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The title means that I spent various meetings in my aspect of recovering cancer patient. I am a very classy, cool patient because Humphrey Bogart had it, and he is the ultimate of coolth. Therefor, this ultra-cool recently treated herself to two cancer meetings today, on right after another.

One meeting was working on getting our cancer center to be recognized as a properly qualified center.

The next meeting was about finding additional sources for a fundraiser. These funds will help younger researchers to develop their ideas and therefore become senior researches. Once they get funding from us, they have no problem dragging in more NSA money. So doesn’t that make us feel good? You bet.

That was the last meeting; I needed to get back home and flop down.

Peter has made it back home here this morning, fresh from the wilds of NYC. He has nothing but awful things to say about the airline that cancelled his flight last night for no good reason, but he seems to have forgotten all of that in the reunion with parents and chihuahua.

He and his chihuahua have gone back down the block to his place to get fresh clothes (well, clothes for him, not the chihuahua), and then we go out for lunch. I have no idea where to take him…

Well, okay, Letters from Chautauqua. But I love it here. I haven’t updated as much because, well, nothing happens in paradise, does it? That’s rather the definition of paradise: always the same loveliness.

But tomorrow is the trip home, and to always the same… unloveliness? No, that’s not what I mean. But there will be two cats, and two dogs (we get to take care of Beatrix the Chihuahua for Peter till his return) and whatever stuff else gets thrown our way. So, the usual usual.

No notes from the road, probably.

Buck @ the Stanley Hotel, Estes Park CO, originally uploaded by niehoff

We spent a lovely day getting to and from Estes Park, our daily adventure. Here we are in the cloudy mountain weather outside, on the porch of the Stanley Hotel.

I didn’t think you all needed to see the outside. If you are a horror movie lover, you’ve already seen it. Stanley Kubrick used it for the outside shots of the remote hotel in The Shining. Stephen King actually stayed in the hotel, and got his inspiration for the book from his stay there. He and his family rented a home here in Boulder while he got the novel started.

So go read your books, like good bloggers.

Last night, for Movie Night, Other Patti and Our Friend Sally and I watched the French movie that gave Quentin Tarantino the name idea for his movie “Reservoir Dogs”.

You see, Tarantino, before he became a famous director, worked in a movie rental store. Some (not so very brilliant) guy came in looking for a movie that he had thought was named “Reservoir Dogs.” It turned out that he meant Louis Malle‘s wonderful film, “Au revoir les enfants.”

Quentin decided to immortalize the poor schmuck’s mistake by making it the title of his first big film, linked above. He also honored Malle’s film indirectly, and a good move that was.

“Au revoir les enfants” is a simple story. French boarding school in Occupied France. Two boys, one plain old French catholic one (Julien) (a stand-in, as it turns out, for Malle as a child), and one boy (Jean) who came to the school under mysterious circumstances, and who gets a bed close to our initial hero. They become best buddies. Hmm, the child during wartime is sneaked into a school. Jean is carefully hidden by the priests during inspections. He knows none of the prayers that the other boys have known by heart since they could talk. Julien discovers that Jean’s surname is faked. And the priests won’t give him communion, no matter if it makes him stand out a bit. Not to mention that late on a Friday night, Julien wakes to see Jean praying, standing in front of two lit, smuggled candles, while the other boys are asleep.

One’s ears have plenty of opportunities to become pricked: this is a “hidden child,” a Jewish child sent by his parents to live in safety with strangers, in disguise, before the parents were taken off by the Germans.

One also knows that the Gestapo eventually comes. The head Gestapo officer finds Jean in class, singling him out even though his classmates don’t point him out. They stare at each other for a minute before Jean carefully puts his pen into the pen box and stands to go with the officer, who shuts down the school, finds a handful of other Jews, arrests them and the head priests, and shuts down the school.

In a last packing scene, Jean whispers to Julien “Don’t be upset; they would have found me anyway.”

We last see Julien and the others marched out of the school in front of the lines of other boys, waiting for whatever transport will take them home. “Au revoir mon papa,” the boys shout at the retreating back of the priest. “Au revoir les enfants! (Goodbye, children!)” the priest shouts back, as if all is normal.

That is the last we see of them, and the last we will ever see, according to the voiceover. All die in camps.

I’d write more, but I’m still savoring the end of the movie (and keeping the tears back too).