Monday, February 24, 2014

‘The Monuments Men’ is not worth the price of admission, not by a long shot.  Since I didn’t walk out, I at least have to damn it publicly.  It has good actors and the true story sounds thrilling, but the movie isn’t.  The dialogue is flat and the plot is chopped up like liver.  The already tired theme of whether saving great works of art can justify the loss of  human life is exhausted by being repeated so often by George Clooney.  There isn’t enough tension generated by the scattered actions of the poorly developed characters to require any comic relief, so the humor that is present, how could Bill Murray not get a laugh, is gratuitous and not very funny anyway.  Even the settings are either unimpressive or have the look of the back lot about them.  One of the reviewers I read after seeing the movie summed it up well, “ it requires nerves of steel to get through.” 

Mondays for me are becoming what they should be for a good housewife, days of domestic work.  I wake at 5:50am to Skype with Jay and after a good chat, feel ready for breakfast and work, usually laundry, shopping for groceries and cooking.  The dust bunnies drifting around testify to the fact that I don’t get the vacuum out often enough.  I did a couple of weeks ago though and decided to clean the filters.  This had never been done since Jim and I bought it when we moved into the condo in Ottawa.  As I got my parents’ vacuum going over Christmas by changing the bag and cleaning the filters, which they had never done, I thought I’d better do my own.  The rule of nuts not falling far from trees holds again.

I have an appointment with the internist on Thursday to find out the results of the tests I had almost 2 weeks ago.  My heart can’t be going to fail imminently; he seems in no rush to follow up.  Good!  But it still means I won’t be joining the Pollocks and Don and Mela in Hawaii.  There’s always one of us whose health keeps them from the gathering.

At 4:00 this afternoon, I meet my tutor for the third lesson on the iPhone.  Again we’re going to a coffee shop because the library is still being cleaned up after the flood of 2 weeks ago. 

Wasn’t the Canadian Women’s gold medal hockey game spectacular!  The men’s game was great too.  They would have been well worth the price of admission.  

Canada's gold medal team

A Whiskey Jack on the snowshoe trail

My shopping list system, incorporating 2 Christmas gifts: the erasable, bamboo note pad that Barbara and Terry gave me and Jay's iPhone.  I take a picture of the former with the latter and look at the picture on my iPhone from time to time in the store. 

Full moon in February

Sunday, February 16 had an auspicious beginning.  I woke early, around 6am, and actually got right up.  I stepped out the front door to check the morning air, as I usually do, and was glad I had because I saw Saturday’s full moon setting over the roof of the house across the street.  It was beautiful, better than the scene that had greeted me on Saturday night when I stepped out to check the sky before going to bed.  Then, as I stretched and took in the air, I almost flagged down a police cruiser that was passing slowly in front of the house.  I saw the driver look over at me; he almost stopped the car but then carried on for about 2 houses, where he did stop.  A woman came out.  As she advanced toward the police car, I heard a man’s voice screaming from inside. And this isn’t the house that used to have the loud, drunken parties/brawls.  In fact I thought it was the home of a granola group because in the summer, behind its high hedge, it always has a rather righteous-looking, semi-tended group of built-up gardens and a sign declaring that the area is pesticide free.  Another cruiser pulled up from the opposite end of the street.  The cop got out and went over to join the conversation.  Then an ordinary car arrived, a man got out and went into the house.  Then it got boring, so I went inside and watched from the window, like a good neighbor, until the woman walked back into the house and the cops pulled away.  Sometimes the hood can be more entertaining than the telly. 

Back to Sunday morning, and the full moon.  After taking a picture, I went to the bathroom to wash.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that my face, although not as bright as the moon’s, looked better than usual.  Of course, I didn’t have my glasses on but I never do when I wash my face.  Had gazing at the moon performed a miracle?  No!  The illusion of being wrinkle free was soon dispelled by the discovery that one of the two bulbs above the mirror was out.  The combination of myopia and low light had created a fountain of youth effect, which I will not soon rectify.  The myopia is a constant, and I’m not going to replace that bulb any time soon. 

I’ve had a couple of good Skypes lately, on Sunday with Caroline and this morning, as usual, with Jay.  In the former, I discovered that Gabe is getting married on July 27^th, so now I will make sure that I plan my summer trip east so that I can attend that auspicious event.  With Jay, I discussed my next visit to Korea, probably in September again; we hope to get his whole gang together for a few days on Jeju Island this time.  He also mentioned that seeing my pictures of skiing in the Vernon area has made him want to give it a try, so he may come here next winter.  Yes!!!!!!

The rest of the week was the usual round of cross country skiing at a slow pace, snow shoeing, going to the Grannies travel log of a trip to Russia, Sunday dinner and hot tub with Mo and John and heart tests.  This time the stress tests took place in the hospital over two days and involved the injection of a minute bit of some radiated liquid before a 15 minute session of photos of the chest taken by an enormous, unwieldy machine.  I commented on its bulk to the technician, and she responded, “Yes, he’s huge but delicate.”  I liked that.  It’s a wonder that something smaller hasn’t been invented in this age of digital cameras in smart phones and selfies.  I won’t get the results until this week.  I hope I passed.

