For the second consecutive day I have iniquitously squandered my afternoon and left myself no time for a serious blog post, but I have to at least tokenly post because Google Photos keeps creating collages from old photos I have in various albums, and I feel I must showcase those commemorations here.
Yesterday Google Photos created this two-image collage using a pair of photos that I evidently took exactly five years earlier on November 4, 2014:
Neither the chrysanthemum in the top photo nor the sorry looking cactus in the bottom photo are alive today.
A frigid Winter wiped out the chrysanthemum, whereas the Easter cactus or Thanksgiving or Christmas cactus ─ we never quite knew for sure which it was, but preferred to think of it as a Christmas cactus ─ finally died off because I stupidly allowed my younger brother to have control of its watering.
He let the plant's soil dry out so thoroughly that when I saw the plant had sorely wilted, the soil had by then compacted into a caked mass that had pulled entirely away from the sides of the pot.
I liberally watered the whole, but it was too late ─ it could not recover.
What was especially sad was that it was the final remnant of a plant that belonged to our mother and had been in the family for decades. The loss was like losing yet a little more of her.
It did not look robust there toward the end, but it bloomed a couple of times each year regardless.
Anyway, here are the two original photos:
Today, Google Photos created another collage that is supposed to be commemorating this day (November 5) back in 2016 when my wife had taken a trip back to her Thailand home country to visit her mother, other family, and friends:
I have not been to Thailand since the year we married there back in 2005, so clearly none of those kids existed back then. Regardless, here are the three original photos, beginning with the left column:
I can at least identify one of the two boys in the background of that final photo ─ the lad holding the pink rod (or whatever it is) as if it were a sword or saber is my wife's nephew Daniel. He is the son of one of my wife's two sisters.
It seems reasonable to presume that the photos were quite likely taken in or very near my wife's home village of Nong Soong, which is maybe a 15-minute drive from the city of Udon Thani.
I suppose that I could now talk about a Christmas movie that I watched yesterday via the YouTube 'app' that is downloaded into our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box.
The movie is the first of a trilogy of sorts centred around an angel portrayed by Peter Falk: A Town Without Christmas. I certainly did enjoy it despite its (Dutch?) subtitles, but it didn't affect me with very much of the sort of emotion that I seek when I watch Christmas movies ─ and that was despite enjoying a can of strong (8% alcohol) beer.
I will have to watch the two sequels before I make a final decision about whether to include them in the two-day Christmas movie binge that has become an annual pleasure for my brother, his girlfriend Bev, and I when she comes over and spends a couple of nights here.
If the two sequels lack the same emotional punch of me ─ the schmaltzy stuff that reduces me to lots of tears as I watch the features while enjoying some drink here by myself ─ then I will not include the trilogy in our viewing. Since I am the only one who knows how to operate our Android TV Box, it is up to me to serve as the chooser of the Christmas movies we watch.
There were lots of grateful comments at YouTube that were left by people who thoroughly enjoyed A Town Without Christmas, and I was surprised by how strongly many of those viewers were Peter Falk fans.
I am 70 years old, so I was a young adult when Columbo was popular. But the character was never a favourite of mine, nd as a result Peter Falk probably didn't register as strongly with me as it did with lots of other viewers.
As for his angel character in this movie, it just didn't work for me. A true angel would not outright lie as often as did the movie angel he portrayed ─ he constantly denied being at key locations where he had previously interacted with the main male character, and he also denied right up front about having had any such interactions with the guy.
To my mind, an angel would not lie so blatantly, and it put me off. False denial is not a Christian trait, let alone one that a true angel would engage in.
Consequently, the two sequels will have to be danged good if the trilogy is going to be among the movies I choose to re-watch with my brother and Bev come Christmastime, and I frankly don't think that's going to happen.
But we'll see.
Note that the lead female character in A Town Without Christmas was not immediately appealing to me, nor was the actress playing her especially familiar: Patricia Heaton. But I soon enough found the woman and actress becoming increasingly attractive, and I was able to empathize with the main male lead finally wanting to have her in his life permanently.
When it at last dawned on me who she was ─ where I knew the actress from ─ I was quite amazed. She played "Frankie" Heck, the tiny wife to very tall husband Mike Heck, in the long-running T.V. series The Middle; and her character was thus the mother of siblings Axl, Sue, and Brick Heck.
There were times in that series when she did somewhat appeal to me biologically, but her character was just a little too irritating. However, in the movie, she played someone far more normal and appealing, and this helped translate over to cement a biological attraction in my old eyes.
I suppose the actress being considerably younger in the movie did help, too. She was just breaking into her 40s in the movie. During the final season of The Middle, she was in her late 50s.
I looked a lot better in my earliest 40s than I did just ahead of my 60s too!
The final thing I want to mention here concerns my activity ─ specifically, walking. I've managed to get out and have a walk before dawn for two consecutive days now. But it has only been possible because I have gotten to bed early the evenings before.
I actually rose around 1:30 a.m. this morning, although I did not leave on my four-mile round trip walk until 4:30 a.m. It was right around 6:00 a.m. by the time I was back and had joined my wife in bed.
I am leery of trying a longer walk quite yet because of concern that the (as self-diagnosed) left tibialis anterior muscle cramping will set in again. The condition struck me 10 days ago on Saturday morning, and I had to walk with it for 3¼ miles before I was back home.
What happens is that the muscle tightens right up and I am unable to rise up onto the ball of my left foot in order to push off to take a proper step. I am forced to walk flat-footed with that foot.
And it becomes more and more laborious doing so. In fact, it is quite embarrassing to appear to be so damned lame.
So for the present, I am not taking on too much by way of walking distance.
Okay, it is time to stop blogging for today.
No comments:
Post a Comment