86 years ago today my father was born. I miss him.
75 years ago today was the liberation of Auschwitz – the prime example of what happens when fear and hatred trump humanity.
1 day ago my son was devasted by the untimely passing of one of his sporting heroes, Kobe Bryant.
May his memory, and the memory of all those loved ones who have been lost, be and remain a blessing.
Today would have been David Bowie’s 73rd birthday. As I read the news this morning (Iran, inane actions by a US president whose name I don’t even want to mention on my blog anymore and his son, horrible fires in Australia exacerbated by climate change), somehow this Bowie song springs to mind…
This is not the first time I think of this when I look at the news. Of course, if we humans could escape to Mars we’d eff it all up there too with wars and greed and destroying the environment. I know it is something of all ages to worry about the state of the world but my goodness, where is the good I wonder? That’s it, that’s my blog post – just a bit of exasperation on a Wednesday morning.
What on earth do people see in leaders like these? I just don’t understand it!
Such a depressing landslide win for the Conservatives in the UK last night! I am by no means a Jeremy Corbyn fan but is Boris Johnson really the better alternative? What is happening that people are so fascinated by lying populists and want to make them their leaders? The disastrous consequences of this election result will live on for a very very long time… For me as a European the worst of all is that Brexit really will happen now. Will of the people and all, I know, I just wish people would have more sense. To say I’m disappointed is stating it mildly.
Recent weeks have been a bit of a downer, or to express it with an Anne with an E gif, the weeks have left me feeling like this:
The vertigo I had a couple of years ago has come back with a vengeance and has left me with not being able to do much. But, thankfully, it slowly does seem to be improving now, so hopefully I’ll see the end of that soon. The only comfort has been my laptop, where when I wasn’t resting, I was able to while away the hours watching stuff that is not the news, because oh my gooodness, the news is absolutely relentless again these days! It seriously depresses me even more than my dizziness and scares me too! So, I have been disappearing into the world of Anne obsession (these following gifs are from last week’s season 3, epsiode 3 – not too spoilery, I hope).
And I understand this dance will be happening in episode 5 in a little over a week:
Seriously, I can hardly wait for the next episode. Is it weird that I should love a show about teenagers so much? 😉
Anway, I was dismayed when earlier this week, in addition to the horrible world news and my vertigo, my laptop crashed and big time too. Nothing I could do could bring it back to life. Mr E and I took it to a repair shop and there the news was that the harddrive had died – forever!! Nothing, no data, could be restored. Thankfully the more important stuff was back-upped on our home network drive and I didn’t lose all too much. A new harddrive has been placed, the laptop is working better now than before it completely crashed (when it was agonizingly s-l-o-w) and everthing is configured again (what a hassle to figure out which of your standard passwords have been used for which sites/accounts!).
I guess I can now state that personally things are starting to look up again (please let the improvement continue and the vertigo be gone soon!). If only I could also say that about the state of the world. I can’t wait for the day that the disastrous president Trump is gone and please please please let xenophobia be a thing of the past… SOON! That would improve my state of mind immensely.
Let me start with the bad things in life. Specifically Boris Johnson as new prime minister of the UK and a Burqa-ban which has come into effect today in The Netherlands are upsetting me and so, for my own sanity, I keep my news intake to a minimum right now. Instead, I try to focus on the good things in life. For instance: my summer holiday started on Wednesday, the technique of using baking powder to clean my two pairs of Birkenstock slippers sorta worked (I walk on them all day every day in the summer, I kid you not), today Mr Esther, my daughter and I will go on a day trip to a city near the German border, and tomorrow I am going to meet my ex-coworker’s two week old baby girl! When we exchanged chat messages earlier this week, she said she was very low on bibs for the baby, so I got her these (that 5th item is a shirt and not a bib)…
It’s always good to focus on babies over politics. 🙂
What also makes me happy is the new Picard trailer. I think I have watched it 10 times already. I love Jean-Luc Picard (and Patrick Stewart as well) and I so very much wish for leaders like him in the real world!
I can hardly wait for this in 2020!
Next up: as I love Roman Holiday so very much, I had to watch last weekend’s Hallmark movie Rome in Love, which was about an unknown actress getting ready to film a Roman Holiday remake and she herself falls in love with an American journalist in Rome. Kinda meta, I know. I watched the movie, it was OK, but had nowhere near the charm of Roman Holiday, which I just needed to watch again for the zillionth time. That movie is always the best pick-me-up movie! It got me back to zipping through some Audrey Hepburn movies again and boy was she good and gorgeous! The last movie she did was a small role as an angel in the Steven Spielberg movie Always. I re-watched her scenes in that and was struck by this image of her in the movie at one point…
The humanity and kindness in her face in that sunset light is just breathtaking.
And there are more goodies to be focused on! On Guylty’s blog the other day she was asking about ‘other gods’ we like besides Richard. In the comments section I mentioned the other (male) gods present in folders on my computer…
I have several side attractions: Colin Firth, Gregory Peck, Hugh Jackman, but I also have some David Bowie, Keanu Reeves, Pierce Brosnan, Simon Baker, James Stewart, Lucas Bryant (yeah, not known), Richard Chamberlain and Viggo Mortensen folders. However those folders are tiny compared to my Richard Armitage folder. Just did a check, I think the largest folder after Richard is Colin Firth with some 400 items. Richard’s folder has 3000 items… 🙂
This triggered me to check out what my more recent actor-crush, Lucas Bryant, has been up to. He’s been pretty quiet of late, not many new roles to speak of, but I did find out that he’s been doing a few M.A.R.V.E.L. Agents of Shield episodes recently. I don’t watch that show but have watched (parts of) the 3 episodes he’s in last night and boy, did he look fine! The camera sure does like him in close-up.
Last but not least, I watched the newest Suits episode this morning (season 9, episode 3) and in it there was a Louis Litt dream sequence which was so funny! Louis is a judge and a lawyer in that dream and the jury turns out to be made up out of 12 Harveys!
Gabriel Macht, who plays Harvey on Suits, directed this episode and I wonder if this court scene was the funniest thing he has ever directed and how much fun did he have embodying those 12 Harveys? The eye-scratching middle finger and the one where he holds a cat like that (cats are Louis’s obsession, not Harvey’s!) are the highlights for me. All of Louis’s insecurities, especially with regards to Harvey, are on display here and that just cracks me up. Rick Hoffman as Louis remains a highlight of this show. Oh heck, here’s the whole scene…
I’m so glad there are also so many joys in this world. 🙂
