Three Beautiful Things 02-28-2022: Double Blood Draw Day, Shrove Tues err Monday Family Dinner, More Criterion Channel Interviews

 1. That time (every three months) rolled around again today for a blood draw to see how my old kidneys are doing and I also had blood drawn to complete my annual Medicare checkup. Today, I got to go to the clinic twice! It turned out that my lab order from Kootenai Nephrology wasn't there, so I got the Medicare blood drawn, went home, called Dr. Bieber's office, accepted all apologies (!), and went back up in the early afternoon now that the order was in, and now I've given all the blood I have to give until May.

2. Carol and Paul and Molly hosted family dinner tonight and we pretended like it was Shrove Tuesday on Monday. Therefore, the central entree was a pie sized oven pancake, accompanied by deviled eggs as an appetizer, and, for our main course, Debbie made muffin sized frittatas and a fruit salad and Carol made what she calls her special potatoes (and they are special!). Christy provided mimosas and Irish coffee. 

I can't say that we were pre-Lenten gluttons in preparation for 40 days of self-denial, but we sure had a good dinner. As we finished eating and got into some serious yakking, we had a superb discussion about books, how we read them, how we talk about them, and what we want from them. Our focus was mostly on fiction and it was fun to get at all the different ways that writers tell stories, employ narration, tell stories in linear and non-linear ways, use their imagination, and invite us to experience life beyond what we've had happen to us and beyond what we've thought about and how we've thought about things. 

3. My list of movies I want to watch on the Criterion Channel grew today after listening to an old timer, Philip Kaufmann, talk about his adventures in moviegoing and after listening to a young timer, Paul Dano, talk about movies he loves. I know I'll never watch all the movies I'm learning more about and wanting to see, but it's still stimulating to see the clips the interviewees chose to highlight when talking about their favorite movies and I love learning about directors, especially international ones, whom I've never heard of and about movies I'm unfamiliar with.