"Her" is Outstanding!!!

We seem to watch a fair number of movies down here, south of the border, where copies of most are available before the movie appears in theatres (funny how that happens?) I am not impressed by too many movies. I find the majority of them are totally predictable, over-rated, and banal. 

Then along comes  "Her".  

Briefly reading articles about 'Her'..a guy falls in love with a Siri-like entity...it seemed like another forgettable Hollywood feature. How wrong I was to make such an arbitrary assumption! 

We watched it last night. Normally I am alseep within half an hour of pressing 'Play'... Meg rarely lasts till the end either. Not with this one. We both stayed totally focussed on the movie, relishing on the premise, the dialogue, the cinematography, the high-waisted pants, the colour red in every scene. 'Her' is gripping!

This has got to be the most compelling story to come along for quite some time. Joaquin Phoenix is perfect, as was 'Scarlett Johannson'. Read this review. It says it all. I would give this movie '3 thumbs up'...'5 stars'. It's wonderful! 

OAN, I don't understand what all the hype is for 'Gravity'. It pales in comparison. We have a few more Oscar nominations to view before this year's event but, for now, I certainly have a favourite to root for!

Zen and the Art of Casa Maintenance - Parte Tres

No question - it is lovely to live by the sea. Temperatures are hovering around 30C during the day and dropping to a shivering 19C during the night. When you compare our weather this week with that in parts of Eastern Canada and the US, there is no doubt that we are liking the sunshine and balmy ocean breezes. The sunsets are outstanding, as usual. It's a good life! 

But along with living on the seashore comes a few mandatory maintenance chores that have to be followed to counter, maintain or repair anything that can deteriorate or fail due to the high salt levels in our environment. 

This week I called on a few of my acquired skills to tackle a few repairs - electical...rewiring a pump motor plug to include the ground wire; plumbing...replacing the innards in one of our toilets; upholstery...repairing a collapsed seat of a chair and recovering the padding and cover; and computer set-up...spending many hours yesterday troubleshooting and setting up a router for our newly repaired telephone/internet connection. 

Fortunately Meg is an expert in pool chemistry, having owned and operated her own pool company for many years. Not only does she maintain the equipment (pool pumps can be stressed down here) and clean the pool, she has structured a water quality program that gives us the clearest, cleanest and most pleasant water imaginable. It does take time and careful attention to keep it sparkling but it is well worth the effort. It is pure joy to swim in and float upon!

Meg also is in charge of lubricating and working all the many locks, hinges and any moving parts on the property (a chore that takes countless hours every week), not to mention sorting, identifying and organizing all the keys. For some reason one key cannot open more than one lock in our little 'burb. Fortunately her carpenter skills came in handy as soon as we arrived last week. The lock on our garage door was completely seized so she had to unscrew the whole mechanism from the door to allow the Subaru in then fabricate a new system to secure the door...all after driving 10 hours from Mazatlan suffering from the initial stage of bronchitis.

A couple of years ago we planted 5 coconuts on our beachfront. We didn't expect them all to grow but they have flourished so well they obscure our view of the shoreline.

Before ...

It seemed like a good plan to dig and move the smaller trees. Our handy hombre, Julien, said that he could do it and arrived with a shovel this morning. I just couldn't let him do all the work himself, after all it is 30C out there and it was our error in judgement for planting the palms in the first place. So I grabbed a shovel and started digging. I managed to unearth one of the palms while Julien dug up the first of four much larger ones. Digging up a palm was a little more rigorous than I had thought it would be. I decided then that I had better dig some holes for the soon-to-be displaced trees. Sand isn't as hard to dig as other soils but the soaring temperature and weight of each shovelful began to get the best of me. I could only move 2-3 shovelsful before I needed to rest a moment and breathe, shovel a couple more times and rest. Yikes...I guess I'm not a puppy anymore. Eventually we hauled the trees to their new homes, planted and watered them and refilled the original holes. The physical effort and sweat felt good but soon progressed to pain and exhaustion. All in all it was a rewarding few hours of toil. The shoreline is visible from the casa now. It's now easy to watch the pelicans dive-bombing for fish.

After...voila!...the ocean!

 Shortly afterward, while I was stretched out on the concrete couch trying to cool down, Julien brought us a couple of coconuts that he had cut down in our own backyard. Wow! These were our very first, very own coconuts!!

 He was considerate enough to chop the tops so we could get at the juice and soft core which I popped immediately into a blender for pina coladas...yum! Life is good!!

My, what a loverly pair of coconuts...