Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Michael Parkes Yesterday was payday.

My housemate is always astonished that I buy things. Useless things, like new sheets and duvet (comforter) and a new rug.
This is the second rug in a month. The first one was fine but it wasn't machine washable. My puppy thinks the rug is a great place to eat the messiest of her treats and stained it.
I don't mind that, she's already shown a preference like that for the new rug; it is machine washable. The old one is now in front of her bed (which she won't sleep in). I'm happy with the arrangement.
My housemate doesn't comprehend that my puppy is part of my family and she can do what she wants (within reason). She's family to me.
I also got a microwave. My housemate had one he was proud of as it was at least 25 years old. It was also leaking RF and microwaves like a sieve.
He was unconcerned until it actually knocked out his internet connection! he said he unplugged it and I had to explain about capacitance tubes.
Nevertheless I got a nice shiny new one. I like it. Its clean and modern looking. Sleek.
I like light airy modern and sleek things around me.

My puppy and I were rejoicing in payday and just having a good time. We fell asleep content.
The only negative was that I really re-wrecked my shoulder lugging the microwave for a mile and a half. No one to blame for that.

Then I got a phone call from an old friend. My brother-in-law (ex?).
Years ago, when my wife was alive, her father showed us the hours of home movies he'd taken. they were pretty fascinating. They were on 8-mm, a medium I still love.
For an anniversary gift I took the films got them cleaned and edited them down. Nothing fancy, these were memories not a movie. Cut out all the vertiginous stuff and the long shots of grass and floor stuff, did some simple A-B rolling for dissolves and stuff. Easy stuff.
I then magstripped the reels and got Howard Anderson to transfer them to Beta 1. Took that to the studio and got the guys to foley in some some stuff, added some sound effects and a light, innocuous music score.
I then transferred them to Laser Disk and to VHS tape.
He called me late at night. Now I'm tough, but this guy is hard. If you know him you know what I mean.
He's my friend, close to I'd say, but he's probably a sociopath. So was my best friend. I don't seem to have issues with that.
He had the Laser Disks transferred to DVD when his father passed away and he'd been watching it last night.
I guess, for him, it was watching his history, his past, his life up till now.
He told me some great stories, a few I'd heard before, about this relative and that. About the crazed uncle who ran a casino in his basement and who ran the cops off with a machine gun when they came to ask for more protection money; that was one that was new.
And the story about his grandfather who looked so delicate and refined in the movies but who, when he found rats in his house went and caught one, cooked it and ate it in the basement so that the surviving rats would know that he was not a man to be trifled with.
Family legend says he never had another problem with rats.
He called me to tell me those stories and something else he couldn't or wouldn't articulate.
That's okay.
One of the perks of friendship is you don't always have to be explaining yourself to someone you love.

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