Full moon in February

Winter Carnival snow sculpture at Silver Star

Another

Miracle revealed

I’m spending Mon., Feb. 10, BC Family Day, quietly at home.  I did my civic duty and shoveled the walk in front of the house just before lunch.  I almost could have swept it, but it felt good to be outside, so I shoveled and did the bit in front of my neighbor’s too.  She works a night shift and consequently doesn’t get the kick out of going outside in the middle of the day to shovel that I do.  As for family, I had a good talk with Jay for about an hour at 6am.  I had awakened at around 4:30 and not been able to get back to sleep and I can’t have any caffeine, not even herbal tea for the next 4 days leading up to and including the stress test, so I needed a kick, but as I have skied every day for the last 4 days I didn’t want anything more than a bit of light shoveling to keep me awake.  Even with that, I had a nap after lunch.

I went to a movie, ‘The Book Thief’, last evening with a couple of friends.   It’s a plain but affecting film about people in a small German town just before and during WW2.  It’s based on a book written by an Australian, Markus Zusak.  I enjoyed it more than I thought I would since I knew beforehand that it was going to be narrated by the Angel of Death and that some of the horrifying events the people endure involve the Allied bombing of their town.  Dad was a navigator in Bomber Command, and although I know what that involved, I don’t often come so close to feeling the fact that the Allies weren’t always the good guys.

On a brighter note, ‘What about the Canadians in Sochi?’  We have 8 medals already, 3 of them gold.  Jay and I talked about the games this morning.  He’s mostly aware of the bad news about the Olympics that he picks up on his main source, his smart phone.  I, on the other hand, am watching nothing but CBC monopoly propaganda, so I’m getting a more positive spin.  Before the games, they did cover a lot of the intolerance of the GLBT community in Russia, the poorly compensated displaced citizens of Sochi, the graft and corruption that led to the massive overspending, the glorification of Putin, the fact that much of the infrastructure and many of the buildings are not even yet complete and the terrorist threats that shrouded everything, but now it’s all about the competition, except for the odd allusion to the predictable scandals concerning the judging of figure skating.  The French media (famous for eschewing rumor), started a story about the US and Russian (BFFL) judges getting together to keep the Canadians out of some medals.   I hope that that is the least of Patrick Chan’s worries at the moment.

This is the miracle baby I wrote about in the last blog

And this is his great step-aunt skiing

Another scene from Silver Star.  Skiing on a cold bright morning with the Monashee Mountains ahead.

February 3, 2014

I Skyped with Jay as usual this morning and heard the details, as many as he knows, of a story he had mentioned in one of his Kakao Talk messages this week.  It’s about the birth this past Sunday of a child who was probably not immaculately conceived, but whose birth certainly seems to have surprised even the mother.  As far as Jay knows, she had the first hints of her pregnancy about a week before the event.  She ultimately required a caesarian section, but in all other ways the birth was normal and the baby is great.  Jay is the step uncle because the baby is May’s brother’s child.  Jay, May and the girls had attended the wedding just three weeks before the birth and nothing was evident to them at that time.  May’s mother and aunt were also there; they had spent the two months prior to the celebration with Jay and May, visiting, getting to know the new Korean in-laws and waiting for the wedding.  They flew home to the Philippines two days before the really big surprise.  Jay said this morning that he had seen a documentary about a similar case, and I remembered that when I was in grade 7, the mother of a girl I vaguely knew had a child all of a sudden, twelve years after having had her ‘last’ child.  Everybody was surprised because she hadn’t looked pregnant.  I, of course, was not privy to any information about whether or not the mother herself was shocked, but the erstwhile baby of the family and her friends certainly were.  We were at the stage when the subject of sex trumped all other topics, and this event, although it diminished her sibling status, inestimably elevated her standing among the girls.  Her presence was required in all discussions for at least a month.  Then she became normal again and ran the risk we all did of being excluded from some secret discussions or of not being invited to a sleep over.

I guess I’ve become a Vernonite.  It’s -7 in town and -12 on the hill today, and I didn’t wait for Jane to call me to cancel our proposed ski.  I e-mailed her right after Skyping with Jay and suggested that maybe it was too cold to ski this morning.  We were going to meet at the usual place at 9:00am, but it seemed too cloudy and cold, and we haven’t had any new snow in a while.  I couldn’t get excited about it.  And I used to go on about Thunder Bay and Wakefield and skiing in -25 or -30c.  I’m sure my friends here will be happy not to hear any more on that subject.

Tonight I will finally see ‘Philomena’ at the Vernon Film Society’s showing of it.  That, together with ‘American Hustle’, brings the total of potential Oscar winners that I have seen so far to two.

Jay, celebrating the Lunar New Year holiday weekend with a hike in the rain in Incheon

A picture taken while skiing at Silver Star on the same weekend

Fresh snow at Silver Star