You Know How It Is...

...with an April day...so quoth Robert Frost in his poem, Two Tramps In Mudtime:

"The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March."

At first it was mostly hail...

...but 30 minutes later, this is what it looked like:

Must be Michigan.

Gone fishin'...

...a grandson in Florida is making good use of his free time...

...fishing for both catfish and shark...big fun...

...and beautiful vistas.

In spite of the snowy start to this blog, we've actually had some decent April weather...

...and I've taken advantage of it, swinging my hickories in the back yard.

Last year I'd already been on the golf course by this time, but considering current circumstances...

...it's unlikely I'll see the links much before May.

I may look happy, but...

Now for the Unhappy Man update...

...and things are going along surprisingly well...down 6 lbs so far.

Of course, the 1st week is usually the easiest when dedication and enthusiasm have not yet been shredded by hard experience and fevered dreams of hot fudge sundaes...

...Yummm...

Been writing a little...

...and researching a little but still not hot and heavy into my next story...haven't hit the zone yet, just kind of dancing around the edges of it.

On the movie front, we've seen some good ones lately, including a couple that aren't normally in our wheelhouse...

- and -

...but which both of us enjoyed...and a few old favorites like:

• Young Frankenstein
• Sabrina (the excellent 1995 remake with Harrison Ford, Greg Kinnear and Julia Ormond)
• From Here To Eternity (for which Frank Sinatra won a Best Supporting Oscar in 1954)

- and - a film noir classic...

...c'mon...Bogart, Lorre, Greenstreet...great on screen chemistry with those guys...gotta love it.

And they were less than a year away from making cinematic history with Casablanca when The Maltese Falcon was released.

Oh, and the Falcon was pretty cool, too...

wonder who blinked first...

Finally, it's Easter weekend...

...and for what is probably the first time in our country's history, there will be very few church services celebrating the Resurrection of Christ due to "shelter in place" orders...some of them fascist in nature.

That does not - can not - negate the great truth of the gospel:

Christ died for the sins of the world on Calvary's cross, was buried and rose to life on the third day as evidence of God's acceptance of His sacrifice. (I Corinthians 15:3,4)

Because of what Christ did, we can be reconciled to our Heavenly Father through faith in His Son. (Romans 10:9,10)

I hope you've experienced that truth in your life, and I hope you enjoy a blessed Easter with ones you love.

later, mcm fans...

System Issues...

...are going to kill me...

Ok, so we're a little more advanced than that, but we're having major issues with a disk controller...too many 3 am wake up calls...as a matter of fact, as I write this it's 3:55 am and I'm just mopping up the third system reboot this week.  I should probably admit defeat and brew a pot of coffee at midnight while waiting for the clarion call.

An upcycled percolator lamp from BenclifDesigns  He has many very cool light fixtures on his site...you should check it out.

If this new and exciting routine we've settled into doesn't do me in before then, we're going to solve it with a system failover event this weekend...big fun.

In spite of these unpleasant circumstances, I generally like the middle of the night.  In a previous life I used to drive back and forth between Michigan and Maine, a 1,000 mile, 18 hour trip.  I'd always do it in one stretch, and my favorite part of the journey was from about 11 pm until 5 am...traffic was light, and for the most part it was just me and truckers counting the white lines as they zoomed by mile after mile.  On a clear night the stars would fill up my windshield and I'd mentally write that bestseller or solve my relational problems while sipping a large coffee and enjoying a Dunkin' Donuts cruller.

So Mr. Bob Adams of www.RonsonRepair.com has been working his magic on my Ronson lighters again...he serviced both my Junior Bartender and Maltese Falcon lighters:

Junior Barrtender lighter

He did a superb job of fixing the touch tip mechanism, and straightening and painting the base...here it is in action:

Here's the Maltese Falcon he repaired:

...and here's a video of it working:

In what appears to be a losing effort to drag this blog back into a mid century modern aesthetic I claim to adore (and in truth, I really do), here's a favorite item that stretches the definition the other way:

My Weltron 2005: radio, 8 track, record player

This was made around 1969 / 1970, and realistically, that's post-mcm...but it has that cool, atomic, space age vibe that was prevalent in the 50's and 60's, so I'm including it here.  A short video of it playing a CRC 45:

I'm home now, it's almost 5 am...as Yukon Cornelius once opined, let's get some shuteye!