Pandemic Birthday

Let me start by saying thanks to everybody that wished me a happy birthday on Monday via text or phone call or Instagram messenger or card in the mail or via haircut or Teams. I’m sure some people even wished me a happy birthday on Facebook. I guess I’ll find out if I ever go on Facebook again.

Even thanks to the people who wished me Happy birthday on the wrong day.

It was a unique birthday. I know that numerous people have celebrated a pandemic birthday this year and many of you will celebrate one in the future. Mine wasn’t necessarily all that bad.

To start with, I took my birthday off. I know I couldn’t do all that much, but I just didn’t want to sit in my office all day. Staring at the walls. The same 4 walls.

I got lucky that on Sunday the new SSD arrived for my work from home computer. I was able to upgrade my work from home computer with the SSD, plus more RAM, and a better processor. I was able to get that work done on Sunday, so I didn’t even step foot in my office all day on Monday.

I slept all the way until 7:30. I got up and ate a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and watched THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA on Amazon Prime. It wasn’t exactly the movie that I was expecting. It had a weird ending.

Then I took Naima for a car ride. We stopped at the Jay Carlson Wildlife Area and the Harrier Marsh. She got a good run in at both locations.

Then I went home and had a quick lunch. I had decided to go for a short road trip. I knew I couldn’t travel very far, but I wouldn’t to do something I would enjoy. I decided to make a trip to Rolfe, Iowa to see the greatest piece of art ever constructed my the hands of man.

I took several pictures, have a look:


Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Birthday Road Trip - 2020

Since I was on kind of a time crunch, I didn’t harvest many signs for THE TOWN SIGN PROJECT, but I did get three bagged:


Bradgate, iowa
Bradgate

Callender, Iowa
Callender

Gowrie, Iowa
Gowrie

When I got back home, I loaded Naima up in the car again and we went over to my Mom’s for my birthday dinner. We had homemade pizza made with the “family sauce recipe”. It doesn’t really belong to the family, but came from a family friend.

On the pizza was sausage, mushrooms, onions, green peppers, and sauerkraut. Delicious!

My Mom also made me a birthday cake. My favorite kind of cake, Mayonnaise Cake! Delicious!

After dinner, we watched the remake of OVERBOARD. I’m not really quite sure how that happened, but maybe I was feeling some 80s nostalgia. Actually, I know I’ve been feeling some 80s nostalgia lately. I recently watched the entire series TEEN WOLF. Entirely based on my fondness for the original TEEN WOLF and my fascination with the absurdity of TEEN WOLF TOO.

After the movie I went back home and finished my day off responding to some text messages before calling it a night.

Pandemic birthday could have been worse, and parts of it were pretty great!

+++++++

This is your reminder that this week’s THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme is SELF-PORTRAIT:


WEEK 245 - SELF-PORTRAIT
SELF-PORTRAIT

A SELF-PORTRAIT image is simply a picture of yourself. Or a picture of somebody taking a picture of themselves.

Don’t forget that Monday is Memorial Day. While the banks take holidays, Photography 139 never takes a day off. The grind is real! Plan on getting your submissions in accordingly.

Happy photo harvesting!

5 thoughts on “Pandemic Birthday”

  1. Jon and I were trying to explain “Teen Wolf” to Alice a couple of years back when one or the other of us made a joke about car surfing. “So, it’s a teenager who turns into a werewolf. No, he wasn’t bitten, it’s hereditary. No, it’s okay, he wasn’t dangerous, it just made him… really good at basketball?”

    And that was when we discovered how ridiculous the movie was in hindsight.

  2. By “ridiculous” you mean “amazing”.

    Stiles is an all-time Top 5 sidekick character. The coach is maybe the best coach character in history.

    It wasn’t just basketball, it made him really good at everything. Even acting!

    When they get old enough, you should make them watch it as an educational film on the changes their body will go through during puberty. Because in addition to being amazing, it is also a brilliant metaphor for puberty.

    Now I think about it, probably just the greatest movie every made.

  3. As soon as I hit “submit” on that, I felt like I should have a follow-up post clarifying that I meant “ridiculous premise” – the movie itself is gold. We watched it approximately 47 times when I was growing up.

    I can still see the coach chewing his gum in my mind right now. Stiles was imminently entertaining, it is true. He was so utterly 80s.

    I’ll have to have them watch it. I think Charlie, in particular, would enjoy the crap out of it. He does love a good werewolf. I’m not sure what is the appropriate age for the movie, though – I started trying to watch “Grease” with Alice a couple of weeks ago, and had a real quick, “NOT YET” moment.

  4. I didn’t know you were such a Puritan. What part of GREASE forced you to turn if off?
    The television show bares little to know resemblance to the movie. Other than that the Stiles character is still the best part. The coach is the second best part.

    The other thing I took from the show is that Beacon Hills Class of 2017 must have started with about 500 students in order for them to have maybe 35 make it to graduation.

    High death rate in that town and nothing seems to be illegal.

    Basketball is replaced by lacrosse. There is no Car Surfing. Scott’s dad is an FBI agent and not a hardware store owner. He also isn’t around. Scott’s mom is still alive and a nurse.

    One of the things I found most fascinating about the show are the characters that come and go because the actors wanted to go onto “bigger things”.

    Scott’s love interest the first 3 seasons is a character name Alison. She gets killed off because the actress wanted to “get more serious” with her acting. I don’t know that she has done much of anything since then. Although she came back for one episode playing a French werewolf hunter from the 18th century and her French accent is ridiculous. Glad she got more serious with her acting.

    Although, she was right. It was ridiculous for somebody that was 29 to be playing a junior in high school. The funny thing is that the actress that plays the character that replaces her was 1 year older than the actress that played Alison.

    But none of the actors were all that age appropriate for the roles they were playing. You know, kind of like GREASE, Mistress Hibbins.

  5. I usually don’t censor a ton of what Alice listens to as far as music (although she’s not listening to a lot of uncensored rap yet), but there are a lot of sexual references and overtones in the movie that I hadn’t remembered. We really just in the past year have explained sex as a reproductive activity, but definitely have not gotten into recreational sex, unwanted pregnancy, and society’s view of “promiscuity.” The Rizzo pregnancy storyline, her “promiscuity” in the eyes of the class, Danny getting too aggressive with Sandy at the movie theater and his usage of the term “pussy wagon” (although she could just listen to Trump for that)… all were questionable. But, honestly, ultimately it’s how Sandy completely changes who she is to keep a man at the end that I don’t want Alice to see yet. Sandy should be as puritan or promiscuous as she wants and doesn’t need to change herself to find a boy who likes her – she just needs to find a better boy. I realize that sounded a little more militant than it needs to be, but we’re still really working on self-image and self-worth, and I don’t want her affected by all of those societal expectations and norms yet. But I’ll take that scarlet A. 😉

    So, while I’m likely coming across as a man-hating feminist…. the one storyline I didn’t love in the OG movie was how Boof just waited around while Scott acted like a turd and prioritized the hot girl, and then just fell into his arms when he “settled” on her. Which doesn’t make “Teen Wolf” a bad movie, it was normal for the time, but it’s still sorta crappy. Is that not a thing now with Alison and any other love interest(s)?

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