Even though Jim and I are trained athletes, after three rounds of this exhausting activity, we work up quite an appetite. Because of this, every Friday we go out with a group of our fellow bocce athletes to refuel at a designated restaurant. The latest post game oasis was Pub 47 in Huntley, which is under new management.

After about twenty-five years later, it would seem that the director is remaking his remake. What sounds like a celluloid ouroboros is made surprisingly whole, primarily from its length. Instead of a crammed ninety-nine minutes, eight episodes allow Assayas to make subplots and character arcs more substantial.

I keep the single socks. What else can an optimist do? Admittedly, I have looked up articles like, “37+ Unusual Uses for Lonely Socks,” but I just wasn’t really in need of a sock puppet or golf club covers or windshield wiper cozies. I once made a cardboard box to go above my wash machine and labeled it “Sock Orphanage.” Soon, it was overflowing with socks, yet when I dumped them all out to sort them, none of them seemed to match.

The grand prize, of course, was the cherry bomb. Its waterproof wick meant that it could be used to sink the ships of yuletides past.

Every Christmas we asked Santa for plastic model kits of the great ships of America’s proud naval history. We assembled them through the dark, dreary months of late winter, and by summer the kits had been built, played with, and abandoned to the back of the closet.

When we arrived, we were looking for an entrance to the restaurant and discovered the restaurant was inside the Glo-Bowl bowling alley. We didn’t bring our bowling shirts or shoes, but we went in anyway and were escorted to our table.

I know that’s a crazy thing to say, unless you’re an ambulance-chasing lawyer or a psychiatrist who sees dollar signs in other people’s misery. But I’m neither of those things, so go ahead — call me crazy.

The statement raises important questions on all sides, regarding what, exactly, our Founding Fathers meant by it. By “Arms” did they necessarily mean “guns,” or would swords, knives, and spears suffice as arms? If they were talking specifically about guns, did they give any thought to what type of gun might be a bridge too far, given the horrors future technology might bring?

Below are five home maintenance chores that if you don’t do could cost you many thousands of dollars.

When I was little, my philosophy was “Let someone else break it.” It worked like this: If I was tossing a ball around in the house and broke a lamp, I would painstakingly reassemble the pieces and then tiptoe out of the room. The next time somebody walked through the house, the lamp would rattle apart, right before their eyes. Son of a gun. And I was nowhere in sight.

There are no strict guidelines of what is a weed or what is an acceptable plant. A plant that is growing where it is not wanted is considered a weed. Weeds, when given the opportunity, multiply, often stealing nutrients and moisture from the soil, from other more desirable plants. They can crowd out good plants resulting in the stunted growth of the good plants.