I’ll give you a winter prediction: It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.

A quote from a movie I watch over and over again, kind of matches the forecast for this weekend. It’s going to be cold and most likely grey, but I’m fairly certain it won’t last for the rest of your life. But is this quote an indication of the weather, or the ramblings of a depressed man? At the point it is said, I would say the latter.

For me it is an indication that I need to get more firewood up to the house. With weather getting down to the single digits, I want some would that will burn long and hot. I don’t want to have to go outside often to get more wood, and I want to make sure the fire puts out enough heat to keep my heating bills a bit lower.

I have some good wood, but I need to be careful with the wood I bring to the house. There were multiple trees knocked over when the big oak fell. The oak burns very well if dry, but there are other types of trees in the fallen lumber that are not oak. Some burn well, some do not. So while moving the wood, I need to pick and choose the good burning wood.

So there is another metaphor on life. You need to pick the good stuff, the stuff you need to make life warm and comfortable.

May you find some warmth on cold winter nights.

Pictures of that big tree. My daughter stands about 5 feet tall, she is about 15 feet from what was ground level of this tree.

Close Up same tree, same daughter.

Feb 2, Groundhog Day. Any excuse to look for spring. Here we are, just a few days past mid-winter in Ohio, and everyone is looking forward to spring. We’ve had plenty of snow, ice and cold temperatures, and we will have quite a few more before winter is through. It seems like winter just goes on and on.

Of course, I do have a custom for groundhog day. I put in the movie Groundhog Day and watch it again. Since the movie came out in 1993, I think I’ve seen it at least 16 times. I know it is more than that, because some years, when the mood strikes I do watch it over and over again. Seeing that this movie is a looping movie anyway, watching it over and over again is an interesting experience. I wouldn’t recommend that for everybody, but I enjoy it on occasion.

So tonight, I was able to watch Groundhog Day again. I had to split it up into two sessions, since I had play practice this evening, but the custom continued. But this got me thinking. I know there are a lot of movies I will watch again and again at a certain time of year. I will read certain books at certain times of the year. It would seem that I never have time for new books or movies, but I get those in too. Books are easy, I read very quickly and I can get through most novels in a day or two. Movies are a fixed length, so I have to make the time. I do this my not watching many television programs. That gives me time to watch a few movies every week.

So any movies or books you watch over and over again.

[poll id=6]

Continuing with AFI’s list, I will now comment on the fantasy world. This genre is by far the one in which most people have to leave their logic and knowledge of the ordinary world at the doorstep and embrace their inner child. This was perhaps my favorite segment (as they did not include the 10 best musicals). But here goes:

• Big (I believe that this Tom Hanks film re-started the whole kid-transforming-into-an-adult-overnight craze)
• The Thief of Baghdad (silent movie that I cannot comment on)
• Groundhog Day (? OOOOKKKKKK…. Why?)
• Harvey (classic Jimmy Stewart film… near and dear to one of my frequent readers)
• Field of Dreams (they built it and they did come again a bit of a ?)
• Miracle on 34th Street (the original in glorious black and white which I have commented on before)
• King Kong (1933 big scary monkey climbs Empire State Building and go boom)
• It’s a Wonderful Life (another Jimmy Stewart favorite at Christmas time…. once in your life did you not want to know the world would be like if you were never born?)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (one of the most faithful book to screen adaptations ever conceived)
• The Wizard of Oz

In my humble opinion, the classic Oz deserves to be at the top. I dare say that this movie has lived on for over seventy years and I do not know of anyone who has never seen it. If there is they must live under a rock. Speaking of rocks, there is at least one film that should have been in there somewhere. The Neverending Story is a fun fantasy (featuring Rock Biter) for children of all ages full of wonder and far away worlds. Also, where is The Princess Bride? The inclusion of Groundhog Day just made me scratch my head. How does one get on to vote on this A.F.I. list anywho?

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Ok, I’m exaggerating just a tad on the number of snow days we’ve had, but that’s what it feels like by now!  I suppose with the new dog in the house, today was as good a day as any to have yet another snow day, but my poor husband is going to go crazy from shoveling all this snow!  It’s become almost a daily chore – just what he needed!  And, the weather guys are saying that they’re tracking ANOTHER system due here on Friday!  They won’t use the dreaded 4-letter “s” word though, it’s kinda funny.  They’ll just call it a “weather system” and “let’s see what it drops on us” – as if there’s any chance it will bring something other than snow (that dreaded 4-letter word!), yeah right.

Hubby and I braved the weather last night to venture out to a movie for date night.  Our date night is once a week on Tuesdays, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s snowed for the last like, 5 Tuesdays in a row, no exaggerating this time!  Last week,  our movie theater was CLOSED because of the snow – that stank.  Instead of having a nice dinner, we got snacks at KFC cuz we were running late for the movie, and then we got there, and they were closed!  So sick of this weather already!  What did that groundhog say again?!?  So anyway, we ventured to a neighboring town with a movie theater that’s a little bigger; that way we could be assured it would be open.  We saw Vantage Point, an action movie with Dennis Quaid, Forrest Whittaker, and Matthew Fox.  And speaking of Groundhog Day, if you’ve seen that movie, even though it’s a comedy, Vantage Point actually had something in common with it in that they kept showing the same scene over and over.  The point of the movie was to take the audience through an incident of terrorism, one persepective at a time.  Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox played secret service agents, and Forrest Whittaker was a tourist bystander who happened to catch everything on video.  It was a satisfying action movie – MUCH better than Gone Baby Gone…  I might actually say it was kinda like Groundhog Day meets In the Line of Fire, if you’ve seen that movie, since Dennis Quaid’s character had been through an assassination attempt on the President before and was jumpy – just like Clint Eastwood’s character in In the Line of Fire.  If you like action movies, this one won’t disappoint.  I was actually surprised there wasn’t a little more to the plot, and I can’t believe the constant violence earned it only a PG13 rating.  But when I think about it, I suppose you could see the same type of violence on tv any given night or even on cable during the day – it’s just what has happened to entertainment these days, I guess.  Vantage Point has constant action, the movie is never slow, and seeing the action from the different people’s perspectives (vantage points 🙂  get it?) was interesting and not at all confusing like I was concerned about.  I found something at the end of the movie incredibly hokey, but then again, that’s common in action movies, you gotta appreciate them for what they are.