In the slowest moving year ever, how is it the middle of August already? I’ve been spending the evenings and weekends trying to tackle some outside (both yard and house) projects. Hopefully we’ll have a nice September so I can continue working for a bit. Of course, there won’t be as much daylight next month…
the irishman
This movie has been in my queue for a long time, mostly because it clocked in at 3.5 hours. Who has time for that? But, I bit the bullet the other day and started watching it. It took me 4 days to complete. Anyway, it was basically a mob movie that tied in with Jimmy Hoffa’s story (and gave one possible conclusion to his death). Every Italian actor (and some not-so-Italian-actors) was in this film (DeNiro, Pacino, Pesci, Romano, etc.). Also, it was directed by Martin Scorsese, who is one of my favorites.
My rating 3.5/5
true detective
I wrapped up season 3 last week. It’s probably going to be the last season, so here’s my review. This show was unique in that each season told a completely different story with different characters.
Season 1: This was probably the best season. It’s been so long since I watched it, so I don’t remember the details, but I remember it getting a little weird at the end.
Season 2: I heard this season wasn’t any good, but I’m running out of new content to watch so I decided to pick the series up again. I actually thought this season was really good.
Season 3: I really liked this one up until the end. It was a little anti-climactic. But, the acting (and especially the makeup) were incredible. The story was told from three different time periods and they used the same actors, so they had to do some magic to make the characters look old but it was really believable.
My rating: 4/5
the little things
Back when we were going to sell the house and move the the country, we had our “to do” list for the house down to about a half dozen things that we felt were required in order to sell the house. Once it was determined that was not going to happen and I was staying here, I started taking a closer look around. I now have over three dozen items on the list. I’m not capable of doing all of these things, but I’m on the hook for about half of them. And, I’m happy to report I did one of them today.
One of our crank windows was broken (the hinge part was off the track). After a little research, I found that you could get replacement hinges, so I did just that. Jake was supposed to help me with it because the screws on the bottom track were rusted and were going to be a bit of a challenge to get out. He wasn’t home this afternoon, but I decided to get my head around the project and figure out what needed to be done. I had to open the window in order to do that and somehow the window got stuck. While getting it unstuck, I snapped the top track off and the window was dangling by the piece of metal attached to the crank. I needed a screwdriver in order to unhook it, so I had to balance the window in the opening in order to grab one. Luckily, it did not fall out while I was gone.
I detached the window and decided to watch a video on how to replace the hinge and tracks. It looked pretty easy, so I started to work on it and figured if I got stuck Jake could help me when he got home. The only challenge, then, was the rusty screws. I had some sort of drill bit that allowed me to extract two of them and then I took the Dremel to the other two and got those out, too. I installed the new tracks and hinges and then popped the window back in and hooked it to the crank. It was surprisingly satisfying. And, now the window works. It has been broken for years, so this was a nice win.
One of the other things on my list is to recaulk all of the windows. I figured what better time than the present since I was already working on the window. I scraped the old stuff off the window I fixed and also did the picture window since it was right next to it. I had to take a break to make supper, but I was able to caulk both of the windows after eating. There are a bunch more windows to do, of course, but at least the project is underway now. I have been putting it off all summer and now I’m running out of time!
alarmed
With the exception of a few times where I had to be somewhere important, I have stopped using my alarm clock since the pandemic started. On one hand, this sounds great, but I’m not actually sleeping in–when I don’t wake up on my own, the dogs are sure to get me up. But, it’s still pretty nice.