Movies

Project Hail Mary

~ MaryG ~ 21 Comments

We went out! For the first time since total knee replacement #2 on March 16, we went to a movie. Thanks to reclining theater seats, my husband was able to elevate his leg enough to make it through a 2+ hour film. He did have to take an oxy about halfway through, but still…he made it…and mostly enjoyed it.

For those who haven’t heard, Project Hail Mary is a blockbuster, feel good, space odyssey, based on the book by Andy Weir, which I have not read.

Here are a few thoughts:

The theater was full of people, including many families. This made the movie going experience more fun. We happened to go to a Saturday matinee the day after the Artemis 2 crew returned safely to earth. The poignancy of the film’s main message (nobody wants to be alone) was enhanced by the good vibes that our stellar astronauts evoked. As eloquent Artemis astronaut Christina Koch told the world upon her return: Planet Earth: You. Are. A. Crew.

Ryan Gosling is charming! We knew this already from Barbie, LaLa Land and other films. But this is his most charming role yet. He’s cute, he’s humble, he’s funny, he’s adorable. Give me Ryan Gosling any day of the week over Matthew McConaughey, Mark Wahlberg or any of the Chrises.

At 2 hours and 36 minutes, the film is a bit too long. I had to leave once to pee during the film and I had already left to pee during the final preview. (I should’ve been able to make it through the whole film.) The boys next to me also had to leave to pee once. But honestly, all films seem too long to me these days. Filmmakers need to edit better. If your average 60-year old woman and 10-year old boy can’t make it through the whole film without peeing, cut some stuff.

But all in all, I give it a thumbs up. It’s a good way to build on the warm vibes the astronauts gave us. Goodness knows, we need all the positivity we can get in light of the total shit show in the White House.

Was this a great crew or what?

Year of the Knee – update

~ MaryG ~ 18 Comments

End of Week One of knee replacement #2 (my husband’s not mine) and I’m pleased to report I have achieved “angel of mercy” status. Oh the power of being in charge of the pain meds!

I did slip into “Annie Wilkes mode” once, when I told my husband I had unexpectedly closed the Activity Ring on my AppleWatch “waiting on his ass.” That was mean, admittedly, but at least I was putting my service in a positive light. Turns out that running up and down the stairs to get things, lugging bags of ice, filling and lugging the “polar cube,” and doing all the daily chores myself (loading/unloading dishwasher, cooking, trash and recycling, etc) burns up a decent amount of calories. I can’t be sedentary for too long.

He’s been trying his best to be a good patient, which I appreciate, but knee replacement is really pretty gruesome. The extreme pain, the swelling, the bruising, the leg full of staples…fortunately not too much bleeding from the incision (and the in-home physical therapist deals with bandage changes—phew)

I think things will start feeling better when the staples come out next week.

In the meantime, we are bingeing The Traitors with Alan Cumming on Peacock, which our daughter got us into. It’s pretty entertaining, for a reality competition show. Who doesn’t love a Scottish castle? And Alan’s outfits are over-the-top in the best way.

A lovely bouquet from our very thoughtful daughter and her husband
It’s lasted all week—and now the tulips are opening.
I might try to paint this one very beautiful rose.

Oh and with this knee, we’ve added cannabis to the pain regime. He’s finding that a strategically timed gummy can enhance and lengthen the effect of the prescribed pharmaceuticals.

Aaah, I finally turned my husband into a stoner like me. It only took 33 years.

Bread offering

~ MaryG ~ 26 Comments

At certain points during his recovery from his first total knee replacement, my husband described me to others as an “Angel of Mercy.” Believe me, he is not one to toss out religious metaphors (nor am I particularly angelic), but he was in so much pain, that I apparently glowed with an angelic light and golden halo as I fetched his ice and doled out his Oxy.

Now that he feels better, but total knee replacement #2 is less than one week away, I’m wondering if I’ll achieve “Angel of Mercy” status again. Our joke is that there’s an equal chance I’ll be more of an Annie Wilkes from Stephen King’s Misery (famously played by Kathy Bates in the 1990 film) this time around. We even joke that if he totally annoys me, I’ll use the mallet we have around to break up bags of ice and the foam roller from PT to “hobble” him like poor James Caan in the film.

If you know, you know.

Given the Annie Wilkes possibility, he’s been extra helpful these past few days. Cooking, fixing stuff, and baking many loaves of his incredible homemade bread. It’s soooo good.

