My Younger Brother Home the Entire Day?!

My younger brother had returned from the bar early last evening before I had published that day's post here in this blog, so I felt obligated once again to sit up into the midnight hour operating the T9 Android 8.1 TV Box that he has no facility with. Otherwise, he is left with basic cable to watch on T.V. ─ or else my youngest stepson's Netflix subscription that my brother is able to access.

I selected a movie to start off our evening together ─ 2017's Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I honestly think that this is the first Star Wars movie I have ever watched all the way through.  

I admit that it was quite entertaining, even if I didn't have all that much familiarity with the characters.

I did not realize it while watching the movie, but one of the female 'bad guys' who was hidden beneath her armour was tall (6 ft. 3 in. or 1.91 m.) actress Gwendoline Christie whom my brother and I became familiar with ─ visually, if not by name ─ when we watched the T.V. series Top of the Lake (the China Girl season); and we're presently enjoying her in Game of Thrones (we are only into the second episode of season three). 

My wife arrived home during the movie, following her long day working at her friend's Thai restaurant. And although my brother and I watched T.V. until midnight, she preceded me to bed.

After I retired, I remained there until finally arising near 8:00 a.m. this morning to get to work on the post I am putting together at one of my six hosted websites. My brother never emerged from his bedroom until around 9:45 a.m., and then he of course soon had the T.V. on.

I did not join him until a little after 10:00 a.m., and my poor wife rose soon thereafter to begin readying for her new day at work and the goodly drive to arrive there ─ she has an 11:00 a.m. start.

It rained a lot overnight, and has done so all the day through ─ quite hard, too. I bet it's cold rain! 

My brother was in no rush to seek his bed rest until 2:00 p.m., so I operated our Android TV Box until then. He had suggested that he was reluctant to head off for a bus to begin doing his usual latter afternoon drinking, but I was still quite surprised to have my own nap and then rise to discover him still to be home and watching T.V. anew.

It is now approaching 6:30 p.m., and I have involved myself with my two blogs ─ it has been too damned early for me to care to be providing him entertainment just because he has decided to remain home for the first time in literal years instead of waltzing off to get drunk somewhere. 

He really needs to learn how to use a computer!

Anyway, I made two posts in my private blog, and now I am making this token post here.

However, I do have a movie I would not mind trying to tune in, so maybe I will put this post to bed.

Homelife Aggravations

As was hoped yesterday, I made it to bed before my younger brother was home from his drinking, even though I never retired until well after 9:30 p.m. But sleep was elusive.

At most, I think that I slipped into a possible three naps before finally getting up again ahead of 1:00 a.m. My wife was home by then following her long day of work at her friend's Thai restaurant; and I had earlier risen at least once to use the bathroom.

I rose intent on working on the post I have begun at one of my six hosted websites, but I would have gone downstairs to consort with my wife first had she not been chatting away loudly downstairs on her cellphone to one of her family members in Thai ─ probably her mother over in Thailand.

Eventually the loud chatter did stop, and I was able to go downstairs and speak with her for awhile where she sat at the dining table snacking and probably involved with her Facebook account. Apparently she had earlier even spoken long distance with her youngest son, who is presently holidaying over in Thailand with a friend.

A second friend had to leave them and begin his solitary return to Canada today.

I returned to work on that website post, and as time wore on I became seriously interested in returning to bed ─ yet my wife was still downstairs.

It was well after 3:00 a.m. before she at last came upstairs, and she then let me know that she did not have to work today until 4:30 p.m.

I remained up until perhaps 4:30 a.m., too short-changed on sleep to care to be going on any walk for some exercise. However, I did engage a 5¼-minute plank. I performed one a couple or so days ago, but I don't believe that I mentioned it in that day's post.

It was definitely nice getting back to bed.

I now forget just when it was that I rose anew ─ perhaps nigh 9:00 a.m., for it seems to me that I felt I would have a little further time to work on the website post before joining my younger brother at 10:00 a.m. for our weekday morning ritual of T9 Android 8.1 TV Box entertainment ─ I operate the device.

However, I was not to find the time to do any post work ─ I found an E-mail from Doug, a cousin of mine who has lived his life in Edmonton. He was just recently forced to retire after working for 28 years in the oil industry, and he said that he was soon planning on visiting a friend in Florida for a couple or so weeks.

Then late in April, he suggested that he might come out this way and finally see my brother and I. The last time I saw Doug was back in 1970 when I was 20 years old, and he was maybe half that.

As you might expect, I took some while responding to that E-mail, and had no time for any further post work.

