Lueders Haus Blog

Caught the evening showing of the new Woody Allen movie, Cassandra’s Dream, at the Harvard Exit. Like Matchpoint, its a thriller set in London. Its good but not as good as Matchpoint, which I would say is his best movie since Mighty Aphrodite. There is something about Allen’s skill as a writer or director that lets him craft great suspense. If only he could have found a role for Scarlett Johansson in this movie. According to Wikipedia, his next movie is set in Barcelona and includes Scarlett and Penelope Cruz, good tastes.

Got up early on Saturday and headed up into the mountains for some more cross country skiing. We arrived at the Cabin Creek parking lot around 9:15am. Either because of the cloudy weather or the earlier hour it was nowhere near as crowded as last weekend. Due to some mechanical problems it was groomed but no tracks set for us classic skiers. We skied the Viking loop twice before heading back down to the Snoqualmie Brewery for lunch.

Last week we welcomed a new member into our family, a TiVo. It has been recording our favorite shows ever since. Now I can watch “The Daily Show” after I get home from work instead of staying up late. (Yes, now that I’m a few weeks away from the big 3-oh, eleven is too late.) Tonight it is going to record “The Biggest Loser” while we might watch last night’s “No Reservations”. It found the “Charlie Rose” show for me since I can never remember when it is on. The “TiVo suggests” feature is a bit weird, it has decided to record more “South Park” and “Scrubs” then I will ever watch.

I’m glad to see my home state senator do so well in Iowa tonight. I’ve been reading lots of the pre-caucus news coverage over the last few days and most of it is pretty slim on actual content. I think the best piece I’ve read was David Leonhardt’s last column. He writes in depth about the differences been the candidates health care plans. Which I think is more telling of their general philosophical differences. He ends with a slim endorsement of Obama’s plan:

Yet for all of the good ideas Mrs. Clinton has proposed, there still seems to be something missing from her agenda. It feels like less than the sum of its parts. It lacks some of the elegance of the Obama approach.

Snuck in a few more days of fun before we headed back to work on Wednesday. Sunday we got to see Bill Frisell (with Danny Barns) at the Tractor. Monday and Tuesday we headed up into the mountains for our first cross country skiing of the year. For New Year’s Eve we had a nice four course dinner at Tilth but did not stay up for the glitchy Seattle fireworks.