No Laughs
For some inexplicable reason (well, it’s probably explicable to him), Bill has been jonesing to see the movie Stillwater, starring Matt Damon, ever since he first heard about it. The movie is about a man from Oklahoma (Damon) whose daughter has been arrested for murder in Marseille, France. She says she is innocent, so he goes to France to see her and try and get the courts to reconsider her sentence. Matt Damon does an amazing acting job portraying the father who did nothing but break promises to his daughter as she was growing up who now wants to make up for his mistakes. The movie is good, EVER SO SAD. So sad, in fact, that I would think twice about recommending it to someone unless they were pure movie buffs who watch movies for the acting only. I don’t know why Hollywood filmmakers and actors insist on movies being “realistic” and depressing. Throw us a bone, won’t you? Can’t you just give us a couple of well-acted movies with a happy ending? Has anyone else seen it? What did you think?

She May Not Look Tough
I talk about my niece Jessie a lot, mostly because she is funny and reminds me so much of my mother. She is under five feet tall and probably doesn’t hit 100 pounds. But she is tough as nails. She is an civil engineer, and leads a team of mostly men. By now, they must know that they can’t win a fight with her, and they’d BETTER NOT take her for granted. My brother sent me this photo of Jessie running a meeting of her staff, and it made me laugh. Jessie’s the one with the computer. I bet she’s sitting on a phone book…..

What’s the Buzz?
A follow-up to my story about the bee stinging situation. I called a bee removal company (and when I say company, I mean one man named Gregg whose mission is to save the bees when he can). He came the next day, and his price was very reasonable. I watched him walk to the back where the two guys were attacked. He looked for about 30 seconds and headed back to the door. “Not bees,” he said. “They are Western Yellow Jackets.” HA! I’m not one to say I told you so, but didn’t I tell both fellas that they weren’t attacked by bees? Gregg used carbon dioxide to kill the yellow jackets, and gave me a guarantee. He even left me with a jar of honey. I was happy about that, because it doesn’t look like Dagny’s bees gave her any honey this year.

Hot Diggity
I accomplished another first this past week. You might recall that I recently met the challenge of successfully making hamburger buns from scratch. This last week, I got hungry once again for brats, but I didn’t have any buns. So I looked up a recipe and realized I had all of the ingredients and all of the time to make hot dog buns from scratch. They turned out perfectly, and they were delicious…..

Ciao!