A Sappy Movie And Other Memories

Hello There My Lovelies,

I don't have to work tonite, so I am just taking it easy at home tonite. I'm watching the Notebook on the Oxygen network. Honestly, most love stories nowadays just flat out suck. But I will make an exception for The Notebook.

Yeah, the guy, Noah in the beginning had some lame lines, but I still really loved the movie. I felt the characters were genuine, and I love Rachael McAdams. I wonder what happened to her. My grandpa is the type of man the older Noah was. He is by my grandmother's side no matter what. The woman, Ally in her younger years sounds like my grandma back in the day. She was really pretty and volunteered for the Red Cross during the war. She got hit on a lot. The pic here is of her that my aunt had in her house.

I love movies from that era or set in that era. I used to look through my grandma's yearbooks and pictures all the time from the 1930s and 1940s. Also when I go back to Europe, I enjoy visiting older towns that haven't changed much. I remember taking a train to the Czech Republic from Austria in the summer of 2005. The station and train in my aunt's town was nice, clean and proper. You got a proper greeting and wished an "angenehmen reise" aka a "pleasant journey". Then when you switched trains to the Czech Republic, the train was old and worn out. Yet it wasn't nasty, just old and worn out in a charming sort of way. The pic on the left was the train station, and the pic on the right was of an old church. Some parts of the town were more modern and the houses were repainted. But much of the town was still old and you could tell it had a past. I was there on a weeknight, and everything, even the restaurant at the train station was closed at around 7pm. It was like a ghost town. I ended up eating a McChicken at McDonalds. When I took the train back to Austria, the bell sounding each half hour a melody at the train station sounded so old.

When I hear older people talking about life back in the day, most of the time they speak with smiles on their faces. My grandparents do. The guy I met at the Greek Festival certainly did. And they survived and/or fought through the war. Most of them say they prefer life back then than now.

When I was in Spain, life was a lot slower. I had a lot less internet connection, minimal cell phone use, no car, and no stable job. Also customer service sucked and they didn't give a shit if they couldn't help you. No such thing as customer satisfaction surveys or "I'm sorry for your inconvenience." It took hours to do errands, sometimes a whole day to do one thing. And some of the places I lived in were old, some were over a hundred years old. Yet, my quality of life was better. I ate better food, and people were more interested in getting to know and talk to me, more so than they are here in the US. I also took in a lot more scenery. My weekends were spent relaxing or taking a walk in the city or meeting someone.

Now, life in the US has become such a hustle, and everyone is always so stressed out. People at work always talking about how busy they are and how they don't have much time for much else. So many people here in the US are plagued with obesity, other health problems, and stress. And we have a lot of medicine and access to food in this country.

Anyway, just my .02, time to focus on the ending of the Notebook.