Silent Nights

Carina took the twins to Michigan this weekend to visit two old friends of her’s, leaving me home alone. The twins were extremely interested to learn what I might be doing with my free time, and rather than bore them with the realities of yard work, I told them I’d be sitting around in my underwear drinking beer. In hindsight, this perhaps was not the best choice, but both girls howled with laughter, and took great delight in asking if that’s what I was really going to do.

As a matter of fact, that’s really what I did on Friday night! I loafed on the couch in my boxer shorts, enjoying a few beers and watching The Fifth Element. I’d forgotten how entertaining that movie is. I stayed up late, alone, and went to bed marvelling at the silence in the house.

Saturday morning, despite having the entire bed to myself, I awoke curled up on my side. I glanced at the clock, and was dismayed to see that on my day off, with no one in the house to disturb me, I had woken up before 9 AM. After cleaning the deck, mowing the back lawn and doing a few other small chores, Eric came over and we both went to help Mike construct a few saw horses. Thrill to the excitement of amateur carpentry! Just before Eric and I left, though, Jeff called to invite me to watch Alien vs Predator at Studio 35, to which I readily agreed.

I genuinely enjoyed AVP. I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece of cinema, and I was actually expecting the film to ruin everything I liked about both the Alien and the Predator franchises. To my delight, the movie was a passable interlude between the historical events of the Predator films while setting up a foundation for the Alien films. Jeff and I hooted and hollered as we saw all sorts of little nods to both franchises – it’s clear that the people involved with this movie knew their work and knew their audience very well. The actual story was – unsuprisingly – thin, but the action was fun and I was surprised at how quickly the 90 minutes passed!

After driving Eric home, I puttered around the house for a bit before deciding to listen to more of the audiobook of Stephen King’s Wizard and Glass, the fourth in his Dark Tower series. I listened to most of Book Three with Carina on our trip to Boston, and then listened to portions of Book Four on our drive to Hershey, PA. Book Four was actually a lot easier for me to jump into because the bulk of the book (indeed, all I’ve heard so far) is a flashback to Roland’s youth. At times tedious, the story is overall an interesting one, and the audiobook version, read by Frank Muller, is superbly done. I fell asleep on the couch listening to the story.

Sunday I woke up in my bed (I must’ve walked up at some point) around 7:45. Grumbling that I had blown my second and last chance to sleep in, I made coffee and listened to more of the Dark Tower. Earlier in the week Father Bob, the officiant at our wedding, had invited us to join their annual parish picnic, which I did. It was a pleasant interlude, seeing some familiar faces, after which I rushed home to listen to more Dark Tower! I forced myself to take a break to mow the front lawn (after searching for a discman so I could listen and mow but, alas, none were to be found), then ran a few quick errands, finally stopping at my parents’ house to join them for dinner. They filled me in on their conversation with Ann, who’s now living with her host family in Moldova. She’s doing fine, and really excited. From what I’ve heard, it’s quite possible that the Peace Corps. is one of the most organized operations in the world: they have given her everything you could imagine – and a lot of things you’d never imagine – that might be useful or helpful to her. It’s really impressive.

Carina and the girls arrived home around 9 PM. This morning, at breakfast, Tayler was quick to ask if I really sat around in my underwear drinking beer. I told her the truth, and said “only for a little bit.”