In Rhythm

My Favorite Panamanian and I contrived to honor date night yesterday through the offices of a Facetime call but it was an abject failure. I had just returned from the movie theater when I received a call from my wife. She was safely ensconced in our beachfront condo but couldn’t get the television to work. I spent the next fifteen minutes trying to talk her through it. The first ten minutes were wasted as I didn’t realize she was trying to control the television through the blu ray remote control. She kept trying to go back to it and I eventually told her to take it into the other room and leave it there. We eventually got her onto Netflix and the crisis was resolved. I’m glad I don’t have a lot of hair because I probably would have pulled some out during this conversation. I guess I understand what it must be like for my children trying to walk me through modern technology. They’re a lot more patient than I am.

The Route

I completed the next step in my 48 state tour planning yesterday. I transcribed a turn by turn route for the entire trip, six pages worth. I’m now firmly in deep love with Google maps. I was able to zoom in on every turn and then go to street view to actually see what the signs said at that intersection. As I was doing this I also fell in love with the idea of the trip even more as I saw some of the vistas I’ll be driving by. Now all I have to do is convince my co-pilot of the worth of this effort. The next step will be to delve into the tourist guides I’m receiving from each state to figure out what is worth stopping by to see on the route, so this is in effect the first draft.

I went to see The Rhythm Section last night. This is an interesting take on the old international assassin motif. A young British gal falls into drugs and prostitution after her family is killed in a plane crash. She’s brought out of that life when she learns the plane was brought down by a terrorist bomb and the bomb maker lives just across town. She embarks on a Scottish assassin tutorial by a former spy and heads out to wreak vengeance. I say this is interesting because she isn’t cinematically transformed into a super-spy and stumbles through her adventures as an obvious amateur fighting well above her weight. Huge kudos for Blake Lively who dominates as the central character. She abandons all thought of glamour and gets down and dirty for the role. I did have a serious problem with the pacing of the film, especially the first third, but I still found the movie highly entertaining.

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RECURRING CHARACTERS                                           

BR3 – inbound granddaughter #3, BRS - Blog Reader the Sequel - second granddaughter; FBR - First Blog Reader - first granddaughter, ABFA – Amazing Best Family Athlete = my daughter in law; Wingman – my son in law; Keene Friends 1 & 2 – friends since high school from my home town of Keene, NH; Soxfather - my brother in law; Great Aunt = my elder sister; Cantankerous Friend – friend since grade school who likes to argue about everything, poses as radical leftist to attract women; Pittsburgh College Roommate – high school friend, also a “Minor Celebrity” in Pittsburgh; Deckzilla – our backyard deck which grew to monstrous dimensions once my wife got involved in planning; Maine and Virginia Musqueteras – two close friends of my wife – her US sisters, my wife is the 3^rd musquetera (musketeer); Riggins - also known as the Grandpuppy, son's dog; PanaGals – female relatives/friends of my wife from Panama; Panamanian/Latin Mafia – inevitable group of Latino friends my wife accumulates wherever we have lived & their spouses; Neighborhood Mafioso - wife's close friend and Panamanian mafia member, Favorite Panamanian - the wife (of course); First Friday – celebrations to mark the First Friday of the Week; Curbside Girls – close friends of my daughter acquired during her single days in Brooklyn