The day was cold but sunny, and proved ideal for bacon-lettuce-pickle-mayonaisse sandwiches (technically "snerches") devoured in front of a television. (I used vegan ingredients for all the normally non-vegan elements in that list, and didn't feel like I was doing without). Gretchen also made a sandwich and it was no snerch. We ended up watching the movie Up, the Pixar-Disney animation about the old man and the young boy who fly to South America in a house lifted by helium balloons (we'd borrowed one of the pre-release "for your consideration" copies sent out to those who cast votes for the Oscars). I normally have my doubts about CGI films, but Up was mostly lovely, particularly the touching montage that hurried through the life of the old man and his woman, who dies just before the non-montage scenes began. The little kid who shows up soon thereafter is mostly annoying, in that way that people who choose not to have kids find annoying about the children of their child-having friends. But later still in the film there is a dog named Doug who has the ability to talk with the assistance of a babel-fish-style collar, and the things he says are exactly what you'd imagine a dog would say if only he could talk. (I perform the functions of such a collar routinely around the house, with the same earnestly-sad, slightly put-upon tone, but with more falsetto.)

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