Rainy Sunday, bought a rain hat and a lip gloss, plus two CDs. They combined to keep me dry.

Fedward and I went to see The Princess and the Warrior, which is Tom Tykwer's latest effort. It was interesting and not at all predictible. It shares some themes with Run Lola Run, all that meaning of life business, but this latest is both more and less surreal.

There's one moment where the main character, Sissi, is speaking and she looks at the male lead, who has just declared it all meaningless and the subtitle says "Nothing is meaningless." She means it, too. My study of German is so distant that I couldn't tell you how exact the translation is, but it sounded right from her delivery.

I guess you could say there are some voices and some words you can just grasp from their tone; this would be an example of that.

In killing time before the movie, we stopped in at Olsson's, a relatively indie bookstore near the Cineplex. I picked up recent releases by Cake and Eddie from Ohio, plus The Pharmacist's Mate by Amy Fusselman. I have not yet read it, but since I know a number of people have stopped by this here diary because they've searched on "Amy Fusselman," I'll give you an unvarnished opinion when I'm finished with it. Already I like it for being brief.

I went to see EFO and Great Big Sea out at Wolf Trap on Friday night, and I think maybe I've seen enough EFO shows for the time being. It's not that they're all the same, that's not the case at all, it's just that I'm tired of hearing Julie Murphy Wells sound more and more like a cartoon character every time she sings.

You know how singers tend to work with a song, and how when you see somebody sing the same song, it changes over time? In her case it doesn't always happen for the better. It's true that I don't love her voice, and that I wish she played an instrument so she didn't have to sing lead most of the time to make her presence in the band necessary... I just think she could do better with the tools she has at her disposal.

So, the weird part, about half way through the EFO set, it happened that I could no longer stand up. The pain in my legs was excruciating, and after I got home I took four percocets before the pain dulled enough for me to sleep. It persisted into Saturday, but by this morning it was gone. Gone. On the other hand, I had to sit down in the bookstore this afternoon because I was dizzy, and then there were the freaky abdominal pains that felt like an electric shock through my new pancreas.

Sometimes I'm convinced that I have the weirdest life ever. I am sure that some of you share that conviction.

before - after