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Our phone is now fixed and people can call us. well, we could sorta kind accept calls, as long as the dialer kept trying and we managed to answer during the first ring. And if the static wasn’t too bad.

I got up late thsi mornign for my morning walk, and the guy was pounding on my door. “Sorry to startle you!” he said. Could been my bedhead as well as the “Eeep!” when I opened the door because he was right there.

By the time I was just getting into it I was passing the post office and a neighbour hailed me. She was off work this week and would I like some company? Um, sure. We walked a bit farther, a bit faster, and a bit better.

And my confounded internet was out almost all morning. We wiped off the dish, rebooted the thing, unplugged it, and still nothing. Finally I said to Ron I was going over to the neighrbours, who recently got the same satellite internet, and asking them if they could get online.

Lo and behold, not only were they onlien right then, their connection was awesome even on their laptop. And they’re on a lower plan.

So after much conversation both at their house and eventually ours, Ron called the number and sat on hold and eventually they said, yeah, maybe our dish really is out of alignment. Of course the connection had come back by then.

Ron had to go, as he had to take the car in for an oil change and some things, but he’ll wrangle some details later. Whew. Load off my mind as I’m just finally starting to see the middle-to-end of my pile of work. 95% of which I do online.

Meanwhile, I updated my flickr stream (see sidebar). I need to tell you about tomorrow’s parade here in our little community and the face painting I’m doing afterwards, plus the conformity we did in lining up flags in the yard. And a deer just crossed the street and I got pics.

Emma is getting as smart as her sisters too. When I said I already put a butt-load of butter on her potatoes, she asked me, “How big a butt-load? Your butt or mine? Because yours is bigger.”

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I took Emma to the movie theater this afternoon, as a treat because it’s expensive and something we just rarely do. Especially considering we’ll be getting the DVD even if we hadn’t seen the movie. In our house, a Pixar movie means an automatic purchase. Emma, and indeed the rest of the family, is a huge fan.

So, we went to see Wall-E.

And here’s where I’d love to tell you what a moving, wonderful story it is, but … I have no words. The words I just typed don’t even begin to describe it. A magnificent film that should receive every award in existence would not even begin to cover it.

Within the first minute, my eyes filled with tears. Ten minutes in I was just trying not to sob. I’m sure any feeling adult in the room was the same. And in the ending scenes it was the same. A roller coaster, swept along in the imaginative storyline, the world - indeed what could very well be *our* world - Pixar has not only done it again, they have blown their previous works out of the water. The competition should be quaking in their boots as anything else is just a cartoon.

The technical details of the animation of a garbage-ridden planet will leave you breathless in its horrific degradation. And this isn’t a film where the pure beauty of a class of professionals pushing themselves to the limit and breaking boundaries is such a joy and awe-inspiring moment. No, it’s the combination that you rarely see; one of fine craftsmanship in both the view and the storyline.

I can barely even express the storyline - the depth of feelings intertwined with what is shown on the screen, the sparse dialog that leaves you welling tears and laughing in the next moment.

And while the irony of it was not lost on me - leaving the theater and seeing the garbage on the floor, overflowing the two meager bins, being assaulted by Wall-E merchandise cropping up in stores now at limited quantities and low prices - there’s still the spirit of Pixar embedded in the file, thumbing its noise and wagging a finger even as it receives funding from its own corporate overlords.

Somehow, we don’t mind, for the creative talents they employ and the stories they have to tell need to be told, need to be unleased in almost any way possible. As long as we don’t fully succumb to the lure of consumerism.

Which, I think, was their ultimate point.

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Our phone is wonky and you can;t call in. loads of static, they’re coming on monday somewhere between 8am & 5pm to fix it.

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Me: “I wonder what else we can have with supper.”

Meaghan: “What are we having so far?”

Me, distractedly rummaging though fridge; “Pork things.”

Smart-mouth; “How about potato things?”

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Especially with Emma. We were at the grocery store last night and she was chatting up the clerk, like she always does. And then I hear her ask,

“Do you know what powers solar sails?”

I’m standing there trying to make sure the clerk doesn’t put meat on top of the bread and simultaneously trying to figure out where Emma heard about this. I’m also playfully guessing the answer.

“Solar wind?” I’m thinking that’s obvious, right?

“Nope!” Emma grins at me.

The clerk and I go back and forth, and eventually I have to remind her there’s no gravity in space. Emma finally ends our suffering by grinning hugely, opening her arms wide and declaring, “PHOTONS!”

“Photons?” I ask, “Seriously?”

I look at the clerk. She shrugs. “Hey, I’ve never even heard of the word before.”

“Oh, I have,” I assured the clerk, “I’m just wondering where SHE did.”

Today, we were over at the post office and I asked Emma if she thought our post mistress might know the answer. We went through the same stream of questions. At the end, Wanda looks at Emma and says, “How old are you again?”

And shakes her head.

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Sarah found this on some online test.

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