Black Fly Bites
A beautiful Victoria Day weekend here in Nota Bene
has brought with it sunshine, warm temperatures, golf
and black flies. If you're counting, that's three to
the good but one very, very bad.
I had never really dealt with black flies until I arrived here in Freddie two years ago. When I was a kid, friends talked about them after trips to their cottages in the Muskokas and Kawarthas but I had lived a black-fly-free life. I didn't know how lucky I was but now I know the truth: black flies are right little bastards.
I played eighteen holes of golf Saturday morning and ran headlong into the black-fly menace. It was bad enough that I hung up my worst performance of the year with the clubs but coming home to find six serious bites on my arms made the whole experience a nightmare. Literally. For the last three nights, my sleep has been affected and, on this night, I'm awake at 3:30 in the morning, my arms on fire and itching, my head spinning. I also have an itchy eye and, fool that I am, I failed to heed the warning signs in time to get some antihistamines to help me.
Awful awful awful awful.
Holiday Monday turned into a bit of an early-summer scorcher meaning that, but for brief jaunts into the world to exercise the dog, we holed up in our oh-so-cool basement to do laundry and watch movies. The best of the three was Julie & Julia, the Meryl Streep/Amy Adams comedy from a year or so ago. I really enjoyed this movie and was once again blown away by Meryl Streep. This is, by all accounts, a minor little film in her repertoire and yet, there she is, delivering yet another stunning performance. She hits all the right notes as the famous chef, Julia Child, creating a wonderful chemistry with on-screen husband Stanley Tucci. Streep makes this movie worth seeing, her acting performance easily overcoming the weaknesses of the parallel plots.
We also watched a harmless British confection, Confetti, the story of a wedding magazine's search for the most original nuptials. Half mockumentary and half mad-cap comedy, Confetti bounces along fairly well and ends in a surprisingly satisfying way. We were pleasantly surprised to find Martin Freeman popping up again, having first encountered the every-man actor in Love, Actually, then later in the English version of The Office, which we have just gotten around to watching this summer. There were times during our viewing when I found myself wondering why Confetti hadn't done better at the box office (the website Rotten Tomatoes reports that the movie earned merely $145,000) only to be confronted again by a string of completely nude people in one of the three sub-plots. The nudity is so aggressive and in-your-face that it detracts from the entire film.
Back to work tomorrow and, if the black flies will allow it, back to sleep now.
I had never really dealt with black flies until I arrived here in Freddie two years ago. When I was a kid, friends talked about them after trips to their cottages in the Muskokas and Kawarthas but I had lived a black-fly-free life. I didn't know how lucky I was but now I know the truth: black flies are right little bastards.
I played eighteen holes of golf Saturday morning and ran headlong into the black-fly menace. It was bad enough that I hung up my worst performance of the year with the clubs but coming home to find six serious bites on my arms made the whole experience a nightmare. Literally. For the last three nights, my sleep has been affected and, on this night, I'm awake at 3:30 in the morning, my arms on fire and itching, my head spinning. I also have an itchy eye and, fool that I am, I failed to heed the warning signs in time to get some antihistamines to help me.
Awful awful awful awful.
Holiday Monday turned into a bit of an early-summer scorcher meaning that, but for brief jaunts into the world to exercise the dog, we holed up in our oh-so-cool basement to do laundry and watch movies. The best of the three was Julie & Julia, the Meryl Streep/Amy Adams comedy from a year or so ago. I really enjoyed this movie and was once again blown away by Meryl Streep. This is, by all accounts, a minor little film in her repertoire and yet, there she is, delivering yet another stunning performance. She hits all the right notes as the famous chef, Julia Child, creating a wonderful chemistry with on-screen husband Stanley Tucci. Streep makes this movie worth seeing, her acting performance easily overcoming the weaknesses of the parallel plots.
We also watched a harmless British confection, Confetti, the story of a wedding magazine's search for the most original nuptials. Half mockumentary and half mad-cap comedy, Confetti bounces along fairly well and ends in a surprisingly satisfying way. We were pleasantly surprised to find Martin Freeman popping up again, having first encountered the every-man actor in Love, Actually, then later in the English version of The Office, which we have just gotten around to watching this summer. There were times during our viewing when I found myself wondering why Confetti hadn't done better at the box office (the website Rotten Tomatoes reports that the movie earned merely $145,000) only to be confronted again by a string of completely nude people in one of the three sub-plots. The nudity is so aggressive and in-your-face that it detracts from the entire film.
Back to work tomorrow and, if the black flies will allow it, back to sleep now.