1. One of the new offerings on the Criterion Channel this month is the 1982 nightmare story, Missing, which tells the tale of a journalist's father (Jack Lemmon) and wife (Sissy Spacek) as they confront one bureaucratic dead end after another as they try to find their missing son/husband in Chile in 1973. I watched this movie around the time it came out.
It unnerved me.
Its director is Costa-Garvas. For the last forty years or so, I've had it in the back of my mind to watch Costa-Garvas' political thriller from 1969, Z.
Finally, today, I started the movie. I got forty minutes into it and simply because I was sleepy, thanks to my nights of irregular sleep and my new habit of getting up at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning, I turned it off and will return to it as soon as possible.
The movies opening forty minutes arrested me as Costa-Garvas sets conflict in motion between an authoritative, military and police dominated government and left-wing activists opposed to the government's policies and practices. The movie is set in an unnamed Mediterranean country, but is a thinly fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of the democratic Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963.
In these opening forty minutes, as the movie portrays this unnamed country's deeply and violently polarized population, I can already tell that it's going to unfold how history doesn't repeat itself, but is continuous. Its portrayal of political polarization looks an awful lot like our world in the 2020s.
2. The United Network for Organ Sharing manages the nation's transplant system. One of their policies is that between day 28-56 post-transplant, transplant recipients are to be tested for Hep C, Hep B, and HIV.
Nurse Jenn messaged me today that these tests will be included in the lab work I'll have done on June 10th.
No problem.
Good to know.
On June 13th, I'll see a urologist in Spokane and he will remove the stent running from my new kidney to my bladder.
It'll be a welcome turning point in my post-transplant life.
Once the stent comes out, I'll be able to drive a car again.
3. One of our HelloFresh bags this week contained the ingredients for a shepherd's pie.
Unfortunately, for me, at least, the shepherd's pie recipe included tomato paste and a mashed potato topping.
Until my potassium level comes down, potatoes and tomatoes are temporarily off limits.
I stored the tomato paste packet and the handful of potatoes and went to work cooking an alternate meal with the remaining ingredients.
To the carrot, onion, and celery that came in the bag, I added zucchini and mushroom and I sautéed these vegetables.
I then added the package of ground beef from the bag and added the packets of thyme and garlic powder and the two packets of beef concentrate.
Once the vegetables and ground beef were cooked through, I topped them with a layer of jasmine rice and topped the rice with the packet of grated white cheddar cheese from the bag.
I don't know what you'd call this meal, but it was comforting and delicious and, since I was tired when I cooked it up, I welcomed that it was quite a bit simpler than the shepherd's pie!
No comments:
Post a Comment