First Impressions..."Shadow And Bone"

 How much can you tell from just one show? There are SO many shows out there. Movies, series, limited series, even podcasts and webcasts...it can be--and it is--overwhelming. So, when we see an ad for yet another product vying for our ever limited time, the ad better be good because the person who saw your ad also saw hundreds of other things.

We're not necessarily anti-new. My wife and I have also checked out some new comedy series and we gave them thumbs down...not funny, or it seems they've sacrificed humor for social awareness.

I admit--I'm a little leery of new fantasy shows. I love the fantasy genre, even though I don't read enough of it. I've been burned by some fantasy series in the past, even if I'm a fan of the source material. I saw an ad for a new show, Shadow and Bone, based on the books by Leigh Bardugo (which I haven't read...yet) and it looked intriguing. I thought I'd give it a shot. Add to the mix a glowing recommendation from an author/friend Kevin Anderson, it increased my interest.

So, I watched Episode 1.

I thought it was great. The set-up was simple, yet fascinating. There's a world where societies are separated by a Shadow Fold...basically, a void. Voids, by nature, are scary. So is this one. In fact, it's terrifying. Some citizens of this world have magical powers. Some don't. In Episode 1 there's evil thugs, waring armies, secrets, and best friends from childhood now adults caught in this amazing world.

There's SO much riding on that first show, that first impression. Careers are made or destroyed over the success or failure of that one show. Yes, we've tried new shows before...some good, some okay, some terrible. Even though I've only watched one episode of Shadow and Bone, I'm going to watch more.

Yes...It's A Daunting Task

 Tomorrow, it's going to get crazy around here. At 8am a truck will roll up our street pulling a tractor--a small tractor--but a tractor none the less. There will also be two dump trucks hauling top soil that will be left on the street in front of our house.

Then, the fun begins.

It'll also be a day of firsts. It's the first time we rented a machine to help with the yard work. Years ago I did some work on a backhoe putting in roads on an excavation crew. The tractor is substantially smaller than the backhoe but I didn't have to worry about running over sprinkler heads or breaking open a water main back then. I will tomorrow.

I've got to say, it's a little daunting just thinking about it.

We rented the tractor for eight hours. I have no idea how much we can get done in eight hours. We have dozens (or more...) rocks to move. I have no idea if that will be an easy task or not. I guess I need to just calm down, get a good night's sleep, and get it out of my mind. I mean, tomorrow's coming, so is the tractor and the dirt. There will be a learning curve, but hopefully, it won't be steep. 

These are the "before" shots of our back yard. Hopefully, the landscape will look different soon.

When Was The Last Time You...?

 

Sure, they're still there, at gas stations, grocery stores, McDonalds, and at one time we used to frequent these amazing kiosks on a regular basis...

But, not much anymore.

It's not that the product the red Redbox boxes push has changed, but I think the way we--and by "we" I mean, our family--has changed. Case in point, after we moved, we unpacked our DVD and BluRay players, but we never hooked them up. It wouldn't take much to plug in the HDMI cable and throw in a disk, but it's just something we haven't done and I don't know when we will.

When I say my first Redbox kiosk, I was blown away. I thought it was one of the most amazing things anyone had produced. Sure, the movies were not first-run. To see those movies, you'd need to go to the megaplex across the street, but for a couple of bucks (and availability, of course...), you could watch movies that came out a few months earlier in the comfort of your own home. I even remember seeing a new DVD kiosk for sale and I think it was around $3k at the time. I even thought at the time it would be cool to buy one of these kiosks and go into the vending business. 

That was a long time ago. Things change. Even before we moved, we used Redbox less and less because, well...there were so many new movies that we didn't want to watch. We may be in the minority here, but there wasn't anything for us. We usually went home and re-watched something we either had in our DVD library or found something online.

Yes, the boxes are still there and they still have movies. They must be there because people still use them. I wonder, though, if one day the Redbox kiosk will become the new public pay phone. Those used to be everywhere, too...

I guess time will tell.

Teaching A Not So Old Dog...A New Trick

 Dogs are smart...

Not with all things, but with some things. Case in point, after I've put in my ten hours at work I will venture outside to retrieve the mail. And our dog has taken notice. He watches me as I get up to go out the front door and he waits. Then, when I come in, he knows what I have in my hand...he knows that if there is something in my hand, there's a good chance, he'll get to rip it apart.

Our dog has learned when the mail arrives.

I'll come in--he zeros in on the mail. He'll follow me into the front room where he waits. I'll look at the mail, the bills, the coupons, then the ads. It's the ads he wants. Sometimes, we'll want to keep an ad so we have to tell him he can't have that particular piece of mail. 

Still, he waits.

Patiently, he'll sit looking at us look at the mail, hoping the oil change notice or the latest cell phone or satellite offer will eventually be his to destroy. I don't have to tell you, he had a great time during the last months of the election.

As long as we keep getting shiny mail--and we have the dog--he'll be waiting to see if anything came for him.

Being A Photography Geek...I LOVE This!

 I saw a post the other day...the tag line caught my attention:

The World's Largest Photo of New York City

I mean, that's like crack to a photo junkie. I clicked on the link and I could spend hours--literally--hours looking at this photograph...and I've only been to airports in New York City. If you want to check out the site for yourself, click: HERE. You may have seen photos with super-high resolution before. In this photo of NYC you can zoom in and see make and model of cars and individual people walking the streets miles from the Empire State Building where the camera is positioned.

Of course, there's a dark side to everything. I suppose at any given time we're being photographed. I live in a very small town, but I'm sure there is camera surveillance all over even in this small town. It would probably surprise me, but it shouldn't.

Having said that, I still love the technology. There's a good chance I will probably never see NYC again in person. This site allows me to see things I can't see otherwise, see parts of New York they don't show in movies or TV shows. I think it's pretty cool.

Give Thanks...The Story Had A Happy Ending

 

If you live in our neck of the woods, you may have heard of a situation last week concerning a lost hiker, and if you were following the reports, you know how it ended.

It didn't end that way for my cousin's family when their son went missing on a hike. For them, tears were shed...tears of sadness. The tears from the recent emergency were tears of joy, of prayers answered, of a successful search. Living, as we did, in that small town, we knew the neighborhood from which the hiker originated...our neighborhood. We recognized faces on the news of the searchers, of those hiking the mountain for signs--hopefully positive--of the person we know from a family we love. I wish I could have helped them search.

This weekend, I'm grateful that of all the outcomes that could have happened, the outcome that did happen was the one many worked for, and that we all wished and prayed for. If you spent any time on social media today, you were inundated with photos and thoughts of thanks for the mothers in their lives. I'm glad for one neighbor family, this year's Mother's Day had a happy ending.

Waving "High"...To Strangers

 Waving to the neighbors...a common tradition, I believe, in most places. I know we did it where we used to live. It didn't happen all that much because we lived at the end of a cul-de-sac and not many drove by. But even when it happened, when our neighbors took a drive down our street, we'd wave.

And they waved back.

We moved last fall, and have not spent a lot of time outside until this spring. We are currently putting in a sprinkling system and we are finding ourselves outside more and more, especially in the front yard. Last week and this week, we've been out front digging holes, checking sprinklers, and planting trees. We've also seen numerous cars driving by our house. And when they do, we wave to them.

And they wave back.

The difference is, for most of the drivers in those cars, trucks, four-wheelers, and motorcycles, we don't now the people. They're strangers. Thanks to covid, we haven't been able to get out and meet many of our neighbors. We hope to get to know the people who have been driving by and waving sometime soon. But for now, we'll continue waving to those who drive by.

And--I'm sure--they'll continue waving back.