♫16 Tons and What Do You Get?♫

I have no idea, since we only got three tons:



It’s going to take more than "another day" to get rid of them, and we paid a little over $200 in cash so we’re not "deeper in debt."

This is the next stage of Project Patio, a Cecil B DeMill(e) production. I don’t know where the mill is, but it sure has a lot of gravel in it. It was delivered yesterday while I was at work. Man, I said, that’s a lot of kidney stones. Now I really have to pee gravel.

That’s a joke, son. “Pea gravel” is the term for this type of loose stone that is going to go between and above the layer of bricks from the demolition project that has finally been laid down. Then that layer will be covered with a dozen or so large pavers we’ve had in various places over the years, a cement pinning for an umbrella is already there, we put the table out there, and finally let’s eat!

Maybe by the end of the month if we’re lucky. It takes between 10 and 20 shovels of that stuff to not quite fill a wheelbarrow, which then has to travel from the driveway to the new patio. Eleanor is estimating about 150 trips. By the time I left for work this morning, we'd made four of them. It’s a start.

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Also a start? An overblown, scandal-ridden right-wing hero has finally been shown the door, hopefully never to return.

Unfortunately, not ours:

Boris Johnson has left the Downing Street building, after his entire cabinet pretty much announced they couldn't cover for his bullshit anymore.  It took all of a day for the inevitable Downfall parody to arrive.

Meanwhile, our version of Boris continues to deny, fabricate and rally his (heavily armed) troops who can't wait to have him back in the saddle.

We declared our independence, why?

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Despite what I posted on ID4, we did wind up going to Canada on the Fourth.

Sort of.

We continued our in-home Friendship Film Festival, begun over the weekend with Candian Bacon, by taking in a much overdue re-viewing of Men With Brooms, the legendary Canadian tribute to curling from 2002. Paul Gross wrote, directed and stars;  Leslie Nielsen is funny in a supporting role. but he gets to go back to some of his pre-Airplane! dramatic chops, as well.

Lots of future alums of Orphan Black, Murdoch Mysteries, and of course several (in addition to Paul Gross) who would go on to Republic of Doyle.  Future Lost in Space-r Molly Parker's in an early role, but future Doyle judge Michelle Nolden is the one playing an astronaut in this one.

The soundtrack is awesome, from Kathleen Edwards to Our Lady Peace to the Tragically Hip, who not only play on the soundtrack but appear in the film as a Kingston curling rink on the ice! And no beavers were harmed in the making of this motion picture, eh?

Since then, we've been back in the USSA, on both coasts. The digital version of Everything Everywhere All At Once came out the other day and we re-watched that over the past two nights. Oddly, the subtitles only translated the roughly half the dialogue that was in Chinese, but the film is so weird that the visuals overpower anything being said in any language. We then returned to the just-released episode of the second season of Only Murders in the Building- which is building, to a nice slow burn of the whodunit and the whydtheydoit.  Seeing Steve Martin here reminded me of one of his most memorable single performances back in the day with Tracey Ullman; those shows of hers were epic, but have been stuck in Rights Hell ever since because of the original Simpsons short segments contained within them.  Fortunately, some snippets survive, and this is one of them:

Watch on YouTube

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So much for past and present. The immediate future still holds my return to sacred ground on Saturday.

Sort of.

Rain forecasts in NYC for that day have blinked on and off and now back on: as of now, there's a 40 percent chance of the wet stuff for the day. I'll stick my finger in the air tomorrow morning and make the decision on whether to begin the drive after I get out of work early tomorrow afternoon. I want to try to get some of the patio work done before I leave, because I know how Eleanor rolls, and don't want her to try taking on the whole thing while I'm away.