Recover and rehash
I guess that's enough bitching and moaning. I did have a nice weekend, a lot of good and enjoyable things occurred. Like many of my weekends it wasn't overly exciting, but I did have a nice relaxed few days. After finishing up Buffy season 4 on Thursday I finished up Angel season 1 on Friday night, both great series and each thrilled me in their own distinctive way. I eagerly anticipate the next season.
I also discovered on my Friday night weigh-in that I'm down to 215 lbs./24% BFC; which, is a marked improvement after a slight fall back during Christmas vacation. I had gained about 8 lbs. and I was hopeful that it would come off again, and I'm quite relieved that it did. I'm feeling really good about reaching my goals now. It seems all I have to do is keep doing what I'm doing, though I do worry about plateauing, but feel I know what to do if that occurs.
I watched one movie on Saturday, And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself, with Antonio Banderas. I don't know much about the life of Villa and I'm sure that this is a condensed, glazed over Hollywood portrayal of his life, but I thought it was an enjoyable film. The movie covers Villa's life during his revolution and up to his death, but primarily the movie centers around his involvement with using the early film industry to gather support for his war. Not a great cinematic effort, it lagged at times, but Banderas was a hoot to watch and gave a very solid portrayal of Pancho Villia, playing him equally well as both a compassionate leader, and a brutal bandit. The other lead and support roles were well done, but nothing overly impressive, with the possible exception of Alan Arkin playing Pancho's maniacal Jewish machine gunner mercenary. If nothing else, the movie makes me want to go buy a book on Villa and get his full story (interestingly, I found on IMDB that the film is pretty historically accurate and that a lot of painstaking research went into it…cool).
I finished reading two books this weekend, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 by Alfred W. Crosby and Across the Nightingale Floor (Tales of the Otori, Book 1) by Lian Hearn. Ecological Imperialism was a hefty read, I think it took me at least four months to finish it, but it was a very eye opening read as to why Europeans were able to hopscotch around the world; which, no other culture on earth did to their extent. It gave me some new insight as to why our history has played out as it has. Nightingale Floor was, surprisingly, a very fun read and a nice reintroduction to reading for leisure again. It's set in a fictional feudal Japanese setting with all the expected trappings of that culture and environment and includes a nice amount of fantasy elements to make things interesting. I read through this pretty quickly, it was an easy read, but highly enjoyable and I'm looking forward to reading the other two books.