Family Movie Night - Part 3... or was it 4?

This Sunday's Family Movie Night was another good one.

The choice of movies went to my older brother this time. He had some difficulty in finding one that he liked that had captions, but finally settled on "Appaloosa" staring Viggo Mortenson and Ed Harris. Both Viggo and Ed were in fine form and were supported by some really good actors - namely Renée Zellweger.

Here's a synopsis of the movie: "Set in 1882, New Mexico Territory. Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are itinerant lawmen, hired by desperate towns as marshal and deputy. The city fathers of Appaloosa hire them after Randall Bragg, a newly-arrived rancher with money and a gang of thugs, disrupts commerce and kills three local lawmen. Cole and Hitch contrive to arrest Bragg and bring him to trial, but hanging him proves difficult. Meanwhile, a widow has arrived in town, Allison French: pretty, refined, and good-natured. Virgil falls hard, and it seems mutual, but there may be more to Allie than meets the eye. Can friendship and skill with a gun overcome a pernicious villain and green-eyed jealousy?"

We had intended to celebrate my younger brother's birthday, since he will be out of town for the next few months working out in the bush and will miss his actual day. Unfortunately, he was out shopping for the supplies he’d need, and didn't show up until the movie was over and people were starting to leave. But I did get to hug him goodbye, giving him my standard admonition "If you go and get yourself killed, I'll never speak to you again!"

My younger brother is an adrenaline junkie and loves to do things that stand a very good chance of killing him. I'm sure he does it just to give me nightmares.

We had good food to eat, as always. Enchiladas made by my sister-in-law Heather (she pressure cooked the beef and shredded it by hand, even!). Rice with meatballs & gravy made by my Mother (unfortunately the meatballs fell apart in the gravy, so it didn't look nearly as good as it tasted). A nice big Caesar's salad made by my sister-in-law Julie (who makes the best salads ever). A platter of fresh veggies with ranch dip provided by my sister Kelly (well, as fresh as you can get in the middle of winter up here in Alaska). Somebody had a tray of cocktail shrimp with tasty horseradish sauce to dip, but I never did really know who provided that. Last but certainly not least, I had fully intended to bring a peach/apple cobbler but ended up grabbing some pudding cake from the store on my way out. I simply ran out of time this weekend and didn't cook it ahead of time like I should have.

I also brought with me pictures of my Craft Corner construction day for Heather. She doesn't have very many pictures of Lauren so wanted to get them from me. I'm not exactly technically proficient, so could only bring them to her on my camera. When she went to put them onto her laptop, we ran in to a slight miscommunication problem. I kept trying to tell her how to get them off the camera while she kept trying to tell me that her computer doesn't work that way. She has an Apple, I have a PC. It took us a while before we were both on the same page, verbally speaking, and finally did manage to download the pictures for her. I take all the blame for that: I barely understand PC-speech, you can't expect me to understand Apple-speech as well.

I noticed on my drive home that those few added seconds of sunlight each day are starting to add up. Typically when I drive home from these events, the sun is low enough that it doesn't bother me much. This time, though - it was in my face pretty much the whole way. I don't want to complain - God knows we need the sun - but my sunglasses barely did the trick. I'm just glad I didn't get into a wreck from lack of visibility.