'Holiday Tree' Cutting in Darien Sunday

Decorating cookies with Granny

Yum

At Fairways with Juggler

At Fairways cheese counter

More Cookies

Well, we were up a little late, around 7:30 and we have lot to do, nothing we must do, of course.  We are off to a local Diner from breakfast, then pick up a Christmas tree and bring it home to decorate, a fun jaunt for all.  Then, Ramiro and I  are off to Apple to spend mega bucks, for me, to get my storage system on my Mac up to snuff, a new router and hard drive called Time Machine, from Apple, which automatically saves any files, pictures or documents.  Then, a second hard drive to back up the Time Machine in case anything happens to it.  Thus, all my photos from the past 50 years will be backed up and backed up.  Rami is amazing at helping me set up my computer and getting organized but always has a new new idea that costs me more money!  It's good for the economy though.

Yesterday, Beth and Rami shopped, Mitch went to pottery, Tyler had a two hour SAT session with his tutor, Marisa and Evie decorated cookies, I walked Cody and watched Ohio State lose to Kansas, and we went to Fairways, our favorite grocery store and picked up four pounds of coffee, my favorite is called pea berry, a much smaller berry from Salvador.

We ordered a pizza for dinner, and Beth and Rami decided to come home early, so we all watched one of my favorite movies, THE VISITOR, the story of a professor who has a second home, an apartment, in NYC which he rarely uses.  When he is asked to present at a conference in NYC, he discovers someone has sublet his apartment to two illegal immigrants, one from Syria, the other from Senegal.  A bit of a curmudgeon, mostly because his wife has recently died, he decides to let them stay for a day or two, ends up befriending them, and because the  husband plays the bongo drums, the professor ends up learning how to play and it becomes the symbol of a new awakening for someone who seems to have been dead for the past few years.  They become part of his life when the husband ends up being picked up by police and sent to detention.  Walter hires an immigration lawyer, to help, and the husband's mother comes to NYC to find her son.  The mother and Walter work to save him, and end up developing a relationship, slow and touching.  The movie ends with his being deported, leaving his wife and mother and Walter bereft.  The mother decides she must follow her son to Syria, though it's clear she and Walter have strong feelings for each other.  The movie ends with Walter playing the bongos on a subway platform, something the young deported Syrian had said he always wanted to do.  It makes us see how lucky we are for the most part to be American and what it's like to live in an illegals shoes. All four of the actors are marvelous, understated yet distinct, each interesting and developed.  No bells, no whistles, not a lot of action, just a good story and wonderful characters.  A Tom Mc Carthy film, like The Station Agent and Win Win, his other two films.