Films and playgrounds and shiny cats

It’s been a busy weekend.  Yesterday afternoon I went to another film festival film, The Tale of The Princess Kaguya.  A lovely animation from Studio Ghibli, based on a Japanese fairy tale.  As with everything Studio Ghibli, a visually wonderful film, plus it’s always so interesting to see fairy tales from other cultures – they never follow the structures that seem so right and natural to our Western-encultured eyes, and the embedded moral lessons are very different than you’d find in a European fairy tale.  A good reminder that what seems “normal” is very much a subjective thing.
Harvestbird and I had planned on going to another film in the evening, Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?, Michel Gondry’s documentary/conversation with Noam Chomsky.  The timing wasn’t going to work out for her though (because: children), so my revised plan was just to go on my own (how could I miss a film on Chomsky after I spent half of last semester debating the validity of generative linguistics?), but then I got a message from her on Friday saying that the film had just shown up on their <*cough* not Netflix because we can’t get Netflix in NZ and of course nobody would ever use a proxy to pretend to be in America and acquire illicit access that way *cough*> queue, so would I like to watch it with them at their place instead.
So a new and improved plan was born, and we spent a very enjoyable evening eating way too much junk food and watching the film, with the bonus that we could pause it for critical comment whenever the whole “Chomsky as Elder Statesman of Linguistics who must be listened to with awe even when he’s making pronouncements on things way outside his field” thing got too much for us.  Followed of course by long and in-depth (and only slightly whisky-fuelled) discussion on the film’s merits and philosophies.  It was a very late night!
Then this afternoon, Harvestbird, the elder mini-Harvestbird, and I went out to Tai Tapu to explore a promising crafty-type shop (which didn’t quite deliver as much as it promised, so I didn’t buy anything), followed by cake at the cafe and some playground time (during which I may have spent more time clambering around on the climbing frame than the mini-Harvestbird did… but only so I could help her build confidence, honestly! 😉 ).  A lovely afternoon – Mini-Harvestbird is always so excited to come on these “only for big girls” outings without her little sister, and Harvestbird and I got to continue our long philosophical discussion from last night.
Somewhere in there I even managed to squeeze in a little time to work on the next stage of my second butterfly.  A wee teaser:

And to add even further to the pretty:

I spotted him in a shop window as I was leaving the picture theatre yesterday, and couldn’t resist.  I’m not sure exactly where he’s going to live yet, so I’ve been auditioning him in various spots around the house.

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