Watching In Bruges in Halifax

Happy, empty, stretching out in front of us morning.

Kitty is gone to work. Little Un is not around this weekend. It's too wet to drive four hours to the island to go mackerel fishing as we had planned.

We are alone at home with nothing to do except stuff we want to do.

Just a matter of remembering what that is then.

First of all, we both slept in until almost ten. Which is unheard of in our house unless you are a teenager.

Second of all, we called the island and extracted ourselves from the fishing expedition.

Then I got myself a nice pot of coffee and read the papers online and tried to make sense of the maze that is the new Facebook interface.

Currently, Himself is bi-locating between the kitchen, where the unhealthy fried breakfast is underway and the living room, where Stephen Harper is standing in the corner rambling on about how a carbon tax would destroy the Ontarian economy. Himself is shouting at his Prime Minister with all the power in his lungs, but it's not working - possibly because Harper is not actually standing in our living room, but on the television which is situated in the corner of our living room.

We were driving home from Blockbusters last night, with In Bruges, of which more anon, when we realised that all the gas stations were wall to wall with queues of cars waiting for gas (with their engines running - what is that about?).

'Shit', said Himself, 'has that hurricane taken out Texas?'

We decided we'd better get gas in case something had gone terribly wrong.

This morning, the front page of the Chronicle Herald announced that the government regulator had used its 'interrupter clause' to increase petrol prices by 13 cents a litre overnight.

I wish someone would explain to me how linking the rise and rise (I mean fall) of pump prices to speculatory activity on the NYSE is the most sensible way to regulate gas prices to reduce rate shock.

Anyhows, we have one car with a full tank of gas and we don't live in Galveston so I suppose we're doing as well as we can expect under the circumstances.

As an Irishwoman, I am used to being gouged for petrol anyways, so I have often felt guilty in the past number of years about how little I pay for it over here in Nova Scotia.

Speaking of being Irish, several times in the last few weeks, a Nova Scotian has sidled up to me at some point during my day and said, 'I watched this great film recently, with Colin Farrell in it. It's called In Bruges. It's about two Irish hitmen in Bruges. Have you seen it? No? You should watch it.'

So we did last night.

Gotta take a short break for brekkie - back in a bit.