Trouble in California -- And Two Movies

Hello everyone!  I can't believe I'm writing an entry so soon after the last one, but I have the time, so it seemed good to do so.  

California.  We are in California, near LA.  We delivered our load to South Carolina, stopping on the way on Thanksgiving Day for a meal together.  

From South Carolina, we picked up a load going up to Dayton, Texas, to a Sam's located there.  From the time we left Green Bay, Wisconsin earlier last week, we drove in some kind of precipitation almost the entire way -- either snow or rain.  Of course anything short of the snow and blizzard conditions we were in through Montana the other week were not too bad.

From Dayton we took an empty trailer all the way back to New Orleans and picked up a load there that was going to Chino (might as well just say LA), California.  We delivered that load yesterday morning, and then gave ourselves some time to take a little break, do some laundry,  and go see a movie, so we were ready to go again this morning.

We had a load to pick up that was going up to Denver.  I was excited about that, because my Daddy is working up in Denver until the middle of this month, and I was looking forward to seeing him for a little while.

I left this morning around 0600 California time going to pick up an empty trailer that we were taking to the place we were to pick up the load.  Almost to the place we were picking up the empty (the same place we delivered to yesterday in Chino), I had just gotten off the 71 Freeway at the Chino Hills Parkway exit, the truck started flashing lights at me and acting funny, just the way it did several months ago up in Oklahoma when we had the transmission problems.  

The bottom line is that we got towed back to the Schneider OC in Fontana (about 20 miles away), and we will be here until at least Thursday.  Maybe longer.  So we are staying in the motel that SNI uses in LA, which is near the Ontario, California, airport.  It's the same place we stayed the time we just took a little time off here several months ago.

No Country For Old Men.  One reason we decided to take some time off yesterday was to be able to go see the movie that just came out.  It's a Coen Brothers movie based on the book of the same title by Cormac McCarthy, who also wrote the excellent book I just finished, Blood Meridian.

I won't go into details about the plot, but it was an excellent movie, one I would rate 5 out of 5, or 10 out of 10, or whatever scale you would like to use to measure such a thing.  It is not a gentle, kind movie, and the ending doesn't wrap everything up neatly, and not everyone lives happily ever after.  It's disturbing, but it's disturbing in the sort of way that leaves you asking questions, challenges your view of the world and the way it works.  Profound in some of those challenges.  Excellent film on many levels.  

Go see it.

Beowulf.  Another movie that we've seen previews for, and here in Ontario, it was playing in High Definition on a huge IMAX screen in 3D.   Based on the epic poem of the same name, really the only requirement for me to see it was that Angelina "oh those lips" Jolie was in it.  Also Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone (whom I don't remember seeing in anything else, but he plays the title character very well), and Robin Wright "oh isn't she just lovely dressed as the Queen" Penn.

Good story just for entertainment.  4 out of 5 on the scale (if we are still doing that).  Go see it also, even if you aren't a guy who wants to see Angelina and her lips in 3D.  

Added:  a link to an excellent discussion of Beowulf, especially its depiction of pagan versus Christian virtues and heroes, with a reference to a lecture on Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien I didn't know about.

Other stuff.  There is more going on with us, about which I will write more later, perhaps.  We still have to work out the exact details of our upcoming changes.  I'll keep you posted, one way or another.

On Thanksgiving Day, I got a call from my ex-wife, Charlotte.  We don't talk often, and it's usually when she calls me to talk when she needs a friend to listen.  We talked about an hour.  And, for some reason, more than in almost two years, talking to her this time really just made me miss her more than I have in a long time.  That lasted for a couple of days.  I just had to hang on and let it ride out.  There's something about driving a truck with all that time just with your feelings and thoughts that sort of magnifies the effects of something like that.  

I didn't really listen to a lot of Amber Digby during that time, or I would have been in an emotional whirlpool.  Which is sometimes okay; but I needed to focus on what I was doing, so it wasn't the right time to jump in the deep end of that pool.

Interesting -- why did I just write about that here?  Guess I needed to.

Until next time . . . keep the wheels rollin' . . . hope your time preparing for whatever holidays you celebrate (if any) coming up don't drive you too crazy . . .

Allan