Perfect loaf
Fresh from the oven

The bread offering is appreciated and has been duly noted. I do love homemade bread.

😇

Hamnet

~ MaryG ~ 6 Comments

Even though I was still kind of upset about Ilia Malinin’s implosion at the Winter Olympics, we went to see what I knew was going to be a real heart-wrencher of a film the very next day.

If a film gets eight Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress, my husband and I are definitely going to go see it, even if we have to drive a ways and go at an odd hour like 11am.

So, off we went to Hamnet on Valentine’s Day.

All I’ll say is this (no spoilers)—it’s a real stunner of a film. The accolades are well-deserved, especially for leading actress Jessie Buckley.

I was enough of a theater kid (and theater adult) to understand that the plays of William Shakespeare have impacted the development of the performing arts like nothing else. They are singularly important.

If you’ve ever been deeply moved by a play or a painting or a song or a poem or a novel, you know the feeling of not really understanding why it hits you so close to the heart. It just does.

This film, Hamnet, is about the why.

12 Memories from 2025

~ MaryG ~ 15 Comments

OK, we’ve reached the last day of 2025. It was certainly not the year I had hoped for when I worked on the 2024 election. Let’s face it, a full year of Trump 2.0 has been devastating. Ain’t no way to sugarcoat that. And we’re only 25% done with the senile tangerine rapist’s second term.

But I’m going to look back on non-political memories of 2025 and post 12 photos (one from each month). I double-checked that these are all photos I haven’t previously posted. No more Ireland pics I promise!

January—We lit a fire in our fireplace and I made a truly top notch s’more.
February—a black and white butterfly in the Key West Nature Conservatory
March—a hauntingly beautiful self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. This one was painted around the time he was hospitalized for severe mental illness.
April—my driveway on April 12. This is the only major problem with Massachusetts…winter lasts forever.
May—a chilly and misty weekend in Portland, Maine with my dear friend Gail who turned 60 about a month before I did. Who knew cruise ships stopped in Portland?
June—For my birthday, my dear friend Susan took me on a “Karen Read” tour of our old hometown (Canton, MA), which was the epicenter of the Karen Read Murder Trial in 2025. Here she is in front of the infamous Waterfall Restaurant, where we had lunch. (IYKYK)
July—I went to a very elegant wedding in the Boston Public Library and my dress matched the library gates. It is hereafter known as “the wrought iron gate dress.”
August—my son, husband and me on a Boston Harbor cruise in late August. It was already getting chilly at night be then, but at least that meant I got to wear my new wool sweater from Ireland.
September—my granddaughter turned one that month. I love her and her wonderful mommy so much. 💕
October—Monthly flower arrangement from BloomsyBox
November—I went to a wonderful concert in Boston’s Symphony Hall with my dear friend Eileen who absolutely HATES to be in photographs. I’ve never seen anyone refuse to smile for a camera like Eileen. We had a great time up there in the second balcony.
December—We had the most wonderful Christmas with this darling girl.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year’s Eve. Our plan is to go to the movies to see Wicked Part 2. I’m a Wicked fan, but we haven’t seen Part 2 yet due to The Knee. Hopefully this first foray back to the movies will go well.

Downton Abbey Finale

~ MaryG ~ 10 Comments

With increasingly unhinged far right authoritarians running the show here in the US, it’s hard to stay calm. Due to the Kirk assassination, many people will no longer be able to speak their minds due to promised retaliation by the government. And I don’t just mean talk show hosts and journalists. Teachers, doctors, university leaders, nonprofit administrators and regular old corporate employees are losing their jobs over what they say.

Here’s Commander Waterford and Commander Putnam lying about left-leaning organizations promoting violence and telling us their grand plan for Gilead.

Therefore, if you are able, I recommend escaping to the great outdoors or, if it’s raining, the great indoors—a big-ass movie theater with reclining seats, Dolby Atmos sound, and a bar.

I thoroughly enjoyed the sold-out premiere of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. If you ever loved the show, you won’t want to miss the final installment set in 1930. Downton looks amazing on the big screen and your old favorite characters all make appearances, even the deceased ones. Not to give too much away, but acceptance of divorced women and gay people into polite society is a major theme.

You will be reminded that time marches on and progress has—and always will be—a matter of more inclusion, rather than less.