When I joined my brother for T.V. at 10:00 a.m., I had a movie in mind. Unfortunately, none of the streaming 'apps' that I have downloaded into the device ─ and I tried at least eight of the 'apps' ─ could locate a trace of the movie. Not one source.

Meantime in the 15 or so minutes I struggled with that search, my brother became almost belligerent at me. It came to the point where I almost cancelled all of my involvement with the Android TV Box entirely so as to leave him to entertain himself with basic cable ─ he is too technically challenged to know how to use the Android TV Box for himself.

However, I had a fallback movie, and I had no trouble locating a source for it ─ 2009's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.

My brother does not like to have to think when it comes to movies. However, this movie was very long and involved, and had enough elements that he probably could not help but feel some interest. That was probably the only reason he never openly bitched.

Nevertheless, I do expect that I will hear about it soon enough once he is drunk ─ which he is every day of his life. He is practically beside himself in the early afternoon each day in his eagerness to get away to begin drinking anew in some bar.

I don't care what his opinion is ─ I liked the movie a lot.

I was unable to quite determine just how old the titular character was supposed to be, but perhaps she was around the same age as the actress portraying her ─ i.e., actress Robin Wright. In other words, 43 at the time the movie was released. Still, I did have the impression that we were to accept that Pippa was somewhat older than that.

She's a darned good-looking woman, and in very attractive shape. It was perfectly believable that the younger man played by Keanu Reeves could not help but come to grow to love her.

And for a change, I was happy with the way the movie ended ─ newly widowed Pippa basically riding off into the sunset with her younger beau to potentially explore starting a life together.

The movie ended in the early half of the noon hour, by which time my wife had risen. Normally that early into the noon hour, my brother still wants to at least watch a comedy, but not this time. Without much word at all, he went on up to his bedroom to rest up for his afternoon away.

I had the feeling that he was resentful that he had been 'forced' to sit through the movie.

Well, spare me! I don't want a steady fare of nothing but high-action movies.

With my wife home, I was unable to have an early afternoon nap ─ and I wanted one. But at least I did get out to the backyard toolshed during the noon hour for the day's scheduled exercising out there. That freed me up to later have a meal.

My wife went off at one point to do some shopping for the restaurant, first phoning ahead to place the order ─ probably to Henlong Market (Google map). It was while she was away that I had that meal. I even had to lie down, but my wife returned before I got to enjoy it for too long.

I sometimes marvel how she can go as she does! After she left on her considerable drive to work, I had to nap ─ I was otherwise useless for anything else. I would not have been able to post here without the restoration.

My word, it's almost 8:00 p.m. ─ I have to wind this post up.

I want to present a few more of the photos that were taken two years ago when my wife treated five of her Thailand family members to a holiday in Bali. My wife's two sons even flew there to join the group.

Google Photos just today created a five-image collage from some of the photos I have in a Google Photos album devoted to that holiday they all enjoyed:

My wife is in three of those photos ─ that is her in the large selfie.

The lovely young lady in four of the photos is the wife of my wife's nephew. Since he took a lot of the Bali photos, he of course naturally would feature her. He is the young man at the far left in the top right image ─ that strap across his shoulder is probably for his camera case.

Also in that top right photo ─ and the one at the bottom left ─ are my wife's two sons. The youngest lad is wearing the black t-shirt.

Here are all five of the original photos now:

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My brother has managed to show up already, so there is not going to be any early evening for me. I just got done stating in yesterday's post that he seems to effectively be robbing me of an early evening on alternate days ─ it's almost as if it is being done deliberately.

It is annoying beyond expressing.

Now I am going to have to sit up well into the midnight hour operating the Android TV Box because I am the only one of us who knows how to do so.

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Exactly Two Years Ago: My Wife and Her Family at Pura Tana Lot, Bali

My younger brother seems to be effectively alternating the evenings I am able to get to bed early, and it's becoming distinctly annoying to me. He foiled me last evening by arriving home from the bar considerably ahead of the 9:00 p.m. cutoff that I have for him (which he knows nothing about).

To better encourage his hold onto consciousness, I selected a movie for us to watch via our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box ─ the 2017 feature Kingsman: The Golden Circle. We had watched the prequel just ahead of the weekend, and found this more recent venture to be just as interesting ─ if utterly far-fetched.

It was a nice surprise to see familiar actor Pedro Pascal in the movie ─ we didn't know the actor's name, but we well recognized him from the T.V. series Narcos that we watched in its entirety. And I see that he also acted in Game of Thrones. However, my brother and I have not progressed far enough into the series yet to where his character is introduced.

