Spooky Night

I usually don’t dwell on the emptiness of the house during my wife’s extended absences. Part of that is self-preservation as I combat the isolation with prolonged time in the Man Cave and the accompanying four walls of speakers. Since I am without my Favorite Panamanian I can raise the decibel level to truly wall shaking levels, that’s usually enough to keep my fertile imagination as to the source of the house creaking noises in check. Last night was kind of spooky though, I returned from the movies and paused to look outside and was startled by the stark beauty of the winter night. We had a super moon and the arctic air was so clear that along with the coating of fresh snow an interesting effect was created. Properly viewed from inside, of course, since I didn’t want the odd appendage to fall off from the intense cold.

Super Moon Last night

Night time always brings back a lot of Army related memories since we did so much of our field training at night. “Owning the Night” has been a catch phrase for the US military for a long time but it was not a lot of fun despite our advantages in night vision technology. While that technology provides some remarkable ability to see clearly on the darkest of nights, especially near the end of my career, the infantry always trains part of the time without that advantage. Just to show we could, I guess, but it was never fun. I will always remember the night land navigation course in Georgia. That had to be accomplished in total darkness as you had to follow a compass azimuth to specific points through the woods without a night vision device. The added fun was that all the owner occupied spider webs you walked carefully around in the daytime were invisible at night, at least until your face passed through them. This is another time my fertile imagination did me no favors as I imagined the huge yellow and black spiders taking up residence on my face along with their remnants of their homes. When reaching those designated points there was always a flashlight check to remove any non-imaginary hitchhikers.

Such a great View

Especially When You Add This Lady

How Was your Day?

As hauntingly beautiful as last night’s back yard was I much prefer the one my wife sent me from Las Lajas, see above. I’m so excited to show this beach to friends and family over the coming years. The FBR was in fine form last night during our call, she even asked me how my day was. It is hard to minimize any day when it involved a conversation like that. My daughter also passed on these photos from the award ceremony I wrote about last Friday as a proud papa.

I saw Phantom Thread last night mainly because it was nominated for so many Academy Awards. This is supposedly Daniel Day-Lewis’ final film but c’mon he’s an actor and he’ll be back. He plays a prima donna fashion designer in 1950s London and while up to his normal level but this felt a little workmanlike compared to some of his more memorable roles. The true revelations in this movie were the female leads, especially Lesley Mannville as the sister. She truly deserves the Oscar nod as it’s not often you see any actor stealing scenes from Day-Lewis but she does it repeatedly, just so good. Lewis’ character surrounds himself with women and always has a chosen one as a paramour. He bites off more than he can manage when he selects Vicky Krieps as the latest to fill that position. Their very strange love affair is the central plot line. I didn’t much care for the movie overall but it was definitely worth seeing if this is truly Day-Lewis’ last stand and more so to watch Mannville. She is really that good.