Back to work! This morning, after waking up a little later than I had intended, I joined Lou in the backyard to see what our tasks would be. I was not thrilled to find out that we would spend the day redoing yesterday’s work. We would be positioning the stakes about eighteen inches further back toward the house. That means Lou won’t have to buy as much dirt and the steps will sit more naturally in the existing slope.

     Since I woke up late though, the work day was pretty short. It felt like I’d just gotten outside when Valli started making apple pancakes for lunch. We cleaned up the tools around noon so that we could go eat them. They were wonderful!

     Our afternoon was spent at Marie’s house, where we joined in with a weekly game of Blitz (a card game I had never played before) between Marie, Lou Sr., their friend Ed, and Ed’s caretaker. When we weren’t busy playing, I  heard a little bit about Ed’s experiences in the Air Force. He served during WII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. His favorite plane to fly was the F-4 Phantom. After he retired from piloting, he continued in the military as a flight instructor for several years.

     Marie won the first game of Blitz and I won the second, After these games and a snack, Ed and his caretaker returned home. The rest of us talked for another half hour at the table before deciding to go for a walk around the neighborhood. Along the way, I met two dogs that looked like Alaskan Huskies. From the howls and growls that this one made though, it may have been a wolf instead. 

     Back at Marie’s house, Louis and I were interested in watching 2001: A Space Odyssey. Since I am interested in Sci-Fi, I’ve heard of both the book and movie quite frequently. It came up in conversation again earlier this week, and I figured it would be fun to finally see it.

     I was wrong. It was not fun. Most of the movie was slow, boring, strange, and confusing. There was one fun part in the middle though. 

     The middle part of the movie focuses on a colony ship that is headed for Jupiter. Most of the colonists aboard the ship are in artificially-induced sleep, but two crew members remain awake to take care of necessary procedures. They are aided by a supercomputer named Hal – the newest and most reliable version of artificial intelligence yet made. In the end, he turns out to be a bit too smart and decides that he (and possibly the universe) would be better off without the humans aboard the ship. So turns against his human masters, kills one of them, sends the other one spiraling off into space, and then turns off the life-support systems on the ship, thus killing the rest of the colonists.

     Other than this interesting interlude, the whole movie was spent on drawn-out scenes of apes jumping up and down, spaceships flying slower than snails creep, and colors strobing across the screen in strange psychadelic patterns.

     We finished the movie and discussed its obscure and confusing plot. Then we drove back to the Mansion and went to bed.