1. Just as I was getting ready to write my Saturday blog post this morning, the phone rang.
Bill and Diane called to wish me a barely belated happy birthday.
This turned out to be much more than a happy birthday call!
It was a more than ninety minute refreshing and stimulating discussion mostly centered on movies and streaming television programming.
To my utter delight, Bill and Diane watched Conclave a couple of weeks ago and we had just what I love to do most a day or two after seeing a movie: we had a positive discussion about all the aspects of this movie we enjoyed, ranging from the the ways the makers of the movie lit and shot the movie, the beauty of the cinematography, the admiration we had for the movie's actors (the men and Isabella Rosselini), and the vibrant topics regarding the Church and doctrine, women, sexuality, tradition, and the challenges of modernity.
I wouldn't say I needed to talk about the movie so much as I had been hungry to listen to others' responses, especially positive ones. I did offer my two bits, especially about the question of God's handiwork, but what I really enjoyed was listening to Bill and Diane and having my experience with this movie both reinforced and broadened.
It was kind of wild that alongside this discussion of Conclave we also talked a lot about Columbo and the genius of Peter Falk in this show and in other movies he made.
Diane has been on a Columbo binge lately and she and Bill knew that Debbie and I went on a similar binge some time ago.
The Columbo discussion opened the way to talk about Rian Johnson and his show on Peacock, Poker Face. It's a Columbo like show focused not on who done it, but on how will the murder mystery be solved. Poker Face features Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, a casino cocktail waitress who has the ability to immediately tell when people lie.
I'd read about Poker Face. Now I knew I had to look into it and I knew that before long I would have to watch Rian Johnson's second Knives Out movie, Glass Onion.
Talking with Bill and Diane, recalling how much I loved seeing them back in March and how much I loved seeing Hugh and Carol and Peter and Mark on that same visit to Seattle left me longing to get back to Seattle again as soon as possible to see them all again -- and, who knows, maybe I'll get to see other people I know in western Washington, too.
2. Because Christy and Carol knew that I wanted to spend my birthday in almost total solitude and because Debbie flew to New York on the day of her birthday, they gave us gifts in advance of our birthdays at family dinner on December 16th. (They gave Debbie her Christmas gifts, too)
So, because of the anti-rejection drugs I take post transplant, I have to be careful about the teas I might drink. The pharmacists on the transplant team have been very helpful in telling me, when I asked, that licorice teas are out as is one of my favorites, Bengal Spice Tea.
For my birthday, Carol gave me a pack of Northwest Breakfast Tea from Spokane's Revival Tea company, a black tea blend of Assam, Ceylon, and Flowery Orange Pekoe that also includes cedar tips (or as the packaging says, pine needles).
I messaged Gina and Stephanie, the transplant pharmacists, and Gina replied with the good news that this tea was safe for me.
Today, I experienced what awesome news this was!
I brewed a cup of this Northwest Breakfast Tea to go with another gift Carol gave me, her fruit cake, and the tea complimented the fruit cake perfectly and was a most tasty and refreshing hot drink.
I've got twenty-three more bags to go!
3. I haven't done this for a long time, but at bedtime tonight, I decided to crawl under the covers with Copper at my side, and watch the first episode of Poker Face.
I learned Charlie Cale's back story. I learned why she lives in a beat up trailer outside Laughlin, NV. I learned why she works now as a casino cocktail waitress.
The episode's story really kicks in when, upon learning her good friend, Natalie, has been murdered, Charlie doesn't accept law enforcement's official story explaining it.
So she digs.
Like Columbo, Poker Face features weekly guest stars. Adrien Brody is this episode's primary guest star and he is terrific as the Fredo Corleone-like son of casino magnate.
Solving this murder puts Charlie Cale in grave danger and she goes on the run in her Pontiac Barracuda.
(Like Columbo, she drives a beat up car of questionable reliability.)
It was getting really late, but I decided I had to watch the next episode of Season 1.
It was fun to see that one of the guest stars was John Ratzenberger (of Cheers fame).
Once again, this episode opens with a murder, this time in a remote locale in the middle of nowhere -- maybe in Arizona.
We know who did it.
Charlie doesn't believe the official story.
So she digs.
And, as this episode concludes, she is back in her Barracuda, back on the run again.
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