Once.

Once.

Tonight, I sort of blew off a deadline and we watched "Once," which is an amazing film starring the guy from The Frames, music I randomly and luckily stumbled into half a decade ago. Let me just cloud your judgement of the movie right now by telling you it's about an Irish musician. You love it now.

Right before the credits rolled, my eyes welled as I whispered "wow, it started... slow, but holy hell did it suck you in." (And you = me in that grammatical bad habit I like to drag around with me.) Sucked in indeed. It's one of those remarkable but infuriating things, infuriating in a good way, when you're so thoroughly convinced that something is so real that you walk around for days with your mind racing about the story, the characters, the connections. It's more than just wanting to know what happens next. It's just... more.

In one of the special features, the musicians/actors said that they always get people asking them questions about the film as if their characters were really them. That? Is awesome.

I don't want to link to all of the places where you can read about the story or listen to the songs online. I want you to see the movie and hold your breath as they start to sing together for the first time. So much of what made the film so beautiful for me was that huge swell of the music growing from just one person to that one person plus the other. If I had heard those songs a thousand times before, I surely would still love them, but I think they would just be musical things to me, not narrative things.

I have this habit of listening to songs over and over without even really paying attention to the lyrics, just getting lost in the music and the melodies and even the tones of the singers voices. My mind sometimes wanders even before the first word is uttered. It doesn't wander far - I'm still lost in the song. I think part of what created this in me is being a classical musician first before ever delving into song-writing or even having mature tastes in lyrical music. (and another part of it is an underlying attention deficit thing I'm increasingly realizing I've always dealt with). But it's so, so rare that lyrics or the story of a song grabs me first, and when it does, I'm, well, grabbed.

So don't listen to the Once music. Don't go to the myspace page where you can listen to them all. Don't download the soundtrack. Just watch it. Then buy the soundtrack.

Creepy.

Creepy.

I was just coming on here to make a big huge update post because we got our laptop back tonight, with a new hard drive because the old one was unsalvageable and Erik got offered his job back and Ollie is pooping real poops now and giving me kisses and using sign language, but that's going to have to wait.

When I came to blogger, it automatically redirected me to the blogger dashboard, with me all logged in. Logged in! We just replaced the hard drive! The old hard drive crashed! The Mac hipster geniuses couldn't get the data! It was ruined beyond hope! It took CHRISTMAS! Half of Sarah's birth pictures! The Sparrow Baby logo photoshop files! (And: photoshop). But? somehow managed to keep my blogger password or cookie or whatever tucked away in some safe corner? Where is this safe corner and what else might be lurking away in there that I might want? Government secrets? Grassy knoll pictures? Cold hard cash?

I can't get my pictures back but at least I can quickly and easily blog about it. Cest la vie.

That blinking little apple light in the sky.

That blinking little apple light in the sky.

Our Powerbook is currently in the capable hands of this little indie mac repair store in town. (Erik: "they were all dressed alike in black and dark rimmed glasses like it was some kind of uniform.") Also, they might not finish this week because they're all (yes, all) attending the Mac World convention. Good times.

The other night, I went to print out a paypal shipping label for a necklace sale, and suddenly, the laptop just started this weird clicking, like Mac tribal speak for "I'm dying, please put me out of my misery." Then, it locked up, and when I tried to turn it back on, it did more clicking and then just displayed a little folder with a blinking "?."

We just downloaded Christmas day pictures from the camera, and didn't get around to uploading them to Flickr yet, or even backing them up. Please think good thoughts for our little powerbook. And cheap thoughts, too. Our friend Chris said it cost him $1500 to salvage some data from a dead, faulty hard drive.

For $1500, I will restage Christmas morning.

Crawling.

Crawling.

Ollie started officially crawling about a week and a half ago. !!. Big fun.

This also seems to affect his sleep. He'll stir slightly when drifting off to sleep, and instantly surge to the side to try to flip over onto his tummy. He just wants to practice :-). As cute as that sounds, it's really frustrating.

Anyway, I've been a little behind on posting pictures, so without further ado, here's some shameless catching up:

This is a picture from mid December at the Tuttle's house.


And here he is after a bath, looking completely edible. Le sigh.


In a swing, letting out a little yelp. This picture was from early December.


Wearing Lucca's reindeer ears.


Do these cheeks make me look fat?


Most of our pictures these days look like this - him lurching towards the camera strap.


That is all. Flickr uploader crashed like, 5 times while trying to upload these, and we're still stuck in late December.

Hi Luci

Hi Luci.

Happy New Year everyone. We just got home from seeing baby Bryn tonight, and I promptly left the house upon hearing that my playgroup was at a bar in North Park. The mamas, that is. Anyway, Luci made a little remark about the Iowa post getting old, so I promised her a note. Dear Luci, hi. love, Julia. p.s., write back.

Anyway, off to bed. One weak Pink Elephant martini really did me in. I'm tuckered out. More blog posting to come. I always hate posting after I write something Important, because I don't want to follow it up with something lame (figure 1: this post for example). But whatever.

xoxo. Mama needed a drink.