With my wife present yesterday, I never got around to creating a post here. She finally left by around 4:40 p.m. to probably return to Vancouver where she spends most of her free time.
Such is my sorry marriage.
I had not yet exercised that day, but I needed some bed rest first due to a meal that was laying rather heavily within me. I should have sought a nap instead of merely reclining for an hour or more, for I still felt oddly unwell.
I then did try for a nap, but at that point it was long beyond 6:00 p.m. If I did not somehow find it within me to exercise, then I was afraid that I would have to abandon it for the day.
So I rose and sat on the edge of the bed, facing an open window covered with just a screen. The Sun was low in the horizon. Confronting the sinking Sun, I began a series of breathing exercises.
It proved of some benefit. I managed to find enough within me to tackle the scheduled exercising.
I had been expecting my younger brother to show up, for he had driven off in the afternoon to do whatever it is that he does when he leaves each afternoon. I think he always tries to get in a park walk somewhere, aside from any personal errands he might run.
Then he is usually back home after two or three hours because he is afraid to risk drinking and driving.
I had some supper at 8:00 p.m. while I watched an episode of a T.V. series I very much enjoy ─ the series is Parenthood, and I am only into the first season. Lauren Graham has always 'hit all my right buttons' ─ if I had ever been exposed to someone exactly like her, she would have owned me in every sense of the term.
When my brother was still not home at the episode's conclusion, I came upstairs to spend a little time here at my computer, for I had no desire to become engaged with my brother ─ he could only be drinking. I preferred an early bedtime to his besotted company.
Then around 8:50 p.m., I happened to notice his van about to back into the driveway. That was my cue to hightail it to the bathroom for one last act of micturition, and then to my bed.
When I soon heard him in conversation with my eldest stepson, it was apparent that my brother was indeed drunk.
Anon I was to find sleep. Then just after midnight I checked the time, and could still hear the T.V.
I may have approached some further sleep, for it was something like 12:48 a.m. when I next checked the time. My brother is not often up that late.
I may have approached some further sleep, for it was something like 12:48 a.m. when I next checked the time. My brother is not often up that late.
So I rose and dressed; and upon opening my bedroom door, I saw that his bedroom door was shut, but the light was still on in his room. But not a minute later, it was turned out and my brother retired for the night.
I came here to my computer to put work into the post I have in production at one of my six hosted websites. I saw that it had experienced three visitors over the course of the day just finished; however, for the three days prior to that, not one soul had visited the website.
This sort of thing is dreadfully discouraging, for the website has been in existence for something more than a decade. There should not be such visitation gaps.
I stuck to the targetted minimum amount of work that I wanted to put into the post for today; and then maybe around 4:30 a.m. I was back to bed.
Sleep thereafter was somewhat intermittent, and I could easily have risen ahead of 8:00 a.m., but I stuck it out until maybe 8:30 a.m.
My brother never rose until maybe 9:30 a.m., and of course when he emerged from his own bedroom it was only to turn on the T.V. and to boil water for his day's first instant coffee.
I waited until 10:00 a.m. before joining him in the living room, and put our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box into operation (my brother has no expertise with the device).
We were to watch episodes of a few of the T.V. series we follow; and then around 1:20 p.m. he was set to seek that bed rest to restore him for another afternoon outing.
I took the opportunity to tackle the backyard toolshed exercise session that I had scheduled for today, finding myself growing quite uncomfortable with overheating by the time I was finishing up. Some sunning was next on my agenda, and there was no question that all I was going to require were my cutoffs ─ yesterday a chill breeze ruined the sunny day, and forced me to remain fully clothed, apart from the baring of my feet.
For the first time this year, I spent just over 20 minutes sunning my back. Then I resumed sunning my front for just over a further 20 minutes.
Upon coming back into the house, I found that my brother had already gone. However, his van was still here. What that signifies to me is that he bused off to rendezvous with one or two of his drinking buddies, and will not likely be home until into the latter half of the evening.
In other words, I ought to be able to get to bed early in the evening again.
I want to mention a movie that I tuned in yesterday morning for my brother and I via our Android TV Box ─ the movie was the 2010 Western Meek's Cutoff.
At its conclusion, my brother was vociferous at what a useless waste of time it had been. I certainly felt no need to try and defend the feature ─ it was disappointing alright.
Wikipedia finishes the plot description by saying that the small group of pioneers decide to continue following the Indian they had imprisoned in the hope that he would lead them to desperately needed water.
If that was indeed what the pioneers decided to do, it was not at all obvious to my brother and I. The Indian was last seen trudging off into the sandy wasteland, while the pioneers were still more or less congregated under a weird lone tree.
That was how the movie finished.
So very damned little happened throughout the film. The opening scene involved what seemed like five or more minutes of watching the pioneers comprised of three covered wagons and a couple or so riders fording a river that was almost chest deep at its worst.
There were no difficulties with the crossing. No drama.
And thereafter, we were subjected to scene after scene of the group simply travelling across the countryside with nothing at all happening.
Sometimes the men would talk among themselves, and there was one scene where they were removed from the women and the only child in the group. We the viewers could only hear segments of the faint conversation among the men because we were supposed to be experiencing things from the perspective of the women.
This dreary sequence went on for some minutes. There was no purpose to it. The only point was to best convey how the women might have strained to hear their men.
Big deal.
Then there were the pointless various nighttime conversations among the characters. Often, there was absolutely no way to tell what we were seeing because the filming was done entirely in the dark, and not around some campfire.
We were subjected to the inane sort of spiritless and weary conversations that anyone might engage in when they were perhaps about to fall asleep.
Again, it had nothing to do with plot development. It was just the filmmaker's notion of making the movie seem 'real life'.
Well, there was just too darned much of this 'real life' detailing. The pointless long scenes of the wagons slowly moving and the people and the few horses walking ─ on and on and on.
We kept waiting for there to be some reason for these panoramas of the travellers, but the only purpose was to make us feel as weary and dreary as the travellers must have been out there in the sere Oregon desertland.
This is not why I watch a movie. I already understood the premise ─ the group are lost and running out of water in a desert. I did not need to see nothing but scene after scene of some of the people and the couple or so horses with their riders walking, and the oxen-drawn wagons slowly creaking noisily along.
It would not surprise me if half the movie was nothing but that drudgery ─ these scenes were not accompanied by any conversation.
The movie was a drag.
Wikipedia quotes one mostly favourable review:
"Moving at a contemplative speed unseen in most westerns, Meek's Cutoff is an effective, intense journey of terror and survival in the untamed frontier."
Oh, the movie most definitely moved "at a contemplative speed", but terror? I never felt any sense of terror.
The only time I saw something like that was when one of the women was in hysterics because she thought hordes of wild Indians were about to descend upon them all and savagely murder everyone.
The movie was too realistic. And by that I mean that just as in real life, hardly anything at all was ever occurring ─ just the same boring, repetitive, day-to-day doings of a small group of homesteaders crossing a desertland.
Nobody died. Heck, I don't recall that even a horse or ox died, despite how supposedly desperate the homesteaders were to locate water.
And then to have the whole movie end at that weird tree was honestly exasperating. We invested all that time watching the feature and ended up with no resolution whatsoever. At least if Indians had swarmed them and killed everyone, at least we'd have know how the characters finished up ─ their story would have had an ending.
Well, I hope I have better luck with whatever next movie I tune in for my brother and I.
Oh gosh! It's already approaching 7:30 p.m. ─ I must finish and publish this post, and then have a little supper so that I can be all set to have myself an early evening in anticipation that my younger brother is not going to be home for at least a couple of hours yet.
Be well, everyone.
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