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foreign mail day Yesterday was foreign mail day for me, but I didn't know it until the day was nearly over. Right before I left for work I stopped at my mailbox at the side of the road and found two small packages with foreign postage marks. One of them was from Thailand and the other was from Spain. It was a nice surprise and I took both of them with me to work. The package from Thailand was a DVD copy of The Shipping News that I had won in an online auction. I had read the novel years ago and loved it. As for the movie I bought it without having seen it, which is not something that I do often if at all. So once my usual tasks at work were done, I watched about two thirds of the movie at work and wasn't disappointed in my purchase. I had known ahead of time that one of the daughters from the book had been eliminated from the movie and that was fine with me. Movies in general have to compress books as much as possible and deleting a character is one of the easiest ways to streamline a story. Obviously the other daughter made sense in the book, but I guessed that a movie could be made without her. Besides I had a feeling that the strong cast of Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett were reason enough to make the movie worth seeing more than once. Now that I've seen the whole film, I know that I was right. Not only were the right casting choices made, but the scenery in the film is perfect for the tone of the book. As for the package from Spain, it was a travel guide book about Andalucia that I had requested online. ... I probably spent an hour with Nicole before I left work this morning. Maybe I was trying to stock up on quality time since I won't see her again until Thursday night Friday morning. ... With little effort on my part, I got just the right amount of sleep this afternoon to still have a full Sunday. With my homework for Monday already completed I could simply relax and enjoy the day. For me this meant spending an hour or so out on my deck drinking a beer and watching the sun set. Now for some people that might not be that much fun, but I can't think of the last time that I could do something so simple and peaceful. That hour or so was enough to offset any stress that might have lingered from last week.
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