the weekend sure flew by. it was good, just too short, and that’s saying a lot considering it was three and a half days. so what happened? lessee:

there was lots and lots of loafing around, doing nothing.

saw wall*e. love, love, loved it. of course, my favorite character was m-o. *squee* such a subversive little story in there along with all that heart and pixar’s gorgeous animation.

saw wanted the following day. eeek! i’ve been watching so many actiony-comic booky movies lately that all the cursing and blood and violence took me by surprise. i forgot we were going to something rated r instead of pg-13. oops. liked it a lot, though. sometimes ya just need to watch angelina jolie play with guns. the concept was pretty cool, too.

watched a couple of episodes of doctor who. the return of sara jane and k9! this show continues to be fun. as i said to curly, this is like finding buffy all over again. it’s not star wars or lotr, not epic or earthshattering. just a fun jaunt to a new universe and i’m enjoying the ride.

started reading julia child’s ‘my life in france’ even though i’ve not finished ’splinter of the mind’s eye’ yet. somehow all i can hear is her voice in my head, guess having watched that show in my formative years just made her voice and personality stick but good. her descriptions of everything are making me fall in love with france from afar. it all seems so magical.

so what else? uhm…

i sewed this little fabric basket, but somehow got things all crossed up a couple times and while it’s still cute, it’s definitely full of fail. i’m going to simplify a few parts of it and try again soon. pictures will come when i get it done properly.

i also spent a huge amount of time sifting through my itunes library. i’ve got somewhere between 12 and 15 thousand songs on my hard drive, not including podcasts and it’s been a while since i went through the whole list. made a couple of playlists of some stuff i’ve not listened to in a while. also noted that there is a ton of stuff in there that i’ve never listened to at all. if i had a way to have it all with me (say, one of those huge, 165gb ipods) i could make more progress. as it stands, i have to copy folders of stuff to my portable drive and then… well, let’s just say it gets a bit cumbersome and i tend to pick the stuff i’m more familiar with instead of something new. the cheapest option i can see is a larger portable drive. i’ll have to think on that.

i’m also making some moves to get my visual art stuff up and running again. don’t know when anything will actually be produced, but i’m starting to work on my foundation again. going through tutorials and starting to pull raw materials together to use as stock for digital work. if i don’t have any direct ideas right now, that’s fine. as i’ve said a lot recently, i’m in an absorption phase. i’m watching and reading lots of fun stuff as well as gathering and improving on my skills with the tools i have at my disposal.

and thanks to the tai chi, i am perfectly at ease with this. i’m not churning out new words or pictures, but i am relaxed and mostly at peace. i don’t feel as stressed or pressured as i usually do, a vast improvement in my opinion.

and on that note, i’ll get back to work here.

wallpapers, that is. a week or two ago i started making wallpapers again. just fun stuff for something to do at work. they’re all kind of improvised, this is just me playing with photoshop to see if i can break some of my old, stale habits and find new ground.

anyway, click for the big versions and take any you like. oh, and they’re all in 1600×1024 format.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

things are much better than they were a few days ago. i did a full 50 minutes of tai chi and felt a bazillion times better after that. gradually my usual vim and vigor has returned.

unfortunately for our little band of bohemians, dear curly came down with a stomach virus thursday evening. we didn’t know what it was until after a friday morning trip to the emergency room. four hours of waiting later and she came home and curled up on the couch.

sadly the rest of the weekend plans were then put on hold. we were supposed to go see wall*e and take a trip into the city to the museum of natural history. neither happened. instead we had burger king for dinner last night and watched ‘attack of the clones’. weird choice, i know. for whatever reason the flick struck me as particularly funny last night and we ended up making fun of large portions. yeah, that would be just about every scene where hayden christiansen makes an appearance. i swear his biggest influence has got to be kevin costner. despite all the unintentional humor, i still like the movie. the fight scenes were still cool, after all. and i loved dex.

let’s see, what else? cleaned my room pretty thoroughly. it had gotten a bit out of hand of late and required actual, honest-to-goodness dusting. i than took a quick swing through the bathroom as well, made a pot of soup because i’m being a lazy cook at the moment, and then did a bit of sewing.

now i’m ripping through these updates and later there shall be some doctor who. not exactly the weekend we planned, but i must admit that i’m enjoying the relaxed pace.