Three Beautiful Things 02/03/14: Walking the Q, Food Prep, Gene Hackman Rattles Me

1.  I did some more walking today and took the Pentax Q for a long awaited spin.  I didn't take many pictures, but I sure enjoyed being back out walking.  I also enjoyed taking a little break at Sweet Life to warm myself up with a cup of coffee and I took this still life, a picture of my Monday morning:

 

2.  I sent the afternoon boiling beans, fixing rice, and chopping food so that the Deke and I can have rice bowls or tacos in an instant or so I have everything ready to stir fry in the electric frying pan. 

3.  I deeply admire the work of Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Oddly, his death moved me to want to watch the actor I consider among the greatest of a former generation:  Gene Hackman.  So, I watched The Conversation and marveled at how Hackman brought to life Harry Caul, a repressed, guilt-ridden surveillance expert who becomes unmoored when he can no longer numb his conscience once he believes surveillance audio tapes he made for a nameless director of a nameless corporation could lead to the deaths of the man and woman he spied on.  It's a tight, existential story that is both painstakingly realistic and vividly surreal.  Gene Hackman brings Harry Caul's expertise, loneliness, spiritual warfare, obsessiveness, paranoia, and hunger for human contact unforgettably alive.