Thanks WordPress
I keep getting a 403 Forbidden ever since they implemented their authentication scheme. I’m using a VPN in the browser to type this post and I’m afraid to hit publish…here we go…
WTF
Creepy AF
BottleDrop Redemption Center
When I got in the car this morning to run some errands, this is what Google Maps unbidden offered up for directions. Now, I have been to this redemption center numerous times since moving here in 2023, and maybe I asked Maps to tell me where the closest one was back then, but it is 3 turns away. I haven’t needed directions to it for 2 years. Before I got in the car on the driver’s side, I had opened the passenger door and placed something on that seat.
Green Bag to take to the BottleDrop
How did Maps know I placed a bag full of cans on the seat? That is just creepy as fuck.
This Is Not Spinal Tap
After dinner I decided to watch one of the 100 or so movies I own while waiting on the dishwasher to finish. I opened up Plex and went to the movie page. As I looked at the first couple of rows of movie posters, I tried to decide what kind of movie I was in for. Really couldn’t. I’ve said this before in that I’ll see the title or the poster and I’ll be able to sort of speed watch the whole movie. And once I’ve done that, I literally don’t need to watch it … I’ve just seen it.
One nice thing about Plex is that there is a shuffle button at the top and if you click it a random movie will start. I’ve used it a few times with limited success, maybe twice out of the five I got something that I would be in the mood to see. Attempt number six was a win, Plex had selected This Is Spinal Tap. I hadn’t seen it in ages and just running the movie through in my head made me want to watch it again. I didn’t recognize the background image at start up, but there were our 3 main guys looking like they’d been dipped in gold, so the movie was right (the image was for the movie’s 41st golden anniversary.)
The movie was not right. First clue was the first image you see, the logo of the production company A24, that studio was way too new to be from the 1980s. Wait a minute, Rashida Jones and Marlon Wayans getting married, I watched the trailer for this movie a way back and put the movie in my Apple TV+ queue. I did start to watch it back then too, but gave up about 20 minutes in.
Weird. I exited Plex, got back in, drilled down through the movie posters, found and clicked on This Is Spinal Tap again. It started up right where I just left off, 3 minutes into On The Rocks. What the heck, I’ll watch it again and see if I can at least get to the part where National Treasure Bill Murray shows up. I ended up watching the whole thing. It had very strong Lost in Translation vibes and with good reason, it too was directed by Sofia Coppola.
After watching the movie, I went over to the PC where the Plex sever runs on, found the .MKV file, opened it in a media player and it was the real “This Is Spinal Tap.” What the heck was going on. I scrolled back up in the directory and there was an .MKV video file for “On The Rocks” too. The file was dated in November of 2023. Did I download a copy of the movie less than 2 years ago and forget about it? I stopped pirating stuff way back in the twenty teens. Plus, I wouldn’t think so based on earlier this year’s starting and stopping watching it part way. Has someone hacked into Plex somehow on stored a copy of there? I mean I have it set up to allow me access to my movies while traveling…
I’ve deleted all the “On The Rocks” files and rescanned the library, but now when I got try and play “This Is Spinal Tap” Plex can’t seem to find it. I guess tomorrow I’ll try and uninstall Plex, clean up the registry, reboot and reinstall. Now, I really want to watch Spinal Tap.
Addendum (8/15/25): Nothing I did would let me play “This is Spinal Tap” on the PC using Plex. It wouldn’t play on on the laptop either, but it will play on either TV running Plex via the Roku box. “?” Side note, I just now stumbled on that there is a sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, coming out next month. This is where that gold image came from and since the movie came out in 1984 it also explains the 41st anniversary thing.
The Proposal
Time for one of my patented long-winded intros leading to a small bit of actual content. Sally, of Santa Fe fame, and I have known each other 42 years. So, when she asked me if I wanted to come down, visit Santa Fe a bit, and then road trip together to go to her mother’s 98th birthday festivities, I jumped at the chance.
She was Donna’s friend from an early age, and the two families belonged to the same church. When I got out of the Navy in 1983, we moved back to Donna’s hometown of New Orleans. The 2 girls connected again; Sally had married, so the four of us naturally became a group. Sally and her husband bought the house 2 doors away. Donna and I babysat the daughter, Claire, and then a couple years later, the son, Stuart.
For various reasons we moved up to New Jersey for work in 1987. The Lewis clan also moved north to Lexington, Virginia, shortly after. We visited several times a year, first from Jersey and later from Aiken. In the early two thousands Sally’s husband proclaimed he was in love with someone else and wanted out. Claire was already in college, and Stuart was a junior or senior in high school. After his graduation Sally joined the State Department. Whenever she was back in the states for language training or something, Donna and I would get to DC to hang for a couple days. Anyway, we go way back.
