7ToF: lots to catch up on

Someday I will take a good pic of her, but it is not this day

1. Well, first of all, we have a new family member. She is a shelter kitty named Wynnie, short for Eowyn, and she is a year-and-a-half old. I love having a cat, so this makes me very happy. The mice were getting out of hand over the summer, and we're counting on Miss Wynnie to be a huntress. She's still a little skittish, but she's warming up to us. Now we just have to solve the sibling rivalry with our dog Sadie and we'll be good.

2. In our ongoing battle with the neighborhood foxes, we are losing. Badly. We're down to four chickens at the moment, which brings us to a total of seven that the foxes have carted off this year. It's impossible to hate them-- they're just doing what comes naturally. But I have to admit I shake my head when I see them around the neighborhood because you have never seen such healthy, well-fed foxes.

3. I went back to work, and for the most part, I love it. Only three days a week, which is perfect for right now. Our local hospital is transitioning to a new electronic medical records system, so my co-workers and I comb through old records looking for dates of procedures, etc that need to be transferred to the new system. It sounds boring, I know, but it can be surprisingly absorbing to read through people's medical records. Also, I love getting paid, and this is the best hourly rate I've made since we moved here (although still not quite as much as I was making in NC before we moved here twenty-five years ago).

4. I've been singing in a community choir this year. I've sung in choirs all my life, but usually church choirs. This choir, Valley Voices, works off a semester schedule, so we practice for three-ish months and then have a concert. There are no intermediate concerts, just one big one at the end (well, actually two, because we perform Saturday night and Sunday afternoon). The downside is that we were practicing Christmas music back in September when I was definitely not in the mood. The upside is that we can tackle difficult music because we have enough time to work on it. The concerts are this weekend and I'm looking forward to them. If you're local, look us up on Facebook.

(I know some of you are never going to appreciate superhero movies, and if that's you, skip the rest of this and see you next week, because not one, not two, but THREE of my things this week are about superhero movies.) 

5. The Thor-Loki movies are definitely my favorites of the so-called Marvel universe, so in preparation for Thor: Ragnarok we went back and watched the first two Thor movies and the first two Avenger movies. The first Thor movie and the first Avenger movie were better than I remembered, and the second of each was worse than I remembered. There are two reasons I love the Thor movies: Idris Elba and Tom Hiddleston. I'm not usually one to root for the bad guy, but Tom Hiddleston is just so good as Loki.

6. Then we finally went to see Thor: Ragnarok. I assiduously avoided spoilers and reviews (having been told by a friend to do so), so we went in without knowing what it was about--although I did know that Ragnarok is the Norse version of the apocalypse, more or less. I had no idea that Cate Blanchett was in it, for example. So the best part was that it kept surprising me. The second Avengers was kind of a yawner, honestly, especially when it's the fourth Marvel movie you've watched in a week, so it was a bit of a relief that Ragnarok was so much fun. The humor was good, but maybe a bit overdone. And I do wonder how they're going to play the changes they made to Hulk's character in future movies. But other than that, I loved it. I didn't miss Natalie Portman (to my surprise). In fact, if it weren't that I was a bit disappointed by the ending, I'd say they knocked it out of the park. SLIGHT SPOILER COMING-- skip ahead now if you want-- I really thought Thor was going to step aside at the end and let Valkyrie take the throne. That would have made it just about perfect. I don't know anything about the original comics, though, so maybe that's just too far out there.

7.  It occurred to me that Ragnarok is actually a pretty decent movie about post-colonialism (colonialism being a catch-all term for the period in world history when all the major powers believed they had a God-given right to rape and pillage indigenous societies as they spread their empires). When Hela talks about how the wealth of Asgard is based on destroying cultures throughout the nine realms, she's saying words that could be said by the rulers of Spain or England or Portugal, or the United States if you look at it from the perspective of the Indians. This could be an entire series of posts, but maybe I'll stop there since I'm not nearly smart enough for that. But it definitely adds a layer of self-awareness to this movie that wasn't there in the others. So, bottom line: all thumbs up from our house.

Have a great weekend. I'm headed to Texas next week to spend some time with my mom who had surgery this past week, so you probably won't hear anything from me for awhile.

Two years ago on To Square a Circle: Re-Thinking Self Care. Four years ago on Aunt BeaN's Third Blog: Odds and Ends, because it's too cold to do anything else. (I'm shamelessly stealing this idea to link to old posts from Modern Mrs Darcy.)