Suspicions Abound

I have information being kept from me. The predictable source – my Favorite Panamanian. Saturday marks my 70^th birthday (What?!!! Yikes!!!) and earlier this year she said she wanted to throw me a birthday party. I told her Saturday was not available because it marks the 13^th annual birthday pub crawl back in my hometown – therefore sacrosanct. She is not easily daunted and pivoted to a Friday, the 14^th party. I figured it would be the usual gang of the Panamanian Mafia and a couple neighbors. I’m starting to wonder though. This is where the missing information comes into play. My daughter and her family are enroute from New Jersey today and my son casually mentioned that he was taking me out to the movies tomorrow afternoon (like this is normal for a workday Friday for him).

The Test I face Every Time I walk Upstairs

Then I add the cone of secrecy that has descended over the house for the past week. I’m used to my wife’s machinations because I’m usually target #1 but this is different. She archly informed me I was forbidden to come upstairs during the past week while she was working on something. I was to remain in the Man Cave. Okay, that wasn’t so bad, as a number of movies fell in the A-Z quest. She’s also stopped mid-conversation on phone conversations whenever I walked into the room. Something is afoot. I think this is going to be bigger than I imagined. The latest clue – I just walked upstairs and was confronted with a huge plate of cookies! So, I’ll have to navigate past that between now and when the party starts without sampling (that’s going to be hard). I just might be getting a little excited about what she has in store for me. I was already in a building high, looking forward to the pub crawl, but this has taken it up another notch.

Failed Attempts to Capture the Lights

I’ve been on my own quest for the past couple nights. I’ve always wanted to see the Aurora Borealis, you know, the Northern Lights. Every opportunity I’ve had, be it a military flight stopover in Alaska, Washington State, and occasionally here in New England, clouds always intervened. The lights were supposed to be out for all to see around here for the past two nights. Tuesday night was a bust with the accursed clouds again. There were also clouds last night but not as thick. I went out onto Deckzilla three or four times and glanced some pink and green tinges behind the broken clouds. The pictures don’t do it justice but I’m counting it as a win, with an asterisk.

So Good!

In another win, Coca Cola came out with a new product that I’ve fallen madly in love with. Actually, it’s an old product that they’ve once again started selling. The only problem, I can’t find it anywhere. I was perusing the soda aisle when I saw an unfamiliar box in the Coke section which featured Coke Zero with Vanilla! This is awesome (trust me). I quickly snatched up the only box left. I was only getting Diet Coke with Vanilla at the movie theater until this. Apparently, I‘m not the only one enamored of this concoction because I’ve been to four different supermarkets and they’re all sold out. I’m not giving up though.

I was solo on date night at the movie theater because of the aforementioned machinations. I saw Predator Badlands. Only Hollywood would try to make one of the 1980s arch villains into a hero. Predators have always had a tinge of respectability because of the warrior ethos and they liked to kill aliens but this was a bona fide attempt to make a movie with one of the predators as the focus point and hero. Somehow it works. Really well. A smallish predator escapes his family, which is trying to kill him for his lack of stature, and tries to prove himself by going after an apex killer on the appropriately named Death Planet. There he runs into a crew of cyborgs, sent from the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (of Aliens infamy) who are after the same creature. Elle Fanning (always good) plays one of the cyborgs cut in half by the creature and teams up with the predator. The interaction between those two is worth the price of admission by itself. You add in the state-of-the-art CGI with non-stop action and you’ve got a pretty good flick. Go figure – rooting for a predator. Loved it.

Five movies fell in the A-Z watch, all keepers: Tomorrowland – love this for the precise reason Disney made it, to remind us of the value of dreaming big; Tony Rome – Sinatra was so cool, he could sleep walk through a movie and still be watchable, then there’s Jill St John at her peak; Torn Curtain – lesser known Hitchcock drama with Newman and Andrews; To Sir With Love – Poitier is towering in this London school drama; Top Gun Maverick – think I already did this for A-Z but it’s so damned god, I had to watch again.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------RECURRING CHARACTERS:                                

ABFA – Amazing Best Family Athlete – my daughter in law; BR3 – Blog Reader #3 – granddaughter #3; BRS - Blog Reader the Sequel - second granddaughter; Cantankerous Friend – friend since grade school who likes to argue about everything, poses as radical leftist to attract women; CRC - Connecticut Riverboat Captain – another close friend from high school, renowned sailor of the big river; Curbside Girls – close friends of my daughter acquired during her single days in Brooklyn; Czech Connection – Czech couple who’ve become good friends along with their daughter (the Czech Shadow); Deckzilla – our backyard deck which grew to monstrous dimensions once my wife got involved in planning; Favorite Panamanian - the wife (of course); FBR - First Blog Reader - first granddaughter; First Friday – celebrations to mark the First Friday of the Week; Great Aunt - my elder sister; Keene Friends 1 & 2 – friends since high school from my home town of Keene, NH; Kindergarten Friend – friend since kindergarten whom I reunited with after many years; Maine and Virginia Musqueteras – two close friends of my wife – her US sisters, my wife is the 3^rd Musquetera (musketeer); Namesake Nephew – son of Great Aunt and Soxfather named after me; Neighborhood Mafioso - wife's close friend and Panamanian mafia member; 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; PCR - Pittsburgh College Roommate – high school friend, also a “Minor Celebrity” in Pittsburgh; PCR+1 - Pittsburgh College Roommate’s wife; Riggins - also known as the Grandpuppy, son's dog; Seis Amigos - two couples from our condo complex and my wife and I; Soxfather – my brother-in-law (whom I miss more than I can ever explain); Tia Loca – wife’s younger sister; Wingman – my son in law; Wingmom – Wingman’s mom, of course