The movie served its purpose, helping my brother weather that initial period after he first arrives home and is most likely to pass out ─ which he generally does if I only play episodes of any of the T.V. series we follow.

My wife arrived home very late in the evening following her long day working at her friend's Thai restaurant. She was still up after my brother called it a night well into the midnight hour. And when I went to bed just barely ahead of 1:00 a.m., she was downstairs at the dining table immersed into videos on her cellphone ─ she was probably involved in her Facebook account.

I considered alerting her when I was bed bound, but I decided not to interrupt her. It would have been our first converation since she had arrived home and exchanged general greetings with my brother and I.

I cannot now recall if I was still awake when finally she came to bed, but I think I may have been. I had left a bottle of melatonin tablets by her side of the bed for her to help herself to if she found her inaugural sampling of the hormone to be of any benefit the night previous.

I did my best to remain abed for as long as I felt myself able to sleep, but I was having too many extended periods of wakefulness before it was yet 8:00 a.m., so I rose to get to work and lay the foundation of a new post at one of my six hosted websites.

My brother rose within the next half hour.

My poor wife didn't rise until shortly after 10:00 a.m. And even after she showered, she still looked very poorly slept when she left us to tackle her drive to work and her 11:00 a.m. start there.

It had rained a lot overnight and into the morning, but eventually the day was to have some sunshine.

As usual, I sat with my brother from about 10:00 a.m. until late into the noon hour when he decided that it was time for him to seek some bed rest to fortify him for his afternoon departure to go drinking. I also sought a nap; but despite falling asleep, I was awake again not an hour after having gotten into bed. Nevertheless, it was very difficult to rally myself to emerge from it.

My brother was by then also up from his bed; and around 2:20 p.m. he set off to catch a bus. His plan today was to hook up with his friend Greg in Langley. What this should mean for me is that my brother will not be home by his mid-evening cutoff, and thus I will be able to get to bed early.

Maybe I will even manage to get out in the wee a.m. hours to have some exercise ─ a small walk to the elementary school not a half mile from here where I sometimes do some sets of pull-ups on the gymnastics-style rings in that school's playground.

Google Photos has again notified me of its creation of a collage from some photos that I have in one of my Google Photos albums. Just as was the case yesterday, the photos that were selected were from the excursion to Bali my wife treated five members of her Thailand family to during an early 2018 trip she had made to see her mother at the family home village.

My wife's two sons even rendezvoused with everyone over there in Bali.

This is the latest Bali collage:

As far as I can tell, the first image in both columns is the identical photo, but I have not before noticed Google Photos double up like that. 

The setting in the background is Pura Tanah Lot (Tanah Lot Temple), and here are the original photos used in that collage:

My wife is the solitary figure lounging in the Sun ─ probably at poolside wherever it was that they were staying. 

Her youngest son isn't in any of the photos, but that's her eldest son in the tank top. The middle-aged couple are my wife's sister and the sister's husband; and the young lass is the daughter-in-law of the couple.

I came across a YouTube video of the temple ─ you can locate the video here if the link remains valid, and if you have any interest. The video is under four minutes in duration, I believe.

I haven't aught else I feel like talking about, so I am going to shut down here.

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Some Uluwatu (Bali) Photos Taken Two Years Ago

My younger brother failed to arrive home by mid-evening yesterday from wherever it was that he was drinking, so I was in bed just ahead of 9:00 p.m. I managed at least a couple of 'naps' before becoming aware that my wife was in the bathroom following her long day working at her friend's Thai restaurant, and she had left the bedroom light on ─ evidently she had already been into the bedroom without me noticing.

I wear a blindfold and earplugs so that I am not as keenly aware of my environment ─ especially once I happen to be asleep. It helps me to remain that way.

A check of the time revealed that it was not yet midnight.

I heard my wife go downstairs, so I decided to make use of the bathroom, and in doing so was not noticed by my brother who was still downstairs with the T.V. on.

Then after I returned to bed to bide time, my brother conveniently sought his own bedroom, and it still was not quite midnight. Nevertheless, I rose and dressed, and then went downstairs to consort with my wife whom had not been home since late Friday morning when she left for work.

She tends to spend her weekends somewhere in Vancouver ─ such is my marriage.

I learned from her that her youngest son and his two friends are supposed to return from their Thailand holiday sometime on February 11 ─ their flight left Vancouver International Airport extremely early into the a.m. of January 11 to start them on their adventure.

I am curious if he will volunteer access to his horde of photos? It would most certainly be a boon to me, but I will not request it.

