This weekend was *good*, with one notable exception (more on that later). It's been a while since I've been able to say that honestly and really mean good in the true sense of the word, but this one had goodness all over it. For one thing, the weather was finally really nice. It's hard to believe that at the start of last week (Monday and Tuesday) it was in the teens in temperature, and then when it finally did warm up into the 40s we got rain. Saturday and Sunday were just gorgeous with sun and temps in the upper 60s. It's supposed to be in the low 70s today and tomorrow and I'm really excited. It's pretty amazing how a few extra degrees on the thermometer can improve ones attitude so dramatically.

I officially opened the 2009 hiking season yesterday with a trip to Sweetwater Creek State Park. I've been there before and blogged about it, I'm sure, because it's close and the scenery is really nice. This year the lake (reservoir? I'm not sure) is up a lot more than last year and that's making the falls down the river a lot more... I don't know, fall-y? Fall-ish? Whatever, there's a lot more water volume coming down the falls and it's a lot more picturesque. It wasn't an overly ambitious hike or anything, I just really wanted to get out and go somewhere, but it was nice. I did take a few pictures, but the light was horribly flat (a bunch of clouds rolled in after I got there, that's what I get for being lazy and not heading out the door until 3:30) and I don't think they'll amount to much. There was one shot that would probably be cool if the light was better, one single green pine tree sapling in a huge field of brown wheat - great color contrast, but it was just too cloudy.

In the past four nights I have watched "Slumdog Millionaire", "Doubt", and "Milk". Have I inherited a movie theater? Suddenly come across a cache of movie ticket coupons? Nope. I watched them at home, on DVD. Not bootlegged. I have, let's call it, a source, that I am not revealing. I've still got about five more movies in the stash to watch, I don't remember all the titles but I know one of them is "Gran Torino" which I'm really excited about seeing. It's tough for me to determine which one I liked the best, they were all fantastic. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I think I liked "Doubt" better than "Slumdog". On my own personal movie rating scale of 1 to 64, I gave Doubt a rare over-60 score of 61, with Slumdog right behind it at 60.

I don't know, maybe it was my 13 years of Catholic school and the fact that nuns, especially disciplinarians like Sr. Aloysius, are very familiar to me. My grade school principal, Sr. Margareta, was a lot like her except more physical in her punishment. She was the one who dragged me down to her office by my earlobe (actually split the skin between my ear and my jaw). *shudder* I was impressed greatly by Slumdog, though, with the shooting style and the story. Very modern, while Doubt seemed like a throwback to great plot driven movies of the past. Philip Seymour Hoffman is just amazing.

So the bad news: my mom called me last night to let me know that my uncle (uncle by marriage, my dad's sister's husband) has espohageal cancer (warning: unpleasant pictures in the link). He's a hell of a guy. He's an amazing dad (they bore two of my cousins, a daughter and son who are both grown and through college and are both incredible people), a really, really nice guy, and he would do anything for anyone. With my own parents divorced I've always looked to him and my aunt as the prototypical successful married couple. They are in their late 50s and still the hippest couple of people in that generation that I know. They have fun and they have fun with each other. They are affectionate with each other and just have a parenting style with their kids that I've always hoped I could emulate when I get to that point in life. It's a relatively rare type of cancer and I think they're still scratching their heads about any risk factors he might have (none seem apparent except perhaps GERD - he's a lawyer and I can see him having a high stress factor). He lives a very healthy lifestyle and is otherwise in good shape. He's three weeks into his first round of chemo and radiation and is suffering greatly. It breaks my heart. My mom mentioned they found evidence that the cancer had gotten to some adjacent lymph nodes. They are going to see some specialist at UofM tomorrow and will know more after that. Five year survival rate for esophageal cancer is less than 5%. I'm having an especially hard time with this, I guess because he's so young relatively speaking.