Saturday Tom and I went to the Cleveland Film Festival. It comes once a year. This year Tom’s friend from high school Dave Boyle was showing a film “White on Rice.” The whole experience was delightful. We took the train in, which was actually the first time we had taken the train into downtown. We thought we would utilize the train a lot when we bought the house because it is so close. However, it turned out that our commute would double if we rode into school/work on the train, and we rarely go down town. However, after using it Saturday we to use it more often. It was fun to see a different side of Cleveland than we are used to.

The film festival itself was also very interesting. We watched two films. The first was a very raw documentary-feeling film about a hustler in New York who is suddenly left with a child he supposedly had with a past girlfriend. The film features several story lines of illegal immigrants and their attempts to make a life for themselves in New York and the trails they face. It was a very powerful movie.
The second, White on Rice, was a funny film about a Japanese divorcee who moves in with his sister and shares bunk beds with his 10 year old nephew as he tries to find a job and find himself again after his divorce. The two made a nice contrast.

Other notible achievements from the week were cleaning out our garage of all the garbage we had collected over the winter. The house next to us is being gutted and renovated, and so they had rented a 40 yard dumpster. One morning they asked if they could use our driveway as it would be more convenient for them to get rid of the asphalt they had to tear up to build a new garage. Tom agreed and then asked if we could use their dumpster. It was certainly a great trade for us! It ended up beng quite a task however. The dumpster was huge and so we had to climb up a ladder in order to throw anything over the top- which can be very tricky when you lugging 50 bags of leaves, tile you name it!