Five Things for a Pre-Retreat Tuesday

1) Tomorrow I depart for a company retreat at the McMenamin's Edgefield Resort outside of Portland. It's an overnight trip, and the resort looks cool and interesting, with art all over the place. jaylake was there recently with radiantlisa and their pictures of the place make it look just lovely. I'll be carpooling down and back with three other coworkers whom I quite like and I expect it will be fun. It'll be work, but it'll be work in good company.

2) Last night's episode of Castle was kind of a nergasm. In a nod to Terminator 2, we've got a double-murder, a suspect who claims to be a time traveler from the future (Joshua Gomez of "Chuck"), a physicist targeted as the Cause of It All (Tim Russ of "Star Trek" in a lovely copycat role of Joe Morton's engineer Miles Dyson from T2), a big, stoic, Germanic type hunting the innocents. And a nice, Twilight Zone-type twist at the end. If you get a chance, catch it online. The ep is called "Time Will Tell."

3) This weekend, in preparation for the coming Thor movie, I rented and watched "Captain America" and "Thor" to fill the holes in my Avengers education. Neither of these movies had any right to be as good or as much fun as they were, but I enjoyed the hell out of them both! I find myself thinking more about Thor than Cap, I think, because of how it ended--with a sort of romantic moment that wasn't at all saccharine. But also because the film made the patently absurd remarkably believable. I suspended my disbelief and didn't second-guess it for a moment. I had a moment or two of hesitation with Captain America, but only a moment or two. Lots of fun. And last night I watched "The Avengers"--my third time seeing it. I was impressed once again with how the director treats Steve Rogers, shooting him and lighting him like he's still a 1940s-era hero, always in sepia browns with brilliant yellow lighting (see especially the boxing scene)--except when he's in uniform. I remain convinced that both the actors and the script have created a canon for Stark/Banner. They're adorable together. It's rare you see two men so blatantly flirt with each other the way they do--you can see their brains sparking off each other--and I love it that the Hulk roars Stark back to consciousness (like waking him with a kiss) and that they drive off together. I loves me my dark-haired, dark-eyed geniuses (even one with breathtaking anger management issues and even if the other is kind of an asshole). ::grin:: Prime, tasty work by RDJ and Mark Ruffalo.

4) Last night I talked with BB, a friend I've known since childhood. I continue to be struck by how different our lives are. I'm not surprised--we were never on the same path by any means. The things we have in common are elemental--where we grew up and the culture there--but other than that, we couldn't be more different. She is a sweet, good-hearted woman and just having a really rough time this year, with family illness all around. I've tendered yet another in a long list of invitations for her to take a break and come visit me, even if it's just for a weekend. As usual, she said it sounded wonderful but will probably never accept, which I regret.

5) My thoughts around the above-noted invitation got me to thinking about getting out of one's comfort zone. It's a challenge for me to do that, but I push myself to do so because I think it's important for me to stretch myself--and it's resulted in amazing travel and wonderful personal experiments. Comfort zones are by definition comfortable, though, and some people--many people--just don't see the need to break out of them. I hope that I never stop pushing myself, even if it's just in tiny increments. When we stop learning, we die.

Bonus! 6) I'm thinking about 2014 and the possibility of international travel again. Certainly there's the WorldCon in London as one option, and fjm has already planted a seed about it that I continue to consider. On the other hand I've been to London twice and there are other places in the world that I want to see (though I surely haven't seen nearly enough of London--can one ever?): Morocco, for one. That idea is really taking root. But I also find myself thinking about Tanzania and the Great Migration (though safari trips are insanely expensive). It's funny. There are all these places in Europe I want to see, and yet when my mind turns to travel for real, I always find myself thinking farther afield. Apparently there's something about Africa generally that I find compelling. Still haven't figured this out yet, though. More thought to come.

Editor's note: When I post a Five Things list, often each entry in the list includes a bolded phrase. Usually, this bolded phrase is kind of the subject of the bullet point. I figure it makes it easier to parse the post and see what might be interesting to read about. I don't know if this is true. But what I do know is that people seem more inclined to respond to my Five Things posts when subjects are bolded than not, which I find a fascinating phenomenon from a usability standpoint.