With so many bars now closed due to the COVID-19 scare, my younger brother has not been going out to any to do his drinking the previous two days, so I expect the trend is going to continue for today.
As I intoned near the end of yesterday's post, this is a big hindrance for me because I feel compelled to join him in the evening and then put our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box into operation to bring in episodes of some of the T.V. series we follow.
He hasn't the expertise to operate the device.
This entails me sitting up late into the midnight hour, and last night it was approaching 1:30 a.m. before I was to bed. Naturally, being up so late robs me of any opportunities to rise early in the a.m. to try and get anything accomplished.
And where physical activity is concerned, since I do not drive and detest walking in my overpopulated and busy environment, I remain home just about every day.
Our string of sunny weather has evidently come to an end, so there isn't even an opportunity today for me to sit out in the backyard.
And on a related note, I have just finished getting up from a nap shortly before 3:00 p.m. to discover my eldest stepson in the living room trying to perform an exercise workout ─ he explained that he found his gym closed today. The brawny lad rarely ever missed going there as a daily routine.
I don't know what he'll do now ─ we don't have any proper bodybuilding equipment.
But welcome to my world, lad! I've never in my life exercised in a gym, and I can only ever remember setting foot into any gyms just three times in my life ─ twice because friends wanted me to have a look at the concerned gym they were involved with or interested in, and a third time because I was seeking a specific supplement that proved to be unavailable at that gym.
My stepson has very pumped arms, so I don't know what is to befall him if he can't access the sort of equipment he uses at his gym ─ eating alone will not maintain his muscular bulk.
Now, to switch topics.
Now, to switch topics.
I never blogged this past Friday, so I have been neglecting to mention a movie that I watched late that morning with my younger brother ─ a 2014 feature titled The Grand Budapest Hotel.
I felt that it was a diverting throwback to a different movie-making era ─ to my mind, it was redolent of the types of British films featuring the Carry On gang and or Peter Sellers, and even American films like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Great Race.
But until I scanned the Wikipedia article on the movie, I did not realize that it required as much work and research to create as it did.
Since I did not study anything about the movie beforehand, I didn't know just who was going to be featured in the movie, although I think that I was aware that Saoirse Ronan might be in it.
The cast was quite huge, and I have to admit that I never recognized some of the known-by-me actors who appeared in the movie because everyone was made up to resemble the sort of personages who lived in that era and in that eastern area of Europe.
For instance, I was surprised to find afterwards that Willem Dafoe was in the movie, as was Harvey Keitel.
However, I found the movie to be too truncated for its expansive plot. Travel, events, and timelines were so very condensed that it weakened the movie ─ again, by my estimation. The movie could easily have been expanded by an hour.
It would have been the basis for a superb T.V. series, I bet!
On other matters, I am still slowly building to a finish the post that I have been working on at one of my six hosted websites for what may well be in excess of three weeks by now.
And concerning the monthly mortgage likely to be debited from my chequing account tomorrow (as has been heavily discussed in my last two blog posts), the $250 that my eldest stepson said his mother was to deposit or transfer into the account to finally correct a $900 shortfall of her creation...well, that deposit has yet to happen.
She normally spends her weekends somewhere in Vancouver (such is my sorry marriage), so I expect that she will be showing up later today. However, if she has not shown up by well into the early evening, I will check the account once again and then inform the lad so that he can pursue the matter with his mother.
If she fails us, then he is going to have to contribute even more money than he already has to help cover for his mother's relapse earlier this month into her addiction for gambling. She had withdrawn money from our chequing account to fund her gambling; and since the money in the account was entirely comprised of my monthly pension, she basically robbed me ─ there is no other way of defining her action.
Returning to the topic of exercise, I had a backyard toolshed session scheduled for today, so I wanted to get at it early this morning before my brother had risen. As a result of getting quite drunk last night, he rather cooperated by not rising until after mid-morning. And that allowed me to have my exercise and get back into the house with no one else in the house the wiser that the activity had taken place.
For maybe at least a week, I have been experiencing a slightly 'runny nose' and enhanced nasal / sinus mucous production that I attribute to a probable very feeble rhinovirus, for otherwise I feel perfectly normal.
Well, over the course of the morning I had been experiencing what I can best describe as a frothy accumulation of mucous in one or more of my left sinuses that defied the usual efforts at removal through a process of inward snorting to draw the material into the back of my throat.
Early into the afternoon I got more aggressive with that process by blocking up my right nostril and then engaging in a succession of enhanced inward snorting as deeply as I possibly could until eventually I managed to clear some of the frothy matter out.
However, in doing so I have adversely affected my left Eustachian tube. It would be nice if I have only managed to draw an unaccustomed volume of air into the tube, but I fear that I may have also drawn some infectious matter into the tube as well.
It does not exactly hurt, but it does feel as if the situation is developing toward a possible earache or associated distress.
Just before I lay down for my nap, I used a dropper and applied quite a quantity of hydrogen peroxide into the ear canal ─ I gradually emptied the entire dropper of its quantity of hydrogen peroxide while I lay upon my right side.
I kept that position for over 15 minutes ─ perhaps nearer 20 minutes.
I fully expected that the ear would block up ─ and it sure has. It's so stuffed up with the hydrogen peroxide that I might as well have an earplug inserted into the ear. I'm having trouble hearing now.
This just in at 4:40 p.m.!
My wife has texted me, and she said that she can only deposit $200. I've replied back that $200 will not quite bring the account to what we need ─ we'll be short by just a little over $42.
If she cannot come up with the required sum above what she has cited, her eldest son will have to shoulder the small shortage.
Also, I noticed that my brother's van is here, and he isn't. Since he no longer dares to drink and drive, he must have walked or bused somewhere to do some drinking.
Since rising from my nap, I have thought that he was out with his van on errands and whatever else might innocuously have his attention.
If he has gone off to drink, then maybe I will be able to get to bed early this evening after all. And especially so since I do not believe that my wife will be coming home this evening.
Last and finally for this post, Google Photos notified me today that it created a collage from some photos that I filed into an album exactly seven years ago ─ i.e., March 22, 2013:
All of the photos are much older than that, for they were uploaded into a small album that I put together featuring my late maternal Aunt Nell Primrose who must have died earlier that year.
Here are the photos from the album that Google Photos selected to work with ─ we begin with the first column featuring Nell and her husband Earl, along with a young man whose identity I am unsure of:
The second photo features Nell and Earl along with Nell's son Jock (John) Halverson, who has also since died as a result of cancer. The little girl must be Laura, the eldest of Jock's two daughters ─ she is into her 20s now:
The third photo features Nell and Earl along with Nell's nephew Rick Hyatt:
And finally, a nice professional portrait of Nell and Earl posed together:
Nell was my favourite aunt, for she was the only one whom I ever got to intimately know back when she and her large household moved to Surrey around 1974 when I was no more than 24.
So many parties over the ensuing years at her home and those of various of my cousins, her young adult children! My brother and I had never lived near any of our relatives before, so we had not become close to any.
Nell ─ my mother's youngest sister ─ changed all of that.
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