Anyway, after spending a fair while downstairs (my wife was cooking), I came upstairs here to my computer to start researching a new post I hope to get begun tomorrow at one of my six hosted websites.

Eventually my wife was ready to finally go to bed, and I was on my own after letting her know that I would be up for some time yet. As I recall, I do not believe I made my return to bed until a little after 4:30 a.m.

During that time, my wife once rose and came downstairs to have a snack, so I broke from my work and offered her a melatonin tablet ─ she has never before tried the hormone. I hope that it yielded at least a little benefit to her.

I did my best to get as much sleep as possible into the morning, but my wife was to rise ahead of me before it was yet 9:30 a.m., so I also rose. I wasn't feeling properly slept despite the time in bed ─ too much of it comprised the interludes between short bouts of sleep.

Normally my wife does not rise until around 10:00 a.m. to begin to ready for her 11:00 a.m. start at work, but apparently this morning she had to do some shopping on behalf of the restaurant at Henlong Market (Google map). I was upstairs, and I could hear her quite clearly where she was bustling about in the kitchen with her cellphone on speaker mode ─ it must have been overpowering for my brother in the living room where he was again watching T.V., but there is very little of interest on the telly at that time of day.

And at 10:00 a.m., my wife was on her way to Henlong. By then I had fixed up my day's first hot caffeinated beverage, and I joined my brother in the living room and was soon enough invited to put the Android 8.1 TV Box into action.

I already had something in mind ─ a documentary I have occasionally (fruitlessly) sought since first learning of it last Summer. I discovered yesterday that it was now available on YouTube.

So I used the YouTube 'app' that I have downloaded into our Android TV Box, and my brother and I watched the feature Artifishal.

My brother is never too fussy when I fetch up a documentary for us to watch, but he did so uncomplainingly. And then when it was done, I tuned in an episode each of two of the T.V. series we follow.

That brought us to the end of the noon hour, and he was ready for some further bed rest before he headed off to start drinking again in the latter afternoon.

We had a fair amount of sunshine today, and the notion occurred to me that had there not been so much cloud floating about, it almost might have been worthwhile to have sat out in the backyard to soak up some of that daylight. The sunshine would have been warm enough for that, but anytime large cloud overtook the sky it would have been too unpleasant to be just sitting out there.

However, the temperatures have been very mild the past week or so, and already plants like tulips and daffodils are pushing a couple or more inches above the ground.

Now speaking of warm climes, Google Photos notified me today of its latest collage. Five photos were used in the collage, and were taken from the Google Photos album where I have the photos filed that were taken two years ago when my wife treated five of her Thailand family members to a holiday in Bali. As well, my wife's two sons both travelled there to hook up with everyone. The lads had not reunited with any of their Thai relatives since 2009.

This is the collage:

From research I have done, the location seems to be the Uluwatu area of Bali.

I have the five original photos, so here those are, beginning with the three in the left column. The first photo features my wife seated with her youngest son, while the older lad has my wife's sister ─ i .e., his aunt ─ draped onto him:

All four of them are in the next two photos, along with my wife's brother-in-law (husband of my wife's sister), and the daughter-in-law of the same sister and her husband. The photographer was my wife's nephew, so he was unable to be posing with his young wife:

However, this is him up close in the next photo, along with his wife and his two cousins (my wife's sons):

And finally, that impressive stretch of cliff with that walkway all along its edge:

Before I close this post and publish it, I just want to declare how much I am enjoying the Windows 10 free upgrade that I took advantage of yesterday, finally and reluctantly giving up Windows 7.

My old computer thus far has not been showing any complications with having this newer and 'heavier' operating system downloaded into it to share space with wherever my Windows 7 now lies buried and inaccessible to me.

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I Successfully Upgraded to Free Windows 10 (From Windows 7) Today!

It can be a little annoying when my younger brother shows up ahead of the 9:00 p.m. cutoff that I have for him which he knows nothing about.

He goes out drinking every afternoon; so if he is not home by mid-evening, I will have nothing to do with him where T.V.-watching is concerned. I am the sole operator of our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box, so he must find alternate entertainment on T.V. if he is late showing up, because I refuse to risk the strength of his hold on consciousness by tuning in an episode of any of the T.V. shows we follow.

If I do risk him and he passes out, then I must re-watch the infernal episode with him once he is sober, and this has been my lot far, far too many times. I won't take the chance anymore; if he is not home early, I see to it that I get to bed early instead of sitting up late into the midnight hour trying to entertain him with our T.V. shows.

Fearing the quality of his state last evening, I decided to tune in a movie that I figured ought to help him keep his attention alive ─ I selected the 2017 movie Thor: Ragnarok.

