Garden of Thought

I nearly completely missed the whole 'talk like a pirate' thing this year, but thankfully had a fine and amusing time playing around with the Pirate Translator - you can plug the url for any page in and it will translate it into "pirate" - try some of your short stories, especially if they have some good dialogue. Ha!

There was a big pirate festival in Portland, maybe I'll manage to make it over there one of these years. Did any of you have any piratical moments go by this weekend?

Today is the day - we have a scene from a movie called "Untraceable" being shot at my next-door neighbor's house. She left to stay with a friend a few days back and the movie guys have been there ever since, taking out her furniture, building a set in her living room and garage and changing the front of her house. They put bars over the front windows and made a false wall on part of the front to protect her siding - took off her front door and built a fake one to break in, and next they cover up her daffodils and bring in fake snow. Her garage is filled with movie stuff and computers and screens.

We have huge lights covered in plastic sitting around the edge of our yard, fat cables running along our fence and a port-a-potty in the arborvitae, another at the end of our driveway. A big white tent has been erected in my other neighbor's yard, and a boom with lights is being brought in to shine over the hedge towards the scene, etc.

I've had to move our cars to the cul-de-sac next door - thankfully we have a side gate that lets us get there. Our driveway will be blocked until the wee hours of this next morning and their trucks, vans and semis (two of them on our little street look exceptionally huge) are taking up all the parking on the main road. Pretty wild, feels like a circus is invading.

We've been watching the security guys wandering around in a bored fashion over the last three days - it is odd to walk down my driveway to fetch my garbage can and have men with badges on their shoulders popping around the corner of the house to shine a flashlight on me.

There's rainclouds coming in now - my guess is by the time they go to shoot, their "snow" is going to look like mashed potatoes all over the yard. We'll see!

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