Beethoven -- Sym 5

So I had a really nice restful weekend. Watched movies, slept in, exercised a lot. Saturday I did 50 minutes of treadmill, basically jogging until I had to slow down, then walking until I could start jogging again. And Sunday I went hiking for a few hours.

And I hate physical exercise. I get hives when I exercise. If my heartrate gets too high, my heart starts to skip beats. And my knees hurt when I go downhill. But after I've been at it for twenty or thirty minutes, it starts to feel good, and I always feel better after exercising. I didn't make a New Year's resolution, it just has worked out that way. And I'm losing weight while I'm at it, and that's good.

I saw "The Machinist" this weekend. Creepy movie, really good, with Christian Bale. His character hasn't been able to sleep in a year. We know going in that obviously, at some point, we'll have to figure out WHY he hasn't been able to sleep, but it's really interesting getting there. The famous thing about this movie is that Christian Bale lost 60-something pounds for the movie. But it's his acting that makes the movie work. They could get any number of really skinny guys to act in the movie but Christian Bale was awesome. This movie really creeped me out, much more so than most thrillers or horror flicks, because it so marvelously "fleshed out" Bale's character and the environs in the movie... really affecting me.

I also saw "The Shipping News" and definitely want to read the book. I liked the movie a lot, but I could recognise a certain feeling of condensation, like there were markers on the screen for things much more weighty in the book.

Anyway. Today Ariel Sharon is breathing on his own. It's weird, waiting around to see what happens, wondering if he's going to be able to think or talk, billions of people around the world in the same position, really. The news shows are using it as education on strokes, and the different kinds, since he had both in less than a month... baruch ata hashem, rofeh ha'cholim.