September Sweeps - Day 578

New month, new bunth.  Wait, does anything rhyme with "month?"*

I didn't mention it yesterday, but I took a little nap in the afternoon when I shouldn't have, just closed my eyes "for a minute," and when I opened them, over an hour had passed.  It was not something I was proud of . . . but today, while driving toward the cabin, I didn't get sleepy even once, and that was new.

Part of me says, I need to not be lazy EVER, I need to stretch myself further and work harder and be better.  But another part says, "See, you took a nap yesterday, and now that you're at the cabin today, you'll make better use of your time.  So the nap was a good thing."  Maybe both are right.

Sit-ups Today: 250 (I wanted to give the sit-ups a healthy head start this month)

For the first time this year, I took my uncle's camera with me to the cabin.  I was reminded recently when I heard somebody refer to a dee-ess-el-ar, and I didn't know what that was.  I listened, and she said it again--DSLR, as though it meant something.  So I looked up the abbreviation, and discovered that it means Digital Single Lens Reflex camera.  I'm pretty sure that's what I have.  I just wish I had somebody to take pictures of with it.

I will have to figure out how to transfer pictures off of it the next time I'm there.  Also, it's supposed to have a video setting--I'll try to record something with it to see how it turns out.

I did a search for "DSLR Camera," and this was among the pictures that came up.  Not sure why I picked this one, though.

When I got here, a full hour earlier than last week (last week I was dealing with my driver's license and such--or was that two weeks ago?), but still later than would be optimal, there was nothing in the traps (there are three, all remain unsprung), but there was a rifle next to the front door of the cabin.

It is my brother's rifle, but just left where anybody could see it, or indeed, grab it.**  Well, I picked it up, just to see if it was loaded--it was--and took aim at a tree stump just past the shed where we keep the shovels and the emergency generator.  I thought I'd see if I could still shoot straight, after thirty-something years.  

But right before I pulled the trigger, I saw an animal's face looking my way just past the stump.  There was a deer laying down in the grass there, watching me, right where I was about to shoot my brother's rifle.  There was something mortifying about that to me, so I turned in the other direction and took aim at a tree trunk up high.  I pulled the trigger, and (like the Sting song) a shot rang out throughout the land--MUCH louder than I ever would have guessed.  And those poor deer behind the shed (there were at least three of them) started bounding for the hills.  

Push-ups Today: 55 (push-ups are hard at this elevation, on a wood floor)

I really like that Ed Sheeran guy, but boy, that "Bad Habits" song has to go.  Every time I hear it, I appreciate the guy less.

I got my Patreon address edited, and even though I'd brought a couple of movies I'd never seen with me, chose to watch SAVING MR. BANKS again.  If you recall, it tells the story of the culmination of Walt Disney's twenty years of attempting to buy the rights to "Mary Poppins" from P.L. Travers, focusing on her 1961 visit to Los Angeles, and flashing back about a hundred times to her childhood in Australia, showing how she, I don't know, somehow both got her inspiration for "Poppins" and lost her sense of wonder.

Big and I reviewed it on our show when it came out, but I had forgotten just how loathesome a character they make Travers, despite Emma Thompson's inherent likeability.  Tom Hanks plays Disney as just about as saintly as is humanly possible, but we sort of warm to Travers as the film goes along, understanding (sort of) why she ended up the way she is.  You see, her father was a dreamer, a drunk who had Rish Outfield Syndrome (a chronic condition in which you're fired from every job you've ever had), and died of Ali McGraw disease (a term coined by Roger Ebert that still makes me laugh whenever I think about it).

The film is a love letter to the Disney company, and particularly MARY POPPINS . . . but there's also an outsider's cynicism thrown in, that reflects what people who despise Disney capitalism see whenever they see the logo and the endless parade of marketed products.  Of course, Travers is fundamentally changed by her experience, and becomes a sunnier, happier person by the end of the movie, but goes to the Hollywood premiere out of spite, and insults Disney during the movie itself, in a moment that I found both brave and amusing.***

Words Today: 668

*How about the villain's last name in the MAGRUBER movie?

**That reminds me, my brother has set up these two motion cameras beside the cabin, in order to find out whether the badger I saw back in June is still around (it showed up, in fact, in photos last Wednesday, right before I got here), and when he comes here, he looks at the pictures, and has forwarded me a couple of the more interesting ones (I'm really tempted to grab my T-Rex dinosaur and have it pop into frame right in front of the camera, just to see if it startles him).  And a couple of weeks ago, the camera captured the images of a bunch of strangers walking around the outside of the cabin, apparently looking at the trench we'd dug and filled in . . . or I don't know what.  There was something super disconcerting about that--knowing people we didn't know had been here--but as far as I know, they didn't try to get in or anything.  Just weird.

***Apparently, Travers really did weep through the screening of MARY POPPINS at the premiere, but the story goes that she did so, not because she was so moved, but because she so hated what they had done to her beloved book.