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It's a very rare Friday night, one which I am not spending with Ben. The past two days have been no-school days for Ben, but Sara has had to work both of them in order to get her new classroom ready. She was finally given her own room Thursday morning, and will have her own set of students beginning Monday. Since I spent the past two days watching Ben while she prepped her room, she thanked me by offering to give me tonight off in trade. Way cool.
So I decided to partake in the rare treat of going to see a movie on opening night with a big crowd in the audience. My review of the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre will follow shortly. A few other thoughts, first.
1) When I sat down, there was a woman in her mid-twenties holding two seats to my left. I assumed her friends were out getting popcorn and such. A few minutes later her boyfriend (or husband?) arrived... with a little two or three year old girl in each arm, obviously twins. At a friday night movie. Rated R. Featuring torture and bloody dismemberment more or less continuously for two hours. Now look, I'm an open-minded kind of guy, and I know first hand what it is like for strangers to make judgements about my parenting skills without them knowing the full story of what is really going on, but... this is just sick. Children that young have no business being at an intense horror movie. None. That's just plain child abuse. If they can't afford a sitter, they can't afford to go out to the movies. I don't know what disturbs me more; the fact that they brought those two little girls to that movie, or the fact that those two little girls only three seats to my left did not disturb me once during the movie. The were both awake when they left after the movie, so one assumes they watched the whole thing quietly. WTF?
2) The trailer for the Dawn of the Dead remake ran before the move. No. No, no no, dear god please no. It's just wrong. I know, I'm sitting at a screening of the remake of a classic, and I am horrified by a trailer for another remake of a classic, but... no. It's just plain wrong. Grr.
3) The trailer for Resident Evil: Apocalypse ran. Very clever trailer, I really liked it. Of course, it had almost nothing to do with the movie, but it was still a clever trailer.
4) God help me, I saw a trailer for an Ashton Kutcher movie that I really want to see -- The Butterfly Effect.
I'll get to my movie reviews in my next post, but I realized today that my journal lately has become pretty much a Disney blog and I haven't been writing much about what has been going on with me or Ben. So here's what's been going on with me: not much. I have been roadblocked at work for about a week now, and it will probably be early to mid next week before the blocking issues are resolved. There is absolutely nothing I can do but wait, just hang around all day waiting to see if anybody messages me or sends an email. Very, very dull. A few minor things have come up, but if this roadblock isn't cleared soon I am going to go quietly insane. Grr. Or better yet, since I have been watching seasons one and two of Angel on DVD alot lately, "Grrr. Argh."
The apartment is very quite and empty without Kris here. I miss her like crazy and can hardly wait until she is back down here. She just booked her flights today to come down for twelve days around Thanksgiving. Yay! I have no specific plans whatsoever while she is here, I just plan on hanging loose and doing whatever. Just kinda... be.
As for Ben, he continues to do very well. He seems to like his new school, and his bus monitor has turned out to be a very nice woman who gets along well with him. He apparenlty talks and sings to her all the way to and from school, although she doesn't understand more than about 10% of what he says. But she smiles and plays along and interacts with him, and just generally keeps him happy and entertained on the bus. Very nice. He seems to really like the climate here, particularly now that it has cooled off some and the humidity has dropped. He is growing like crazy, more than two inches since we arrived, and he is always excited to get out and walk around the parks and such. There is no doubt in my mind that we made the right decision to come here.
As for Sara, she is much less stressed these days. She has a job, and she has a permanent classroom. She had lunch with a bunch of other teachers yesterday and says she really liked them. I expect she will begin to make new friends and build some relationships here. Who knows, maybe there will be some cute single guy teacher that she will meet and fall in love with. I hope so. Just because I couldn't possibly bear to live with her again doesn't mean I wish her anything but the best.
Me, on the other hand, I haven't made a single new acquaintance since I arrived. I've talked to a few random strangers, and several of the cast members in Fantasyland know me by sight while I am there with Ben, but the whole "working from home" thing doesn't lend well to meeting people. Combine that with my natural shyness and you have a recipe for disaster. The book I am reading right now (Way of the Wolf by E.E. Knight) has a passage that pretty much sums it up:
A part of me is content to wait until Kris gets here, because heck, I prefer to be alone, right? Yeah. Right. I know deep inside what the truth is. I need to find some way to make local connections, to build local friendships. I need to either take a part-time weekday job in the evenings, or to get involved in some kind of group. A local equivelant of the Pat Pack, or a reading group, or rock climbers, or just some damn thing. It doesn't even matter what, I just need to get out and extend myself. Of course, knowing and doing are two entirely different things, aren't they?
