Ugh. I tip my head forward to look at my clock across the room. 8:31 a.m. An unpleasant revelation, given that I had stayed up until almost 2 a.m. playing X-COM. I try to roll over and regain my unconsciousness. Half an hour later, I breathe a heavy sigh and rouse myself. I gather some shorts and a t-shirt and wish I were taking a shower. However, I will be going to the Rec Center at Ball State later in the day, and after that I’ll be attending an event at the Kennedy Library that I should really dress up for. So the shower should really wait until after I get sweaty and gunked up.
I spend the morning piddling around, being unproductive. I have until 11:30 before I need to leave, so I have plenty of time before then for breakfast and other things. My sister is still asleep. She was up even later than I was watching Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares on YouTube. Nice to see her sleeping in for a change. One of us should be this morning, I suppose.
I spend most of the time dithering about breakfast/lunch. I know, intellectually, that I should eat something and that I have a few options. Actually mustering up the concern and decision-making power to fix something for myself is a more difficult proposition. While I stew about it, I spend some time reading a webcomic called “Questionable Content.” It’s been running since 2003, and I recently discovered it about a week ago. It’s a bad soap opera with a lot of archetypes and tropes, but it’s incredibly addictive. I spend the morning going through a few hundred pages, getting way too drawn in. Before I know it, it’s almost 11 a.m., and I still haven’t eaten anything. My sister walks over to say good morning.
On a whim, I ask if she wants to watch a late showing of Detective Pikachu tonight. We’re both well beyond interest in Pokémon but we’re willing to make an exception for Ryan Reynolds. We decide who’s getting tickets and who’s buying the concessions. I pick on her about it: last few times she’s tried with her phone, it has ended in disaster. I had to tell her to use her laptop. We agree that I’ll buy the tickets and I get us some seats for 9:25 p.m.
It’s getting to close to time to leave, and I’ve squandered over two hours of decision-making time. I grab my box of Cheez-Its and munch for a few minutes, figuring its better than nothing.
I walk twenty minutes to work. It’s a nice day, sunny and warm. I sing a few songs, mainly “Cool Considerate Men” from 1776, and make sure to take long, deliberate strides. I’m trying to burn off some extra fat, so every little bit helps.
I arrive in the office to see my two coworkers already there on their computers. I sit down and we don’t talk much. I put on my headphones and start working on projects that require me to listen to my computer, and I don’t want to disturb my coworkers. The boss comes in a few times to check on us, and make sure we’ll be ready for the Kennedy Library event. Otherwise the day is pretty boring. My coworkers leave a couple hours before I do, so I can work without the headphones. Every so often, I break up the work with a quick look at the headlines on Google News. I don’t want to go very deep into the abortion debate, or the standoff between Congressional probes and the Trump Administration, so I’ll leave at a general unease and frustration with the current state of things.
Rather than walk straight home, I go to the Rec Center. They swipe my card, and I descend the stairs to lift weights. I like to alternate between leg machines and arm machines to give myself a little time to recuperate, and I do 3 sets of 10 reps with slightly progressive weight increase. I only do about 6 machines or so (roughly half an hour) before I begin walking home. It’s not very much, but it’s more than I have been doing for a while and I plan to go pretty consistently. See if I can’t reclaim some fitness this summer.
At home, my sister is rewatching the second-to-last Game of Thrones episode and getting angry about it. She’s really upset about how the writers are collectively treating the powerful women, and naturally she doesn’t care for the direction they took Dany’s story. I’m amused but also nonplussed by how rushed some of the transitions were in this season. We switch the tv over to the terrible movie Skyscraper when we get a text from our mom. She’s asking if we have plans for dinner. We tell her that we are going to the Kennedy Library at 6:30 p.m. and ask her why. Apparently she went to Cincinnati to visit a retiring colleague, and was going to try and stop by our place on her way home. Unfortunately, her meeting carried over and she wouldn’t reach us in time, so she was going to go straight home.
That settled, I ate a PB&J sandwich and took a quick shower, and changed into some nicer clothes. I don’t feel like a real dinner, especially since I intend to gorge on popcorn later. Skyscraper ends, after an intense questioning about the hall of mirrors thing they did at the end by my sister. Most of my answers boil down to “It’s a Dwayne Johnson B-movie.” We turn off the tv and head to the library.
My sister marvels at the solar panel shade fixtures outside the library. I think I slightly disappointed her by not pulling under one. We enter the library only to discover another group has the room before us, and we have to wait for them to vacate. My sister explores the library proper while I stand near the door humming obscure tunes. At 6:45 the other group leaves and we can enter.
The presentation was not much of a surprise for me. I’ve read enough of the diaries to have a feel for their general themes. However, I did enjoy some of the readings done by volunteers, particularly the aggregate of what people were watching on a particular date. The event goes pretty quickly, actually, but we’re both ready to leave. We head home for a half-hour or so before we need to leave for our movie.
The theater is about ten minutes away, and we always arrive fifteen to thirty minutes early to budget time for lines, concessions, and the pre-movie bathroom run. Fortunately there is not much of a line, so we get through pretty quickly. Our popcorn feels warm and fresh through the bucket, which is not always the case, so signs are good thus far. We head to our seats, and my sister picks one before I get the chance. It turns out she chose…poorly. A somewhat loud group of four sits on her right while the seats to my left remain empty. I suggest she change seats after the movie starts, but she decides she’s fine and will deal with it.
Without spoiling things too much, the movie was good. There were some references and throwbacks to early Pokémon games and movies that made me happy. Ryan Reynolds brought his A-game, and the plot was surprisingly well-orchestrated. The presence of Bill Nighy in the movie was also a pleasant surprise. My long history with fiction led me to guess a lot of the plot twists ahead of time, but I still found them enjoyable.
After the movie, we drove him and began assigning real-life actors to the roles of characters from the animated RWBY series. We fought over some of our casting decisions, but most of them were quickly agreed to by both of us. We retreat to our respective rooms when we get home. She watches more Kitchen Nightmares while I play X-COM for a few hours until I finally go to bed at almost 2 a.m.