The FX miniseries A Teacher (2020) was filmed in my old High School, after it had closed and was scheduled for demolition.
… I don’t recall any teachers like Kate Mara when I was a student. 😀
Set in the span of 10 years, this series follows a female English teacher in her early 30s as she begins to groom and abuse her 17-year-old male student in the fictional high school of Westerbrook in Austin, Texas.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I FINALLY did the Grouse Grind.
Average grade of 17° (31%) and short sections of up to 30° (58%). The total number of stairs is 2,830.
It is relentless.
And one way.
Up.
I hiked down on the parallel Baden-Powell trail.
DEAL Closed. Occupancy by the new owners before the end of August 2025.
My family owned this small, cute single level home in Parksville, B.C. for the past 20 years.
Rob & Yvonne put it on the market for CAD $599,000.
Starting out or slowing down……this centrally located Parksville cutie is sure to please. It features 2 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, an open plan design, solid hardwood floors, an updated kitchen with granite counters, an updated bathroom, skylit entry, crawlspace construction and an attached garage. Sit on your deck and enjoy your lovely backyard that is surrounded by hedges and quite private. It’s a very short walk to shops and Parksville’s famous beach. This home has been well maintained and is move in ready.
I love the place and am certainly going to miss it.
BIG driveway.
The highlight is the back yard. Ideal for someone who likes to garden, as my Mom did.
There are 2 small decks overlooking the backyard.
Once sold, Val organized an Estate Garage Sale.
Tom Cruise may be a weirdo. But he makes great films.
The only movies I’ve seen in a theatre (for years) are the Dune and Mission: Impossible franchises.
8th installment — The Final Reckoning — is another silly, exciting, thrilling roller coaster.
And one of the most expensive films ever made.
I love the stunt work, of course.
Cruise burned his first parachute doused in flammable liquid before opening his second parachute a total of 16 times!
And the humour.
It’s always entertaining to see Tom Cruise in trouble.
The cast is great. I look forward to seeing characters from previous movies.
Hayley Atwell is lovely and believable in this one.
You can almost ignore the plot. For some reason Tom must single-handedly defeat a malevolent rogue A.I. known as the Entity. He somehow didn’t die from the bends. I couldn’t understand that. 😀
This is supposed to be the final portrayal of Ethan Hunt. But the ending leaves it open for yet another instalment. I wouldn’t be surprised.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Well worth reading for those looking for hope into the future of developed nations.
Recommended.
Abundance is a nonfiction book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, published March 2025.
It feels very much up-to-date. They make many recommendations for improvement.
The authors are prominent American liberal pundits. This book evaluates progress in the USA from the left of centre point of view.
It examines the reasons behind the lack of progress on ambitious projects in the United States, including those related to affordable housing, infrastructure, and climate change.
My biggest takeaway is that governments should declare more one time EMERGENCY situations, in responding to things like natural disasters, bridge collapse, and even housing shortages. Rules and regulations make developments safer — but at too much cost. Red tape should be reduced as much as possible.
Klein and Thompson propose an Abundance Agenda that they say better manages the tradeoffs between regulations and social advancement and lament that America is stuck between a progressive movement that is too afraid of growth and a conservative movement that is allergic to government intervention.
Cut and Thrust (2015) is 30th in the long Stone Barrington series.
Similar but different than the rest. A good one.
This one is quite political.
When Stone travels to Los Angeles for the biggest political convention of the year, he finds the scene quite shaken up: a dazzling newcomer—and close friend of Stone’s—has given the delegates an unexpected choice, crucial alliances are made and broken behind closed doors, and it seems that more than one seat may be up for grabs.
And amid the ambitious schemers and hangers-on are a few people who may use the chaotic events as cover for more sinister plans…
The Face-Changers (1998) is the 4th book in the Jane Whitefield series. Perhaps the best, so far.
Jane Whitefield is a Native American who has made a career out of helping people disappear.
Jane had quit and gotten married in book #3.
BUT, her husband’s mentor, plastic surgeon Dr. Richard Dahlman, is wrongly accused of murder.
Jane agrees to employ her expertise one more time.
Thus begins Perry’s latest, which soon begets layer upon layer of deception and intrigue. It seems that Dahlman himself, with a series of operations, had helped someone attain a new identity, and that he is being pursued not by the police but by men intent on killing him for what he knows.
But who are they?
Re-establishing some of her old creepy contacts, Jane becomes convinced the villains are in the business of frightening people into believing they are in danger, then collecting vast sums to help them vanish.
And now that the FBI is after Jane for Dahlman’s escape, she is beleaguered on two fronts. This is really a prolonged chase novel …
The Wycherly Woman (1961) is another complex murder mystery from Ross Macdonald.
This one didn’t really work for me.
Too many family secrets were unearthed to be believable. By the end, I couldn’t care less about any of the characters.
P.I. Lew Archer is summoned to the Meadow Farms mansion of Californian oil millionaire, Homer Wycherly, just returned from an ocean cruise.
Asked to locate Wycherly’s daughter Phoebe, missing since she saw Homer off two months before …
For one Hollywood adaptation of a Ross Macdonald book, they wanted Frank Sinatra. It ended up being Paul Newman playing the role, changing the detective’s name to Harper rather than Archer for marketing reasons.
Lifespan is how long you live, on average.
In Canada, average life expectancy at birth is about 81.7 years. Women live longer than men, on average.
As you get older, that number increases. For example, as a 67-year-old man in Canada, it’s predicted I’ll live to be 85-87 years.
We all need to plan and budget for a comfortable life through to the inevitable end. So I need a plan for about another 20 years.
My parents lived to ages 94 and 96.
Some use the term healthspan to sum up Healthy life expectancy (HALE), the average number of years that a person can expect to live in “full health“.
At age-67 … I still feel fully healthy. There’s nothing I can’t do today due to health limitations.
Japan has the highest HALE at less than age-75. Lesotho the lowest.
Surprisingly low are the USA, UAE, and Qatar.
Canada is NOT up with the healthiest, either.
So … we all need to plan and budget for a comfortable life once our health is failing. IF your nation has good public healthcare, costs could be lower for this phase of our lives.
Wearables MIGHT help. I’m not using my Apple Watch for any health reasons. Yet.
Perhaps I should.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Invisible Prey (2008) is perhaps the BEST of the Lucas Davenport books I’ve read, so far.
The bad guys are interesting. Original.
Sandford starts every book with the bad guys.
The world of antique dealers fascinating.
What makes this book different than most murder mysteries is that it’s the villains themselves that end up solving the case.
In the richest neighbourhood of Minneapolis, two elderly women lie murdered in their home, killed with a pipe, the rooms ransacked, only small items stolen.
It’s clearly a random break-in by someone looking for money to buy drugs. But as he looks more closely, Davenport begins to wonder if the items are actually so small or the victims so random, if there might not be some invisible agenda at work here.
Gradually, a pattern begins to emerge — and it will lead Davenport to somewhere he never expected. Which is too bad, because the killers — and yes, there is more than one of them — the killers are expecting him.
I enjoyed seeing Kidd and Flowers make appearances.
Rick McCharles 