Eye color

~ MaryG ~ 5 Comments

Is anyone else stumped when they have to choose their eye color for an official document like their REAL ID/Drivers License?

Last time I chose Hazel, but I really don’t think that was right.

AI generated eye color chart

The Massachusetts choices are: Black, Brown, Gray, Hazel, Pink, Blue, Dichromatic, Green, Maroon, and Unknown.

Maybe Gray is the closest?

Or Green?

Or basic Blue?

But definitely not Hazel, right? I think I messed up picking Hazel.

It’s not a big deal, but I think this may be the type of thing that concerns me more now that I feel like our country is descending into authoritarianism. In movies, Nazis are always asking people for their papers, Are my papers in order?

Free Gift Article from the NYT

Excerpt: Belarus is a warning that democracy is fragile and that authoritarianism is not a wrecking ball but a hatchet, which slowly chips away until everything is broken beyond recognition.

Rain, rain go away

~ MaryG ~ 22 Comments

As of today, May 31, 2025, Greater Boston is experiencing its 12th consecutive rainy weekend. Since early March, every weekend has included some measurable rainfall, with more than half of those weekends seeing rain on both Saturday and Sunday.

GenX, there are a couple of rain songs from our childhood that will never leave my brain.

The first is “Rainy Days and Mondays” by The Carpenters. It came out in 1971.

The other one is “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” by BJ Thomas. (I didn’t know the artist. I looked it up just now.) It came out in 1969, so perhaps only older GenXers like me remember this one. Apparently it was featured in the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” but I don’t remember that. I just remember singing the song along with the radio, with the most memorable line being “Just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed.” I always pictured that guy. His feet must have been enormous.

What are your rain songs? You know—those songs that just emerge in your brain on rainy days.

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

~ MaryG ~ 6 Comments

In these troubled times, with the entire post World War II order seemingly upended, it’s nice that some things don’t change.

Tom Cruise is still a good movie star. The man is 63 years old and he still delivers a great action film, with a low body count. I have a feeling the critics will find fault in the length, plot holes, and slightly overwrought nature of the last Mission Impossible film, but I liked it and I’m glad I went opening weekend.

After about a million previews, dear old Tom comes on the screen and sincerely thanks you for coming to see his film on the big screen “the way it was meant to be seen.” He tells you that they made the film for YOU and you believe him. He might be a wacky Scientologist and whatever else they say about him, but he’s a good movie star. An American movie star.

I’m not going to attempt to review the film for real, but I will say that the submarine scene is my favorite. (The part when he retrieves the Entity’s source code from the sunken Russian submarine.) I liked that even better than the airplane sequence at the end. Both are quintessential Tom. They say he does his own stunts. And if so, WOW.

I’m not real clear on exactly why all-knowing AI (aka the Entity) feels the need to start nuclear Armageddon, but I’m clear on what stopped it. It was Tom (aka Ethan Hunt) and his team—many of whom you will recognize from past films in the series. It was also a black woman American President (played by Angela Bassett) who chooses to not launch the nukes at the very last minute.

Teamwork, friendship, self-sacrifice, diversity, trying to save the world for future generations. Those were the messages I got.

With cruelty, greed and corruption on an unprecedented rise in America, I guess I saw what I wanted to see in the film.

Katy O’Brian brings non-binary vibes as Kodiak, a US naval soldier in the film.

A first

~ MaryG ~ 15 Comments

I’ve mentioned (about 100 times) that I’m turning 60 this year. And so are all my friends from high school and college. We were all born in 1965–the first official year of GenX, which is usually labeled as people born from 1965 to 1980. Personally, I don’t really think 1980 belongs with us. I think GenX should be 1964-1979. We’ll take Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris (both born in 1964) and the millennials can have book-banning Ron DeSantis (born 1980), but I digress…

That’s right, the coolest generation is turning 60.

One of the coolest members of GenX—actor/writer Pamela Adlon (b. 1966)—sets her daughter straight in “Better Things”

Travel seems to be a top priority for people turning 60, but my friend Susan is doing something different for her birthday this weekend. She’s going on a silent retreat. This is a first. I’ve not heard of anyone else spending a weekend in silence for their milestone birthday. I like it though. It’s unexpected and exactly what she wants. Maybe she will have some sort of A-Ha moment that she will share with us when she gets back.

Cheryl Strayed (born in 1968) from her bestselling memoir “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.”