Hey, Paul

Start the day off early enough for some alone time with Paul Newman in Hudsucker Proxy, and you can't go wrong. Not if you're an Ange, anyway. I watched Road to Perdition the other day and realised that I just love watching, and listening to Paul Newman. Because the other big piece of viewing in our place of late has been Cars. Trying to interest Sweeney in the person behind Doc Hudson is a futile exercise.
And I have to admit that I wasn't any sort of George Clooney fan until I watched Fantastic Mr Fox. Okay, until we had Fantastic Mr Fox on near-constant play for about a month. But now I've watched a bunch of his stuff and I'm in his thrall. Mostly for the ugly roles - O Brother, Where Art Thou and Syriana - but also the gorgeous, smooth stuff - Ocean's Eleven and Michael Clayton. And Solaris. I thought he was lovely in Solaris.

In other new, Sweeney's horrible chest seems to be clearing up, but he has an almighty coughing fit every time he runs anywhere. We spent a few hours today clearing some land around where the O'Neills are building a monument for Sweeney's grandma. Beautiful, looking out over Ngaio Gorge. Hateful asparagus weed. Gorgeous seeing Sweeney climb and climb and climb up a steep, steep bank, calling to us that he was higher!! Higher!!

And he squeezed in two trips to the zoo over the weekend, with various uncles, his cousin Harper and his pal Jackson. He told me he loved the chipmunks lying on the rocks, which I thought was a strange habitat for chipmunks, until we put it together that he really meant chimpanzees.

As Sidney J. Mussburger would say, sure sure ...