Monday, December 26, 2016

Three Beautiful Things 12/25/16: Breakfast, Reflecting on 2016, *The Sting*

1. I fixed Patrick, the Deke, and me a late morning breakfast of bacon, eggs, home fries, and English muffin.

2.  It turned out that Patrick wasn't feeling well and went back to bed and that the Deke was also really tired and napped during the afternoon and so we didn't carry out our plans to go to the Jefferson Memorial and out for Thai food. It turned out to be a quiet day with time to rest and reflect. I thought a lot about how I've never gone to as many places in a calendar year as I did in 2016 nor did I ever have a year more jam packed with great times with friends and family. 2016 unnerved me, too, especially the Deke's cancer scare, but today I thought a lot about Julie and Scott and Cate and Danielle and Camille and Lake Michigan and Pendleton and Nyack and Lansing and New York City and Savannah and Kellogg and my family in Kellogg and my friends in and from Kellogg and my family out here in Maryland and in New York and Patrick and Baltimore and Lura and Lyle and I haven't included everyone and everywhere in this sentence, but it was a momentous year for friendship, kinship, and travel.

3. I was checking one of those 100 movies to watch on Netflix articles online and The Sting jumped out at me and I put the earbuds in and watched it. It had been so long since I watched it that I had forgotten everything. Of special pleasure to me was the acting, not only of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, but of the great supporting actors: Robert Shaw, Charles Durning, Eileen Brennan (oh, my!), Harold Gould, Dana Elcar, Charles Dierkop, and the sly and perfect performance by Dimitra Arliss.  Much of the movie was given over to actors playing characters who were themselves acting out pretend roles, characters within characters, and that was a ton of fun.

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