banana nut muffins. yet another food i only recently discovered i like. also, butter pecan yogurt which i tried when lana, my dad and i were doing our one day, full blast, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. automobile tour of n. carolina. our ostensible destination was this cute small town where my greatgrandfather once lived and ran a store. he chose well: of all the places we passed thru and stopped, that was the prettiest and seemed the most live-able. one corner boasted that it was the birthplace of pepsi-cola, which i don't drink but do have stock in. (the stock market's a funny thing. my mom's father basically plays for the whole family: he buys us shares as well as himself. every once in a while, he'll present me two hundred shares of some company i've never heard of ["sun microsystems? what do they do?"]. but he chooses well. except for the one time, like thirty years ago, when someone proposed that he buy jointly w/ them the land next to a bourgeoning theme park in orlando. "disneyworld?" he said. "ridiculous. that'll never get off the ground.")

uch -- family fighting downstairs. in nine days i'll be back at skool. ben laughed at me today for being nervous. yes, finally, after three (?) days of unsuccessful attempts to get in touch, he called on the cell phone as i was heading home from tamar's. i missed the initial call but pulled onto a sidestreet, parked, called him back, and sat in the grass by my car for the next hour or so. attracted some strange stares and some run-of-the-mill honkings. it was worth it.

tonite liz and annie (who're home, altho i haven't been able to get in touch w/ them yet) are going w/ lana and me to see annie hall at the NIH film festival. i think tomorrow is willy wonka, which makes me think of (swat)becca. her time is winding down in hong kong -- maybe she's even done. she's heading to the barn on the 27th; ross is getting back around then. gaaa, the future approaches. i should march to meet it, proudly and in anticipation of adventure! i hate exclamation points but the word "adventure!" seems to demand one.

oh, speaking of adventures, adam dad and i saw apocalypse now redux yesterday. for some reason, i liked it better than any time i'd seen it previously. i'm not sure why: i don't think the additional footage contributed greatly to the narrative or to the viewer's understanding of the film. the french plantation sequence was pretty awful. it might be that i've become acutely aware of how important sound is since a.i. aronofsky is a master (maestro?) at using sound to maximum effect -- his work resonates partially b/c of its score -- and a. now is similarly breathtaking.
my brother and my father of course had to fight on the way home about what the movie means. i'm not convinced that it means anything. war is crazy; people when pushed can do crazy things; sanity is subjective; paganism is tempting; wagner makes your heart leap up and applaud in your throat. what else? why am i/ are people so enthralled?