So I decided to partake in the rare treat of going to see a movie on opening night with a big crowd in the audience. My review of the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre will follow shortly. A few other thoughts, first.
1) When I sat down, there was a woman in her mid-twenties holding two seats to my left. I assumed her friends were out getting popcorn and such. A few minutes later her boyfriend (or husband?) arrived... with a little two or three year old girl in each arm, obviously twins. At a friday night movie. Rated R. Featuring torture and bloody dismemberment more or less continuously for two hours. Now look, I'm an open-minded kind of guy, and I know first hand what it is like for strangers to make judgements about my parenting skills without them knowing the full story of what is really going on, but... this is just sick. Children that young have no business being at an intense horror movie. None. That's just plain child abuse. If they can't afford a sitter, they can't afford to go out to the movies. I don't know what disturbs me more; the fact that they brought those two little girls to that movie, or the fact that those two little girls only three seats to my left did not disturb me once during the movie. The were both awake when they left after the movie, so one assumes they watched the whole thing quietly. WTF?
2) The trailer for the Dawn of the Dead remake ran before the move. No. No, no no, dear god please no. It's just wrong. I know, I'm sitting at a screening of the remake of a classic, and I am horrified by a trailer for another remake of a classic, but... no. It's just plain wrong. Grr.
3) The trailer for Resident Evil: Apocalypse ran. Very clever trailer, I really liked it. Of course, it had almost nothing to do with the movie, but it was still a clever trailer.
4) God help me, I saw a trailer for an Ashton Kutcher movie that I really want to see -- The Butterfly Effect.
I'll get to my movie reviews in my next post, but I realized today that my journal lately has become pretty much a Disney blog and I haven't been writing much about what has been going on with me or Ben. So here's what's been going on with me: not much. I have been roadblocked at work for about a week now, and it will probably be early to mid next week before the blocking issues are resolved. There is absolutely nothing I can do but wait, just hang around all day waiting to see if anybody messages me or sends an email. Very, very dull. A few minor things have come up, but if this roadblock isn't cleared soon I am going to go quietly insane. Grr. Or better yet, since I have been watching seasons one and two of Angel on DVD alot lately, "Grrr. Argh."
The apartment is very quite and empty without Kris here. I miss her like crazy and can hardly wait until she is back down here. She just booked her flights today to come down for twelve days around Thanksgiving. Yay! I have no specific plans whatsoever while she is here, I just plan on hanging loose and doing whatever. Just kinda... be.
As for Ben, he continues to do very well. He seems to like his new school, and his bus monitor has turned out to be a very nice woman who gets along well with him. He apparenlty talks and sings to her all the way to and from school, although she doesn't understand more than about 10% of what he says. But she smiles and plays along and interacts with him, and just generally keeps him happy and entertained on the bus. Very nice. He seems to really like the climate here, particularly now that it has cooled off some and the humidity has dropped. He is growing like crazy, more than two inches since we arrived, and he is always excited to get out and walk around the parks and such. There is no doubt in my mind that we made the right decision to come here.
As for Sara, she is much less stressed these days. She has a job, and she has a permanent classroom. She had lunch with a bunch of other teachers yesterday and says she really liked them. I expect she will begin to make new friends and build some relationships here. Who knows, maybe there will be some cute single guy teacher that she will meet and fall in love with. I hope so. Just because I couldn't possibly bear to live with her again doesn't mean I wish her anything but the best.
Me, on the other hand, I haven't made a single new acquaintance since I arrived. I've talked to a few random strangers, and several of the cast members in Fantasyland know me by sight while I am there with Ben, but the whole "working from home" thing doesn't lend well to meeting people. Combine that with my natural shyness and you have a recipe for disaster. The book I am reading right now (Way of the Wolf by E.E. Knight) has a passage that pretty much sums it up:
Still, he felt lonely and fell into the trap of pretending to prefer being alone, thus leading to further lonliness in a vicious circle of solitude that young men of a certain temperament build for themselves and then inhabit.
A part of me is content to wait until Kris gets here, because heck, I prefer to be alone, right? Yeah. Right. I know deep inside what the truth is. I need to find some way to make local connections, to build local friendships. I need to either take a part-time weekday job in the evenings, or to get involved in some kind of group. A local equivelant of the Pat Pack, or a reading group, or rock climbers, or just some damn thing. It doesn't even matter what, I just need to get out and extend myself. Of course, knowing and doing are two entirely different things, aren't they?