Now, with just Sally and me, we get along sort of like an old married couple without the sex. Our senses of humor are similar; we would be in a store somewhere, and we would cut up with each other in the checkout line. We “argued” about whose turn it was to fill up the car with gas. “We’ll always have Paris.” A plan was concocted. There was a get-together on Saturday the 18th with the whole family at a place downtown in Hammond called Tommy’s on Thomas. A local pizza joint/nighttime entertainment place—that is where Stuart met his wife and where they go every year on their anniversary. This would be the most perfect place for this; I was going to pretend to ask her to marry me. I wrote a script. I practiced kneeling.
We thought for sure that Adele and Stuart’s wife, Cristina, would be flummoxed; Stuart’s two small kids wouldn’t know what was going on. We thought Sally’s kids, Stuart and Claire, would not know what to say, or their sense of humor might kick in immediately and call bullshit on Sally and me. At the last minute, because of a miscommunication, Adel and Claire couldn’t make it, so we decided not to do it, because those were 2 of the 3 we thought would get the biggest kick out of the stunt.
Scene: Restaurant Interior
Brian
(stands)
"As we knew the end was getting nearer, I asked Donna if she would be okay with this, and she smiled and said of course."
(slight pause)
"So, Sally, these last 2 weeks have been the happiest that I’ve been since last September.
(he kneels)
It would be great if we could grow old, older, together. Will you marry me?
Possible Responses:
Sally
1. Yes, I thought you’d never ask.
2. Stunned silence.
3. What?
4. I hope you didn’t buy a ring already?
Brian
1. You’ve made me a very happy man.
2. Stunned silence.
3. I feel so embarrassed.
4. I may be an old fool, but I’m not stupid.
Boom!
Okay, as promised back at the end of December…
When we moved to Klamath Falls, it had three bedrooms like in Aiken, so in both places two of the bedrooms were made up as bedrooms, and the third became the “Computer Room.” The computer room was merely where the desktop PC was, and it also held the futon so it could be used as a third bedroom just in case.
In Aiken there was a bedroom with an en-suite bathroom, and even though it was a small bath, we liked to use it, but there was a large skylight over the bed. Even with a set of blinds on it, it would still get very warm in the summer, so it became our winter bedroom, and the one on the other side of the house, without a skylight, became our summer bedroom. Every 6 months or so we would schlep our clothing from one closet to the other. And because we had one newer mattress that we liked better than the other, we would also drag it back and forth. After a bunch of years, we finally bought a second nice mattress, so they only had to exchange just closet items.
The K-Falls house was two stories with 2 bedrooms up and one down. The upstairs was really the main floor, as it had the kitchen and dining rooms, so most of our time was spent up there. Again, one of the bedrooms upstairs had an en suite, so it naturally became our primary bedroom. The second bedroom upstairs was kind of small, so it was turned into the Computer Room with a futon. The downstairs had the two-car garage and a large family room, along with a full-size bedroom and a bathroom/laundry room. Even though the upstairs bedroom we used didn’t get hot in the summer, we decided that we should continue the seasonal rotation of sleeping quarters; otherwise, we would never use the downstairs area except for laundry and getting in the cars.
That first summer we lived in Klamath Falls, we moved downstairs, but we didn’t swap closets full of clothes because the closet downstairs was too small to hold both our wardrobes. We still showered upstairs because the one downstairs was just a small stand-up one, so what we did was shower and go downstairs to the family room to watch a little TV before going to bed. Actually, the TV downstairs was larger than the one upstairs in the living room because above the fireplace the mantle was fairly high up on the wall.
The 2nd or 3rd night we were in the downstairs bedroom, we were startled awake about 2:00 AM by an extremely loud BOOM. I’d have sworn someone fired a shotgun in the room. I jumped out of bed and turned on the light; the bedroom looked normal, and the window was intact. So I started flicking on lights and checking the rooms downstairs. The family room was fine; nothing was out of place. I checked the water heater that sits next to the washer and dryer; no leaks or cracks, so it didn’t explode. Next was the garage, and both cars were sitting cool and quiet. Up the stairs I went. No broken windows with meteorites smoking on the floor anywhere. I looked in every room, and nothing had fallen off the walls, and looking out the windows, there were no cars smashed into telephone poles. Lastly, I walked outside on the front porch and back decks, and there were no neighboring homes on fire or police activity.
I was very puzzled that the sound was extremely loud, like it was in the same room as us, but nothing was amiss there, nor any other place in the house. The mystery was solved a few days later when I vacuumed the bedroom. The downstairs was built into a hillside, so it actually served as the foundation. Because the floor was concrete under the luxury vinyl plank, when one of the three slats supporting the box spring shifted and popped down, it made a loud boom. 1
Unintentionally Humorous Warning
I bought a piece of wall art from good ol’ Amazon for over the bed in the freshly painted guest bedroom. Inside the package they kindly included some wall hanging hardware in a plastic bag with a big warning on it.