Breakfast at Tiffany's

Last night, I rented and watched Once Upon a Time in America, starring Robert De Niro. I really liked it. It's one of those old school gangster movies that takes place in the ghetto neighborhoods of lower east side in New York City during the prohibition. Not realizing that the movie is 229 minutes long (I actually had to change discs to continue the movie, which also included an intermission), I had wanted to watch it upon learning that its score was composed by Ennio Morricone. The music was beautiful. I can't emphasize that enough. There were scenes in the movie when music alone expressed the characters' feelings and intentions without dialogue or action. Genius. Aside from Once Upon a Time in America, I also recently watched Cinema Paradiso a few months ago for the first time. Morricone has a way of conveying so much with such simple melodies. Even before watching these two movies, I had heard sample clips of their scores, and something about the way they were written

The reunion weekend with my college buddies was wonderful! It was so much fun to see everyone again and share memories and stories from our dorm days. My friends are amazing! Law school, med school, doctoral tracks, job promotions… We’ve all grown up so much, but together again on Sproul, we were just a bunch of kids picking up from where we left off 3 years ago. Walking around campus, I was amazed at how beautiful Berkeley (the campus, not the city) is, although I’ve been told repeatedly that I happened to visit during a week of awesome weather. In short, though it sounds cheesy, I felt so proud and grateful to have gone to school there and met such great people who have touched my life. This summer has been about family and friends. I am truly blessed! I am back in Tucson now, trying to hold on to that feeling before the insanity from living here begins to settle in and affect me negatively. To help, I’ve devised a workout plan and a list of things to do, one of which is to work on m