I had heard enough about it to expect that it was somewhat comedic, and I was not in the least disappointed ─ even if my brother was too alcoholically obtuse to catch any of the humour.

Chris Hemsworth seemed exceptionally brawny ─ I was most impressed by the young man. Cate Blanchett looked believably malevolent; and despite being in her late 40s, her physique was undeniably magnificent.

All of the characters were well acted, and I found myself quite stirred at times in an inspirational sense ─ I am the sort of person who is uplifted by such shows. They make me wish that I was a far better man than I am or ever will likely be, now that I have achieved 70 years.

Granted, the feats the main characters achieved were Superman-like in the near invulnerability of the performers, so often these superbeings would not have felt any sense of risk like puny you or I would. But it was all still uproarious great fun to watch.

As a result of not getting to bed until late into the midnight hour, there would be no likelihood that I would be rising early this morning. If fact, I took a melatonin tablet to try and do my best to sleep in for as long as I was capable of doing.

However, my sleep overnight was still fractured; and by 7:00 a.m. I no longer felt able to sleep any more. And so I rose, despite still feeling rather short on sleep.

While I was seated here at my computer, at 7:50 a.m. I was startled by the arrival of a text on my iPhone 5. It proved to be from Sandy, the longtime lady friend of Bill, who is a very old and infirm friend of mine. For some reason, she sent me her photo ─ perhaps just to jog me and keep her in mind, for she loves to chat but I rarely telephone her:

The image's metadata says that the photo was taken early in the afternoon of Christmas Day.

When she texted, I was heavily involved in research. I was wrestling with whether to take the dare and try to upgrade my old computer from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

My machine is probably over a decade old, and it has gotten to the point where I do not turn it off anymore. When it grows cold upon being shut down, then once I turn it back on, it almost always freezes while loading. This requires me to force it to turn off and start the process all over again ─ but it can still freeze, and do so several more times.

As a result, all I have been doing in recent months is just restart it every day or so instead of shutting it down.

If my computer was to die, I am too far deep in debt to be able to afford a new one. Was it worth the risk of upgrading, then?

Well, first off I went through my computer and deleted absolutely every programme and other download that I never use. This included all kinds of .pdf documents, many of which I paid for.

And just how serious was I about this housecleaning?

When I ran CCleaner to permanently empty the mass of stuff in my Recycle Bin, and to perform its other cleaning feats, it claimed that I would be ridding my computer of ... Are you ready for this? ... 6.576 gigabytes!

That left me with 778 gigabytes of free disk space ─ my computer's capacity is apparently 918 gigabytes.

A few of its other specifications are that it is Intel Core 13; CPU 550 @3.20 GHz; 8.0 gigabytes RAM; and with Intel HD Graphics. Also, 64 bit SP1.

I'm no gamer, so when I first got my machine a decade and more ago, it was a darned sharp machine for the tasks that I use it for.

My research left me feeling encouraged that ─ despite my problems with the machine freezing when it is shut down, allowed to grow cold, and is then later restarted ─ it seemed to be in pretty good shape for the Windows 10 upgrade.

And so after checking out this January 7 YouTube video titled How To... Upgrade to Windows 10 for free!, and reviewing the following two articles, I felt able to follow the steps I needed to in order to have a successful outcome:

• DavesComputerTips.com (January 2): Upgrade Windows 7 To Windows 10 For Free NOW! 
• CNET.com (January 27): Actually, it's not too late to download the free Windows 10 upgrade. Here's how

Yes, it took several hours, but that was also due to watching T.V. at 10:00 a.m. with my brother ─ I was no longer more or less hovering over developments at my computer.

When I finally did come here to take a look, I had a fully installed Windows 10 version that did not cost me a thing. 

To say the least, I am feeling rather good about myself today!

However, I don't think I'll risk shutting down. I will continue with the daily restarts instead.

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My First Walk Anywhere in Three Full Weeks

As expressed in yesterday's post, my hope was that my younger brother would spend last night at the home of his girlfriend Bev to better facilitate my early retirement last evening, for I wanted to be able to rise early this morning to do some grocery shopping at Walmart a mile away at Surrey Place (Central City) ─ I would have to walk, for I do not drive.

I now do not explicitly recall when I made it to bed last evening, but I would hope that it was no later than 10:00 p.m. (although it might have been). Whatever the case, sleep never arrives too quickly, nor is it a steady companion when it does arrive. It comes and goes all my nights through.

By about 1:30 a.m. I felt able to get up to finally finish the post I have worked on since the early part of this month at my website Thai-Iceland. And now that post is published: Iceland Places.

