relaxation

aah. I stil have one final left, but am taking the time for some nice TV time and relaxation.

Dork that I am, I was very excited when I got home and turned on the TV and found a wonderful episode of Scientific American Frontiers about Obesity...I think it was a repeat, but was really quite informative, even for someone who is studying these things at the graduate level. The best parts were a food lab studying children at Penn State and a segment about the traditional diet of two tribes in the SW United States, one of which was the Pima, (I forgot the name of the other one), and how the traditional diet of plants gathered from the desert prevented diabetes in this population supposedly genetically predisposed to diabetes through the "Thrifty Gene." I enjoyed Alan Alda asking one of the elders "What are the ways in which this food connects you with your culture?" It was like a little food anthropology experiment gone PBS. Heaven.

Anyway, yeah, I said... I'm a dork. It's really nice to have some downtime to one's self. As this semester is coming to a close- I only have a statistics take home final remaining and then I'll be heading down to New York on Sunday or Monday.

I just saw a commercial for Freedom Writers, a new movie opening in January, and even the trailer made me tear up a bit. Looks great--- It supposedly takes a place in Long Beach, where my roomate is from- she has told me tales of great diversity in the district, I think this movie, which is supposedly based on a true story, portrays a different version of that story, although I'm sure it wasn't actually filmed there.

Which brings me to mention that there's an insane number of movies out right now, or that have been out in the past month- Usually, I'm reluctant to see anything in the movie theater more than 2 or 3 times a year, but there seems to be a turn towards actually making good movies.

I really wanted to see the Last King of Scotland, as well as Fast Food Nation, although I'm not sure those are playing anymore. Then there's Borat, Babel, Volver, 3 Needles, Blood Diamond, and now this new film...oh, and Bobby looked pretty good too.

Any suggestions on how to choose, now that I will be finding myself with a bit of free time? Recommendations for light reading would be great as well, although I definitely have a list in my head and lots of NY Times to catch up on....hmmm...oh, to not be a student again....

Update 05|05|07: I just discovered this wonderful report on the study of traditional Tohono O'odham foods, the featured subject on the Scientific American Frontiers show above. Read for more information...