Relief

 After the catastrophe of last year, this year's Duke-OSU game was... probably as close as I expected, though I would have preferred a little less drama.  At least they won -- despite foul trouble, poor inside play, they won.  Duke finally beat someone; no shame in losing to KU in the opener, but getting beaten by Purdue (good as they are)... ugh.  But this was a quality win against a good opponent, and let us hope that this may continue.

I still feel great, with less coughing and sniffling, even if the voice is raspy.  Maybe I am not as far along in recovery as I wanted; one nice thing about the 7;15 start means I can hit the hay a bit earlier, and if I can stop waking up with low blood sugar...  Alas, alack.

I am now more than halfway through the book I am working on, How Did Lubitsch Do It?, a look at the life and work of Ernst Lubitsch, the great German-American film director of the 20s and 30s.  Funny...I had only seen four of his films (the four on the National Film Registry) but I knew, of course, of his magic with the camera angles and shots... well, now I have a dozen more or so films to see, as the book goes through and discusses them all (even the clunkers).  The nice thing is that with the ones I have seen, it recaps some of his best shots/scenes, and I was like "Oh, so that's what he did."  I particularly liked Lady Windemere's Fan (a Wilde play adapted by him); not only did he NOT use any Wilde quotes as intertitles, but the camera shots to depict certain key plot twists -- blackmails, discoveries of supposed adulteries -- are subtle yet extremely revealing.  And this book is a guide to ten more!

In all the hullaballoo of the day -- which was productive and slightly busy -- I forgot today was payday.  I cannot recall a previous time when such an unimportant detail was skipped.  Such is the way of working from home...