Walmart opens at 7:00 a.m., so I was faced with spending quite a lot of time sitting up overnight ─ there would be little sense  leaving on my walk before at least 6:30 a.m. And there were times when it seemed to be raining rather hard out there! I misdoubted my conviction about going.

Around 5:00 a.m. I deemed that my beard could use some neatening; so I wetted and shaped it, and then I went about setting it with an elastic or stretch net bandage designed for use on the head to hold things like gauze in place. With that net bandage neatly compressing my damp beard, I resorted to my bed to rest myself for a half hour or more while my beard dried and set in place.

The rain eased away, fortunately.

It was very little after 6:30 a.m. when I got on my way; and figuring that I had the time to spare, along the way I stopped at an elementary school playground and used the gymnastics-style rings that are there, performing four sets of pull-ups. I took a slow 30-count between sets.

Even with that break in my walk, I still arrived at Walmart early and had to wait a couple or so minutes for someone to unlock the doors to the public. I seemed to be the only customer hanging about.

The very moist, cool night air was almost like a balm to my lungs and my tired eyes, and it was a trifle weird engaging the physical act of walking, for ─ as I said in yesterday's post ─ it was exactly three weeks earlier that I last walked anywhere. In all that time, I never left home to walk even a partial block.

Money has been scarce, so there have been no shopping excursions; and I have no incentive to go anywhere otherwise. I detest my urban environment, and find it more stress than therapeutic when it comes to getting out and walking anywhere.

But with that said, I rather enjoyed my outing. It was so nice and peaceful; and the dark was a comfort, shielding me from the intrusive public eye. Heck, it was still dark when I left Walmart to make my return walk; and by the time I was home, at most the early morning was shrouded in deep gloom.

That's how I like it.

Right now it is 8:44 a.m., and I am soon to finally return to bed for some further sleep.

oooooooooooooo

I spent approximately 2½ hours back in bed gaining some needed sleep, although it was not a solid block. And I needed another nap in the mid-afternoon for well over an hour in bed.

My younger brother decided to cash in a bunch of empty beer cans this afternoon instead of having a nap once he was done watching some NFL ─ he had gotten home during my latter morning nap. It was a Pro Bowl game, but he never sat through it all due to that cash-in of his.

However, since he is still under a three-month driving suspension, he of course did not drive. Instead, he imposed upon my eldest stepson.

After the two left, I took a peek out to the car port to see whose vehicle they took ─ my brother let the 25-year-old use my brother's van to chauffeur.

And it seems that only my stepson returned home. My brother probably had my stepson drop him off at whatever bar my brther planned to do his drinking at.

I have a hunch that my brother won't be out until as late as mid-evening, in which case I will have to sit up late this evening operating our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box. Right now it is not even 5:00 p.m. yet, and I still feel poorly-slept. I never actually got back to bed this morning until around 9:30 a.m. after being up since approximately 1:30 a.m. ─ there is evidently some toll for that time in which I deprived myself of proper repose in bed overnight.

 

The two-mile round trip walk along with the four sets of pull-ups at the elementary school also have taken some toll, for midday I essayed some exercising out in our backyard toolshed. I opened up the exercising with a set of chin-ups and then five sets of two types of pull-ups, and my shoulders evinced the strain of the earlier elementary school exertions.

Hey ─ keep in mind that I am 70 years old. I don't exactly bounce back from physical exertion anymore.

I have been intending to link to an online 'comic book' that I recently learned of from the father of the young man who created, draws, and writes the ongoing work.

I have to admit that the quality very much resembles that of a nicely-drawn, actual comic book.

The online comic is titled Most │ The Adventures of Ion and Echo!, and that link should take you to the cover of the very first 'issue' so that you can have a look at it. Just beneath the cover and each subsequent page you will find the "Next" button to progressively click through.

It's clearly a work of considerable love and lots of detailed care.

Well, I now seem to be courting a vague headache from eyestrain due to my clearly inadequate sleep and excessive engagement online ─ I spend so very many hours ever day abusing my eyes, I know that my vision is sorely declining for it.

Perhaps I should ease away for today and publish this post.

First, however, I want to present some photos, for Google Photos notified me today that it created a commemorative collage from four photos that were supposedly taken on this day exactly two years ago, and which I uploaded into a Google Photos album.

This is the collage:

It is my understanding that this was the very beginning of a trip that my wife was treating five of her Thailand family members to ─ a flight to Indonesia's Bali.

The travellers would have flown from Udon Thani International Airport to Bangkok, and then taken a flight from there to Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali.

