"Friends"

Last week my family watched a great movie called Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. Dustin Hoffman was fantastic in this movie and it really got me thinking about friends. In the movie, several friendless characters are touched and changed when someone calls them their friend.

It got me thinking about facebook. We ask people to be our "friends" whom we have met for a few days and maybe will never see again, but there they remain on our list of "friends". Have we become too floosy with our words?

Who among your facebook friends would you call if you had a flat tire? Who would you call if your boyfriend just broke up with you and you needed to talk, or if you just got a great new job? Who would you hope would call if one of these happened to them?

I don't have an answer, just a thought to send out to the void. I guess, in a way, I should scold myself for opening myself up to the whole world - should I just reserve my thoughts for my real friends?

Blast.

The Mysterious Benedict Society

Apparently I'm on a posting blitz. That is all.

I just finished a book that I wanted to recommend. It is called The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. I actually listened to the audiobook, which in and of itself was a treat. The narrator, Del Roy, was very good, and I'm picky about my narrators.

The book is a children's book, and thus somewhat predictable, but what I really liked about it was that the children in the book were very smart, but not too smart. I've been reflecting on Harry Potter recently and I am frustrated with how...dumb Harry can be. I love the world J. K. Rowling created, but Harry himself is kind of dumb (Don't hate me, Potter club). But in this book, the children figure real riddles out. I'm not sure if this makes any sense, but if you know a middle schooler that is needing something to read this summer, check this book out from the library. I liked it.

I bought a piano

Yep. That's right. A real live piano. No, not an electric one, a real one with strings and hammers and wood.

How, you may ask? Well, let me tell you.

Once upon a time, a broke newly graduated teacher took a job as a mover to help teachers move their stuff out of a school that was going to be torn down. She saw a few pianos sitting in the surplus area and asked about them. She was told that they were going to be auctioned off online. She scurried home, found the website, and after much hemming and hawing, bid on the piano and ended up winning it.

That is the story. Today I made some cookies, bribed some manly friends of mine with muscles and a truck and moved it from the school to the house I'm going to be living in in the fall. (Did I mention I'm living in a HOUSE in the fall?)

So that's the story of my piano.