First days of August

I spent the first day of August in the usual Saturday way: slept in, work, laundry, rode bike to grocery store, laundry, sauna. Pretty ho-hum, eh? The past couple of Saturday evenings have been more interesting. One TV station shows 1960-1970 US counter-culture films, and then follows that up with a documentary about that film. Last week was "Easy Rider". Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson. Took a long time for that movie to get going.... Remember, two biker guys driving through a lot of great western scenary, not much dialogue, lots of weed, and they eventually get killed by rednecks in Louisiana because they "were different". I'm thinking that not only were they smokin' weed in the film, they must have been smokin' weed when writing the screenplay. The documentary afterwords was much more enlightening. I now understand. This Saturday it was "Dog Day Afternoon" with Al Pacino. He had just found huge success with the Godfather and Serpico, and was taking a big gamble doing this "based on a real story" movie. Remember this one? Two guys try and rob a bank. Al's character is robbing the bank so that his transvestite "wife" can get a sex change operation, but he's still married to his woman wife and has kids. You know, truth is stranger than fiction? Both films were in English and unedited. Whew. Again the commentary afterward was excellent, particularly because they gave real insight into the real bank robber, an odd guy. But, I have to be a real night-owl to watch these as they end at about 1:00 am, and now, it's dark at that time....



So, today, I slept in again. The forecast was for thunderstorms so late this morning I picked another batch of blueberries under ominous clouds. They are bigger than last time, and sweeter too. I suspect that there won't be too many left by next week... my last chance for purple pleasure. Apparently, the mosquitoes thought it might be their last chance for blood. They were particularly pesky today. After putting a liter of berries in the refrigerator, I took a quick cruise into town and picked up the last of the groceries I couldn't carry yesterday. I bought an ice cream cone-thing and ate it in front of the store, watching Suonenjoki go in and out. It's always fascinating to see what walks by... I took my recycling in today as well. I got back the equivalent of US$ 2.45. Wow you say? Not really. That was for 9 aluminum cans and one 1.5-liter plastic bottle. I can see how that might encourage more recycling and less roadside litter. I managed to beat the rain home, even had some time to run my exercise route, just barely. It's been sputtering the rest of the day, while I worked on my travel claims for this trip (ack!) and travel forms for international travel in late September (double ack!). Dreay weather, dreary task.The joys of working for the government...