As for Bangkok, my guess is that the Udon Thani flight was to Don Mueang International Airport, and from there the group likely had to commute over to Suvarnabhumi Airport. However, I suppose that it is always possible that there are direct flights from Don Mueang to Bali ─ I just don't happen to know.

The largest photo in that collage looks to me as if it might have been taken at one of the involved airports, but I am merely speculating.

These are the four original photos, beginning with the left column:

Is it any wonder that I am buried alive in debt?

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Twenty-One Consecutive Days Indoors

I was able to watch two movies yesterday through our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box ─ and likely the Cinema HD 'app' that I have downloaded into it. This 'app' seems to do a better job of locating sources than do the other nine of so that I have in the device. 

The first movie was one I attempted to watch late in the morning with my younger brother. However, the 2009 feature The Exploding Girl was too dreary for him, and about 15 minutes into it he grumbled that it clearly was not going to get any better. ("This is as good as it's going to get!")

I bore with the movie for about 25 minutes before giving it up for his sake, although I also found it dreadfully pointless. In fact, this excerpt from one review is superbly accurate:

There’s a fine line between naturalism and tedium, and The Exploding Girl approaches it too often. [Bradley Rust] Gray fills the movie with long scenes of people walking around the city, not saying much, which would be okay if the few actual dialogue scenes weren’t so blandly functional. [Lead actress Zoe] Kazan makes a few pointed calls to her monotone fella—who doesn’t disguise his dimming ardor ....  

That quote is from the Film.AVclub.com article The Exploding Girl.

I now forget just why, but I have been slowly working my way through Zoe Kazan's credited movies. I looked at Wikipedia's list of her films, but none of them seem to me to stand out as having showcased her to such degree that I felt compelled to see as many of her movies as I am able to find ─ unless it was her segment ("The Gal Who Got Rattled") in the 2018 Western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. 

Very late in the afternoon, or early into the evening, I returned to the movie and finished watching the remainder of it while my brother was away somewhere drinking.

He didn't miss anything. And it had the sort of ending I detest ─ no ending. That is, it ended without anything definitive having taken place.

The final scene was of Zoe's character commuting with her guy friend from their home town back to college from whence they had been on a break ─ the two are riding together in the back seat of a car, if I remember correctly, and she is seemingly leaning against him in sleep. The movie ends when their fingers slowly interlock into a firm clasp ─ yet the scene could have been a scene from anywhere in the entire movie.

Sure, it could have implied that they were now consciously going to give coupledom a shot, but that implication is only there because it was the final scene of the movie. The scene could easily have taken place anywhere else in the movie and had no significance.

The two were very close. He would sit by her and comfort her when she had an epileptic fit, or when she was just otherwise not feeling well. Any of those scenes could have substituted for that closing scene, and we would have then been left with a similar unfounded assumption that something more was to come of that new replacement 'key' scene ─ key only because of its placement at the end of the movie.

Thankfully the movie was but 1½ hours in duration ─ not two hours like the second movie I was to watch.

I only watched the second movie because my younger brother returned home from his bar visit before the unspoken mid-evening deadline I have for him...but he did so only barely, to my considerable annoyance.

He showed up approximately 8:50 p.m. Had he not been home by 9:00 p.m., I would not have been willing to try and watch any T.V. with him (he doesn't have any facility at operating our Android TV Box), and I would have had myself an early evening and gone to bed.

The second movie was one I selected just to try and help keep him from passing out, for he probably would have done so with an episode or two of one of the T.V. series we follow.

The movie was 2014's Kingsman: The Secret Service.

It most definitely served its purpose ─ it was filled with lots of action and derring-do, and  it also had a pretty darned good blending of storylines. 

I vaguely recall seeing scenes of the deadly, legless villainess (played by actress Sofia Boutella) in excerpted fight sequences that were advertising the movie back when it was first in theatres.

As sensational and even frightening as Sofia's villainess could be, I felt that the actress portraying the lead character's mother was under-featured. To me, she was gorgeous, and it made no sense that she would have descended so far in life since the death of her novitiate Kingsman husband 19 years before that she would have ended up in a sick and punishing romantic relationship with a brutish gang leader.

The actress I am referring to is Samantha Womack, who ─ as Samantha Janus ─ represented England in the 1991 Eurovision Song Contest with the song "A Message to Your Heart" (YouTube).

Incidentally, I picked that movie because I was intending to watch its sequel; and upon learning that this prequel existed, I decided that it would be inexcusable not to watch this movie first.

So the sequel is likely next up for us to watch within two or three days. 

