Last Week of Summer

That's right, summer ends next weekend. Autumn is great, the weather is cooler or at least less humid and the colors are so beautiful! After the dryness, heat and dying flowers of late summer, the leaves on the trees are beautiful!

Another One Bites the Dust
On Saturday, I went to the East Atlanta Strut with some friends. It was a pretty cool time. The sun was HOT, but we had a good time looking at all the vendor's booths, some neat shops, lots of puppies and kittens, and listening to some good music. We had dinner at the Graveyard, then came home. It was around 7, so I decided I wanted one more drink and then go home. We ended up having LOTS of more drinks and go home about 11:30-ish. We had fun, it was different than working in the garden!
It turns out my friends Kat and John are engaged! That's the 3rd couple that I know of this summer that's gotten engaged. There are a few weddings coming up with people in the hash group in the next few weeks. I went through some weddings when I was in my 20's, a lot of my college buddies got married then, and most are still married, all these years later! A roommate in college had a dream one night about all of us getting married. She 'predicted' that Robin would marry first, then me, then her and Kim would never get married. Well, Robin did get married first, is still married with 3 kids. My friend who had the dream got married when she was 40. Kim is a lesbian, so that won't happen. I tend to skew the curve in any type of statistics.

Unmarried America
Many years ago, I heard this organization existed, but never did find out specifics. I was reading an article online and they quoted this group, and I visited their page. Organizing singles is a tough thing to do because most people don't believe they will always be that way. I've seen it happen lots of times, someone starts a singles social group (travel, dinner, etc) , they meet a Significant Other, get married and the direction of the group changes, and they eventually drop out. I don't have anything against marriage, I'm not a bitter Old Woman (I hope I'm not, at any rate!) but reading that singles or unmarrieds outnumber married folks is a real eye-opener. I don't know the demographics of this group, but I personally know more single people than my parents did when they were my age. But then, if I were married, I would know more couples.
Anyway, the point is, as a Single person, I pay higher taxes and use less social services than married people. The article I was reading, and some conversation we had this weekend was about working with married people. As a single person, we sometimes work longer hours, probably travel more, and take less sick time than married people. I know for a fact that I don't get as many phone calls at work as my married co-workers. I don't take time off for sick kids or 'family emergencies' . I have to spend more time on the phone taking care of personal business (automobile repairs, home repairs, insurance and financial business) as I have no one else to do it, and it must be done during business hours. And school vouchers is another topic: If they are going to give parents tax breaks for taking kids out of public schools and using private schools, I should get a tax break for not having kids in schools.

Movie Review
Along the same subject line (I wonder why that is??!) I watched 'sex, lies and videotape' last night. But first, I finally watched the entire movie 'The Usual Suspects' with Kevin Spacey. What a great movie! I had seen the first 1/2 several times, but never the entire movie. I understand why it got all the awards!
I wasn't as enamored of 'sex, lies and videotape'. I thought it was slow, and basically, I didn't get it. I was listening to the directors commentaries trying to figure out what exactly was going on, but I got bored. I understand the cheating on the marriage, but I don't understand what the issue was about the video tapes, why that made such an impact on their lives. Maybe it's a time relevant thing, but I just didn't get it. In the directors commentary they were talking about the pornographic qualities of the movie, which I didn't understand. There was no nudity (you almost see James Spaders butt cheek), the 'sex' talk all took place on the videotapes, which we didn't see. They used some dirty words, a few suggestive scenes, but nothing controversial. It was just a story, and in the end the Bad Guy Gets What He Deserves, but I don't think I'd recommend this movie for anything.
So when NetFlix gets their stuff together and decides to send me my next movie, then we can have another review.

More to come...
As things happen, I'll be posting. Thanks for taking the time to read. You're opinions are welcome but if you have to start calling me names, don't bother, I won't read them. As my Dad says 'Opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one.'