About Schmidt

I continued the movie marathon madness by seeing About Schmidt. It's well worth seeing, but you might want to pick the mood in which and the company with which you see it. Much of the movie is very bleak. The end had me fighting tears all the way out to the parking lot. It's possible that the movie impacted me more strongly because the last couple of years have been my own About Schmidt movie; it resonated.

Unfortunately, there were a bunch of teenagers in the audience who thought the whole purpose of the movie was to laugh at Schmidt (et al). They'll learn....

I'm planning to see Catch Me If You Can and Adaptation on New Year's. They're coming out with still more movies that sound interesting. Make it stop! Well, not really.

Kids are the spirit of Christmas

In About Schmidt, a child sponsorship organization called Childreach is featured prominently. I could've sworn that it was a real organization, so I did an Internet search when I got home. Sure enough, I found their web site (http://www.childreach.org/.) I've received mail from them in the past, and intended to sponsor a child "someday", but "someday" never comes. So I looked at the pics of the kids on the site, and I'm sponsoring an 11-year-old girl from Albania. Now I'm trying to dig out pics of me and the cats (the cats being way more interesting to an 11-year-old girl -;)) to send her. Mom, were you ever able to get a picture of Nima?

Hmm, it just occurred to me that if I could do a flavor of "a day in the life" for her, she might find it interesting.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to participate in the Family Giving Tree at work. It's an organization that matches gifts for needy kids with donors who buy the gifts. Last year, I did volunteer work sorting gifts for them. Many companies in the Bay Area participate. (I was annoyed by the Lab's web site, which suggested that we participate "because the companies involved in the program have a friendly competition going" (or something like that). Only in Silicon Valley would competition be one of the spirits of the season.) This time, I decided to buy a gift for a kid. Most of the requests, however, were for very specific toys, and I was really short on time to go look for them. (This was the week that I had a lot of homework for class.) However, I found a request from a 12-year-old girl for a blow dryer and "hair accessories". I knew that I could find them at WalMart.

It was a blast. I spent a lot of time agonizing over the best blow dryer to get. I spent even more time agonizing over "hair accessories", hoping that I didn't pick something that she's think was too dorky . I finally got some hair clips and such that had the stamp of Seventeen magazine, and figured that
Seventeen magazine is probably pretty cool to a 12-year-old. (17-year-olds, of course, won't touch it -;))

I hope that she likes it. It pointed out how much I really wish that there were kids around to buy things for at Christmas. Both the Childreach and Family Giving Tree activities provide a way that I can lend some support to kids without having any.