Anyway, as usual, my brother and I were to watch T.V. well into the midnight hour, but I was to bed well ahead of 1:00 a.m.

I hope that my brother remains with his girlfriend Bev this evening, and spends the night at her home as he often does at the finish of his Saturdays. I want nothing to do with another late night, for I want to get out early tomorrow morning to do some grocery shopping at a store a mile from here that opens at 7:00 a.m.

I detest going anywhere once the day dawns and becomes busy.

Hell, I need to get out! I have not walked so much as a block in what will be exactly three weeks come tomorrow morning. That was also a grocery expedition, but of a greater distance. 

I do not drive, so I just about always walk everywhere I go locally. However, I have been too broke to be able to do any shopping; and it is impossible for me to walk anywhere hereabouts merely for pleasure. 

So I have remained shut up here inside my home, a virtual helpless prisoner of utterly crushing debt and my unwanted urban environment.

I want to close with something more positive ─ the following "stylized" image that Google Photos created from a photo I uploaded two days ago into a Google Photos album:

This is the original photo:

The photo is of Wat Pa Phu Kon in Udon Thani, Thailand.

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Thailand Photos From My Youngest Stepson: Mostly at Wat Pa Phu Kon

As I correctly anticipated last evening, my younger brother did not arrive home by mid-evening, so I was able to get to bed early. Possibly it was 9:30 p.m.

I never sleep particularly well ─ just in segments. And so it was that by 1:00 a.m., I felt awake enough to rise and get to work on the post I am trying to finish at one of my six hosted websites.

My wife had not yet come home following her long day working at her friend's Thai restaurant, so I kept expecting her to be making a late appearance. Her friends all seem to know that she is functionally unable to say no when they want her to party whenever it may be that they insist on it.

Well, she never did come home overnight ─ such is my sorry marriage.

It was at least 5:00 a.m. before I returned to bed, but I did not sleep all that well regardless; and when I rose after 9:00 a.m., I was not feeling at all well-slept.

My brother was already up and watching T.V. downstairs, but I did not join him until within 10 minutes of 10:00 a.m. Our usual weekday routine is for me to put our T9 8.1 TV Box into operation and locate episodes of some of the T.V. series that we follow, so that is what I did until late into the noon hour.

By then my brother was ready to make a return to his bedroom to rest up for his afternoon outing to begin drinking somewhere again; and I was probably back in my own bed by 1:30 p.m. at latest to seek some further sleep.

That sleep was very hard won. And as I type these words at 5:52 p.m., for some while I have been suffering a vague headache ─ the sort that comes of eyestrain and poor sleep.

My wife did finally come home. Just ahead of 3:40 p.m., I thought I was hearing my eldest stepson trying to unlock the front door upon coming home from work ─ my brother had locked the door when he left home because he set off before I was up from my nap.

However, to my considerable surprise, it was my wife. She was in a fluster because she wanted to shower and change clothes and even get some laundry going, and still get away on her fairly long drive to make the restaurant's 4:30 p.m. afternoon opening ─ it always shuts down at 3:00 p.m. for that 90-minute period.

I have no idea if my wife worked earlier ─ I suspect not. And she won't have made the 4:30 p.m. opening, now that I reflect upon the matter.

Apart from reporting that we are into what I think is at least our third consecutive day of (mostly) rain, I am really only blogging today because at 7:08 a.m. this morning an E-mail arrived from my youngest stepson. He and two of his friends left on a flight in the earliest a.m. of January 12 for a holiday over in Thailand.

He broke from his friends for a couple of days so that he could visit his family home to see his grandmother and other relatives. The last time the 22-year-old was back home in Thailand was in 2009.

Anyway, he had sent me some photos that were unfortunately drastically reduced in size, so I used the free service at Online-Convert.com to enlarge them anywhere from 2½ to three times the size in which I received them. Then I uploaded the results to an album of mine at Google Photos.

So here are the photos ─ the main reason I am posting today.

This is the lad ─ along with what appear to be some very large dogs:

This second photo is of him with his cousin's wife and her baby:

Although no descriptions arrived with any of the photos, my research reveals the reclining Buddha above to be at Wat Pa Phu Kon. The next photo would be the exterior of that same temple:

Here the lad is posing with his aunt as he holds her granddaughter:

Another shot of the three of them:

Here, the lad's grandmother joins him and the young mum and her child:

And various other shots of the temple and my stepson and his aunt:

I replied back, teasing him with feigned consternation that he and his two friends are only wandering around Thailand and taking photos of scenery, temples, monuments, and so forth ─ doesn't Thailand have any pretty girls anymore?

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