ECONOMY? What about the ELECTION? Dont you care about the ISSUES?

Of course I do, which is why I cranked up youtube to watch both McCain's speech and Obama's at the Smith dinner.Awesome to see the cardinal in his dress up clothes. (Girls, are we agreed that our Catholic brethren have the best outfits?) And also, watched this other celebrity endorsement, which even though I was raised by wolves and had no TV growing up I can still appreciate the Cultural Significance of.


And really? This whole post is a gigantic procrastination project to distract me from the Big Sermon I'm preaching on Friday night and which is not totally done yet, about which more later if it goes ok. If it doesnt go ok, dont ask me about it. I wont know what you are talking about.