Another Day

Ice storm came through last night.  The roads are a mess.  Apparently, this is the first part of a one/two punch.  As the day goes on it will get above freezing and some melting will occur.  As the night comes on the temperatures will drop and there will be more freezing rain.  Welcome to the Midwest in February.  

It is lunch time and I am hanging out at the coffee shop.  The place is a refuge from my workplace.  Me, I am a firm believer in having that clear split between morning at the office and afternoon at the office.  There is just something important about being away from your desk that keeps the mind from growing truly numb.

Today I am listening to an old Willie Nelson recording called God’s Problem Child.  The current song has nice lyrics,

I followed you to hell and back
I'll follow you again
No matter where you take me
It's someplace that I ain't been
And I'll go to hell believin'
True love, you're still my friend
From the start to the finish
And until the bitter end
I lived my life believin'
True love, you're still my friend
When the whole damn thing is over
And we reach our journey's end
I'll leave this world believin'
True love, you're still my friend.

Great sentiments from the old dope smoking, cantankerous, grizzled old singer of songs for the average person.  Willie’s thought are thoughts that cross all our minds.  Willie’s voice is like a well-worn leather coat, soft comfortable and maybe just a little bit ragged but made with enough style and craftsman ship that you will never abandon it.

My wife is out of town and so I am acting as housekeeper to my two sons. This requires making sure they are off to appointments and that they are fed.  Someone, well my wife, left us about a week’s worth of prepackaged meals that I just must warm up for the most part.  The issues are not that I have to do this, but it comes at a price.  At days end after a full day of work’s draining activity, after the 30-40 minutes of prep and the 20 minutes of clean up after dinner I am dead.  This usually leaves me lying on the couch watching Netflix on my iPad (and occasionally playing with the cat).

I watched the series Russian Doll over the weekend.  I loved it.  The basic conceit is the same as that of Groundhog Day.  The lead actress dies 30 minutes into the first episode, and she keeps reliving and reliving the 30 minutes to a day between the starting point and her death.  It is funny, it is dirty, it is rude, and it is imbued with tons of moral philosophy issues.  About every two minutes there is an issue of what or wrong that surfaces.  Russian Doll is not governed by the normal rules of what these kinds of stories and that is a good thing.  Some reviewer called it magical realism.  I am willing to say yeah to that.  The story has a feel that it could have come from someone like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s mind.

Having finished Russian Doll, I have moved onto the Finnish cop drama Bordertown’s second season.  I watch this with subtitles.  I find the tone and the inflection of the voicing some important in a drama.  Watching a dubbed version cuts so much away from what the actors are trying to do.  An actor acts with voice and tone and gesture and the interaction of all three is needed to be seen to capture the art of the performance.  I am only a couple of episodes away from the end of this season.  It is good, but the first season was better.

Willie is singing, “I woke up still not dead today, the gardener did not find me that way…”.  Cute song.  I can empathize.  Not a bad disc.

Oh well, it is back to the old bump and grind.  Four people.  Four stories. Four decisions. My emotions are not really steeled for this, but I will be ready once I sit down in that chair.