Home Alone

So, I've been alone all weekend. Marie has gone to her uncle Jim's 75th birthday celebration in Chicago, leaving me and Ellie the Cat to hold down the fort in her absence. Though nothing major has happened, I felt the need to write some of this stuff down, as this blog needs to reclaim its status as the place where I vent the random thoughts that enter my brain.

*Ellie has recently started drinking out of the sink. On the spectrum of adorable things that cats do, drinking from the sink is very close to the top. She just sticks her head towards the faucet, turns it sideways, and laps at the top of the stream. While this is super-cute, it also shows the difference between Marie and I in terms of how we believe kitty-parenting should work. Marie is from the "do things for the cat" school of thinking, so when the cat wants to drink from the faucet, Marie picks the cat up and puts her back down when she's done. I, on the other hand, believe that the cat needs to show that she really wants it. This means she has to jump up and jump down of her own volition, which I believe has the added benefit of giving the cat a workout (and every little bit helps). I don't know what this difference says about us as parents/people, but its probably significant in some way.

*Along with our Verizon package, we got 3 free months of Cinemax/HBO. As our cable package isn't as all-inclusive as our Comcast was, I spend a fair amount of my TV time watching movies, and have come to two realizations:

1. I have a very specific movie-categorizing system. There are movies I don't like/dont want to see, movies that I want to see, and movies that I'd be willing to pay for at the actual theater. Marie likes to give me grief when I (inevitably) like one of the movies that I told her I didn't want to go see at the theater (Get Smart and Yes Man being the two most recent candidates). The thing is, given that you have to pay for movies at the theater, I usually don't go unless I'm reasonably sure that it's gonna be good. This has managed to keep me away from seeing awful movies in the theater for the better part of my life; avoiding all Jack Black movies has also contributed to this, since he's been responsible for 2 of the 3 worst movies I've seen in theaters.

2. HBO and Cinemax have three distinct types of movies. First, there are the good movies. I've gotten a few movies off of my "I need to see this" list, including Gran Torino and Funny People, since I've had premium channels, which is super-helpful. Second, there are the BAD movies. I don't know who makes the programming decisions at these channels, but there is no reason that Bio-Dome, Meet The Spartans, or both need to be on at any time, much less at all times. Third, there's the interestingly named porn. I have yet to indulge in this, as there is no reason to be up at 3am, but the fact that there is a movie called The Devil Wears Nada (The Hills Have Thighs and Cleavagefield being the other best names) makes me smile inside.

*I'm not very good to myself when I'm home alone. I don't go to sleep until late, and worse, I don't eat well. Friday night's dinner was a sub I picked up at Harris Teeter, and I only ate lunch yesterday, though to be fair, I ate my weight in enchiladas at Shaun's house while watching the US-Ghana game. This is part of how i managed to lose 40lbs in a year; while I love to cook, I feel very little need to do it for myself. I'm trying to stop that for tonight, and I'm making a brisket which will hopefully make for an excellent picnic dinner tomorrow at the outdoor Star Trek screening. I'm banking on the fact that Marie (who doesn't have her computer with her) won't read this, so that the food will be a surprise, but I'm also convinced that she'll act happy and surprised anyway.

May all your hits be crits,
B