It's a Classical Life

SOURCE   It's been a while since I've written a Saturday matinee post but when I watched the film The Blue Dahlia  (1946), written by Raymond Chandler and starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake I knew I had to share it with you. I loved this film so much, and even weeks after watching it I keep thinking back on it. The great thing is, you can watch online too here . The Blue Dahlia  is considered one of the original film noir movies. If you've never heard of the term before, film noir it refers to a particular style of movie, made popular in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s. Elements of this particular style include dark lighting aspects, a crime or mystery to be solved (they often included detectives or private investigators) and a moral lesson to be learnt. Post WWII films made also included some of the challenges that society faced after the end of the war. The Blue Dahlia does this rather poignantly through the scenes of the character Buzz Wanchek (William Bendix) who s...

Last year my son got his first job. It paid about $11/hour. He quickly learnt that the things that he bought were paid for, per hour of work. For example, lunch with friends might have cost $20, which he saw as two hours work. He didn't particularly like his job and two hours work just to pay for lunch wasn't worth it in his opinion. I was amazed at how quickly he learnt that important lesson - ie, our money is worth our time.  Henry David Thoreau said, The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. My current job is a real pay-cut from my teaching job (but I love it so much more!) and yet I found that I was spending as if I were still on a teacher's income. I was dipping into my savings to pay for things I didn't really need. For the last two months I have realised just how frivolous my spending had got. For the last couple of years I had been tracking my spending (on clothes only). L...

"Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth." ~ Epicurius   As February has come to an end I wanted to take the time to reflect a bit on what's been going on in garden. As I watch floods, cyclones and other extreme weather events lashing our country and others, I give thanks for the relatively mild weather we have been having. Most of February was hot though - as in over 30 degrees celsius. We have been watering the grass by attaching a hose to the washing machine and allow the grey water to go onto the grass rather than down the drain. You can see just how dry the grass still is despite this! Honestly I think the soil has become a bit hydrophobic and the water just sort of puddles. Still we are trying to recycle the water and also create a greener yard. This snake-like thing has been a great source of entertainment to Norman, our new Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, who has been my constant companion. There is something so precious about having an animal that shadows y...