In The Deep Freeze

Winter decided to show up the first of March. She's been absent all season, but that's good considering out heat has gone out twice this winter and was out for a week the last time. If it had been this cold then, we would have left here and gone to a hotel. The heat is working today, but it's cold enough in this study to need an electric heater as well. 

Watched The Hurt Locker last night and was discussing it and the novel The Naked and The Dead, and I started crying. Then my nose started bleeding. That's two nights in a row of nosebleeds. I usually have one every winter, most likely from the dry heat in the house, but I'm not sure. They are terrifying!  I don't care how many times I've had one, I get so scared. That blood just keeps coming, and then the clots, and then I think I'm stroking out or something horrible is wrong.  Today, I'm still all stopped up (like always), and I want to blow my nose, but I am not going to. If I have any more nosebleeds this winter, I am calling my doctor.  I don't know if my blood pressure is up, but from what I have read, there is no conclusive proof that high blood pressure (outside of a hypertensive crisis situation) causes a nosebleed.  I just get so freaked out!

I did take a few beautiful pics at sunset last night. I shared one on Instagram and will share it here. I need to go walk, but I am concerned that my nose will start bleeding. I'll just take it slow and take some paper towels. Walking is not vigorous physical activity, so it should be fine.

That's it for now.

The Be Good Tanyas - Waiting Around to Die

Snow

I took these from inside looking out the back window, so the quality is poor, but I'm posting anyway.

Erik Satie - Gymnopédies

Sturgill Simpson-"Just Let Go" (Metamodern Sounds In Country Music)

TOWNES VAN ZANDT - "Dollar Bill Blues" on Solo Sessions, January 17, 1995

Snowfall and Townes

Been listening to some Townes Van Zandt this morning and watching the snow fall. It is a very wet snow and is not expected to accumulate, but it's pretty.  For as much as I love Townes, I did not own one Townes CD, until today. The post office delivers on Sundays these days. How strange. They brought me a Townes CD and a new top I can wear when I walk. It's big, so I won't feel so self-conscious. My t-shirts are all too tight (my XL t-shirts).  I need to be comfortable when I am walking.

Watched the film Lion last night. I think it was a well-made film. The cinematography was incredible, and the story compelling, and the acting was quite good, especially the acting of the little boy who played Saroo as a child.  The movie is based on the true story of Saroo, who got on a train and fell asleep while he was waiting for his older brother to return to come and get him.  The train travels 900 miles away from his home. He is too little to know where he lived, and he did not understand the language in Calcutta, where the train finally stopped. He is adopted a few weeks later by an Australian couple and grows up in Tasmania. 25 years later, he goes to India to search for his birth mother, brother, and sister.  It's quite amazing that he finds them.

Right now, I am listening to the soundtrack from the movie Hell Or High Water.  The music for the film was done by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.  Just amazing work, as always, by Nick Cave.  What is not to love about that man?

I am going to post a video of Townes singing Dollar Bill Blues--the song featured in Hell Or High Water.  This video was made less than one year before Townes died.  Sad I never got to see him and did not know his work when he was living.

From Wikipedia:

With the passing of time, however, a clear distinction has been made between the production and Van Zandt's poetic, often brilliant songwriting, with Mark Deming of AllMusicenthusing, "Townes Van Zandt wrote songs with an uncommon grace and poetic clarity, and he sang them with a voice that was at once straightforward, eloquent, and mindful of the arid beauty of his images...the album's production and arrangements occasionally suggest that Jack Clement and Jim Malloy didn't always know what to make of what he brought them."