Potpourri

Does anyone remember on Jeopardy! when they'd have that random column labeled 'potpourri'? That's what this is.

1) Someday I'd like a digital camera. To wit: about one week into my blog career, I took this photograph (right) from my kitchen window. It's a female mid-sized falcon called a merlin (Falco columbarius), with a dead sparrow in its talons. And I remembered at the time thinking, this will be cool on my blog. And then it took three months to finish the roll of film.

2) I don't want to jinx it, but I think the seasons are changing. I won't even mention the word in full, but perhaps – perhaps – spr*ng is here. It's seven degrees here. I'm not sure what that is in fahrenheit, maybe twenty knots. The geese are back at the marsh, and this morning Squeaky – the headache-inducing ground squirrel that hangs around outside my office window – popped up.

3) I stopped writing movie reviews for awhile because they make me think too hard. But for the record, we recently saw Pedro Almodóvar's Bad Education. I thought it was a nice change from his recent string of estrogen-heavy films, and it satisfied Kerry's hunk fix with a healthy dosage of Gael García Bernal. We also watched a total Venus-and-Mars double bill featuring Steve Martin's The Jerk ("He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!"), matched nicely with a Sylvia Plath biopic bringdown, appropriately called Sylvia. This Saturday we're checking out the 2004 Cannes Advertising Film Festival, a 90-minute extravaganza of last year's best commercials from around the world. It's an annual spr*ng ritual for me. My mom took me with her to see them in 1984 and I've been going ever since.

4) My lemons are up. See them again for the first time – here.

5) And the biggie: We are now officially house-hunters. Kerry and I met with our real estate agent Wednesday night and will check out our first potential pads on Sunday. There's nothing like bandying about the prospect of spending thousands upon thousands of dollars – and decades of my life – to make me feel my age. The market here is nuts, but our agent comes highly recommended, and his enthusiasm is contagious. Wish us luck.