I so badly intended to get out late this afternoon to hike the mile to the nearest shopping mall, but my resolve dissolved by the time I was standing outside the locked front door not much after 5:45 p.m.
It was of course dark, and no one else was home. My wife had to work at full day today at her friend's Thai restaurant; my younger brother had left for the afternoon while I was having an early afternoon nap; my youngest stepson was working; and my eldest stepson had left at dusk's approach to probably go snowboarding with a friend who left his van here in place of my stepson's car.
I was feeling maybe three ounces of rum and instant coffee, but I just could not compel myself to go anywhere. And now I am left with tomorrow as the final day in which to at least get some scratch lottery ticket packages as top-up presents for family and for Bev, my brother's girlfriend, who is to be spending Christmas with us.
In the hopes of adding some inspiration for that hike (I do not drive), I had just finished watching the 2012 Christmas movie Love at the Christmas Table (a far richer description of the movie is on offer at RissiWrites.com).
Did I enjoy it? Yes ... but I have no desire to ever watch it again. I was unable to surrender to the premise that two young people could be together since the age of four and not reveal their profound love for one another until after they had entered their 30s.
Granted, once the male character left town for post-secondary education, the two would only ever get together when he returned to have Christmas with his parents (actually, I am unclear if the woman married to his father was the character's actual mother, or else his step-mother).
The movie kept flashbacking consecutively to the various Christmases since the first one when the two little kids were thrown together when their fathers formed a business partnership, but the movie first opened with the main male character returning home in 'the present' after a four or five year hiatus ─ we were then treated to all of the Christmases that led up to this key final homecoming.
As I said, I enjoyed it, but it just did not 'grab' me.
The lead female character was played by Danica McKellar, whom I am reasonably familiar with. I thought she was pretty damned cute back when she was a main fixture in the old T.V. series The Wonder Years.
The only other actor I could name was Back to the Future's Lea Thompson. I solidly recognized 'laid-back' actor Scott Patterson, but I had no idea what his name was, nor could I remember what T.V. series it was that made him so familiar (I now see that it was Gilmore Girls).
Lead actor Dustin Mulligan was vaguely familiar, but his name meant nothing to me. I now understand that he was a semi-regular on Schitt's Creek as the veterinarian to whom gorgeous-but-ditzy Alexis eventually becomes engaged.
Anyway, I am glad to have watched the movie.
Incidentally, late this morning my brother and I watched a 57-minute video uploaded to Rumble yesterday titled DR. ANDREW KAUFMAN "THERE IS NO DISEASE SUCH AS COVID19"!
I realize that there are both a germ theory and a terrain theory to explain transmissible or infectious diseases, and that Dr. Kaufman maintains that there is no such thing as a SARS-CoV-2 virus ─ or at least, not anything that has yet been isolated and proven to exist.
I was hoping that this interview would further help me to fathom precisely how Dr. Kaufman can be convinced of this, but he only generalized.
According to him, as I understand it, viruses may not even exist. But how, then, explain something like smallpox and how its telltale symptoms devastated the North American Indian populations?
I feel no more informed than I was before.
In the Christmas spirit, I followed that video with the classic 1944 musical Meet Me in St. Louis.
I have of course been familiar with Judy Garland since I was a boy (I am now 72 years old), but I am only coming to realize in recent years that she was a very beautiful young woman.
I hoped that the movie might have historical / nostalgic appeal to my brother, but he gave up on it with about 40 minutes to go and supposedly retired to his bedroom to rest.
I sympathize ─ even I found the movie a little too much of a struggle to allow myself to become immersed into. There is nothing realistic about old musicals, and I did not realize that there were to be as many musical numbers in this one as there turned out to be.
Unfortunately, my brother departed from the movie just before it finally undertook a Christmas theme ─ and it was for the Christmas element that I tuned in this old feature. And so he never got to witness Judy singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", nor experience any of the emotions that only became aroused around that point in the rather long film (seven minutes shy of hitting two hours, although credits did eat up several minutes).
Again, I am glad that I watched the movie ─ one which I know I have watched decades ago, and probably more than once, but which I remember nothing of. But as I said, the musical numbers made it impossible for me to immerse myself into the story, and that becomes a problem ─ I need to be able to do that to truly enjoy this sort of movie.
And so I cannot imagine myself ever choosing to watch it again.
Well, it is approaching 7:20 p.m. right now, so I am going to sign off for today. Tomorrow, which will be my final chance to get out and shop, I will do my best to accompany my brother in the early afternoon when he goes to hook up with Bev. I will have him drop me off at the mall I spoke of.
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