This morning the bus arrived at 5:38. This is a lot closer to it’s arrival time in the schedule book. Again, I did not get a good look at the driver. I have no idea if it’s male or female.

So Far So Good
After coming back from my three day vacation I’m happy to report that I still have a job!

Yesterday, at work started off kind of rocky. Brian, called an early morning meeting. Whenever meetings are called I get scared. I’m always afraid that they will say that there will be budget cuts and that they’ve decided to eliminate our department.

This time it was very minor it turns out that someone in our group wanted to change their work schedule and he wanted to know if anyone else wanted to change their schedule as well. Luckily, everyone else was happy with their schedule. Whew!!

Yesterday, I did see Martin Scorsese's’, The Aviator, at Baltimore’s historic Senator theater.

I arrived at the theater at 3:00 but the movie started at 4:30. So to eat up time I went over to this new book store that opened up across the street from the movie theater. They were having a huge sale. Some books were discounted to nearly 80% off. I love to read so I bought a few books. I bought primarily bought classic paperback books. The books I purchased included; Washington Square by Henry James, Jayne Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Daisy Miller by Henry James, Emma by Jane Austin, and The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy.

The one book I was curious to read was Thomas Hardy’s, Return of the Native. I was assigned to read that book my senior year in high school but never got around to it. The reason why I never read the book was that I noticed that my English teacher, Mr. Edwards, had the peculiar habit of reading out loud chapter by chapter, page by page, the books he assigned the class to read. So I thought to myself, why should I bother reading the book if he’s going to read it to us? I believe I was the only student that year that did not bother to read or buy the book. In case you're curious I did pass my senior English final exam and graduate from high school on time.

The Aviator
The movie was outstanding. Martin Scorsese's did another excellent turn as director. Leonardo DiCaprio did a stellar acting job. Cate Blanchet did a dead on perfect Katharine Hepburn. She even nailed Hepburn’s trademark laugh. I find this incredible because Blanchet is Australian not American. I hope she gets an Oscar nod for this movie. I feel it’s already a foregone conclusion that Leo will be nominated for Best Actor.

In case you’re not aware The Aviator is about the early life and times of Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes was born into a wealthy Texas family. His father’s company, the Hughes Tool Company, invented a tri-form drilling head for oil mining. The drill head was vital to the proliferation of the oil industry and is still in use today.

Howard Hughes was a man obsessed with many things, flying airplanes (set a record in 1938 for flying around the world in 91 hours), making movies (The Outlaws, Hells Angels, and Scarface), having a Hollywood starlet on his arm (Katherine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Jean Harlow), and hygiene.

Things I learned while watching the movie that I did not previously know about Howard Hughes was that he owned TWA airlines, the RKO film studio, and was hard of hearing. I of course was shocked to find that he was hard of hearing because I’m hard of hearing. Now if only my parents were billionaires who left me with an empire to run at the age of 24....

Fantastic things about the movie, you get to see Leo’s ass about twice in the movie. The ass shots occur later in the film as Howard Hughes is going through a mental breakdown.

All in all The Aviator is great movie. I would recommend that you see it. However, I do admit that I kind of wanted the movie to end with Howard Hughes hitching a ride from Melvin Dumas...

WHAT I’M WEARING Today, I have on a green multi-coloured v-neck sweater. Under the sweater I have on a marigold yellow long sleeve turtleneck pull over. My pants are blue jeans. My shoes are my usual beloved brown leather lace-ups.