Abbie's Real Life Blog

Oh, I had such a good weekend!  I am so disappointed in myself that this is only my first year attending True/False.  What an idiot I was, avoiding it in the past!  Although I do have to say that it is the kind of thing that you have to make a commitment to do.  A few people walked in off the street to take in a movie, and the system is more complicated than strictly necessary, in my opinion, so the fact that I had a pass and also volunteer training made the whole thing more accessible to me.

I went to see six movies, all of which were great.  My favorite was probably The Red Chapel, about two Danish-Korean comedians who enter North Korea to do a comedy show with a documentary team.  But it’s a hard call.  I also liked Smash His Camera, about Ron Galella, a famous paparazzo, and Waking Sleeping Beauty, about Disney animation in the 1980s and early 1990s.  I wasn’t familiar with Spalding Gray but enjoyed the Steven Soderbergh-directed And Everything Is Going Fine quite a lot.  The most depressing of all was Disorder, a Chinese documentary that took footage of crazy events happening on the streets in Beijing and put them together without context.  It was fascinating.

So, great movies!  And I volunteered about twelve hours, six each on Saturday and Sunday nights.  My extrovert side really shines during times when I can be helpful to people like that, pointing them in the right direction, etc.  The other volunteers were also a lot of fun, and I went out with them both nights after the work was done.  I saw Capybara and Mahjongg (and a klezmer band while Mahjongg was setting up) at Mojo’s on Saturday night, and then there was a big party for all the volunteers last night.  It was pretty awesome, enough so that I wished I had had the foresight to ask off work today.  But I didn’t!  So I am here, and it is going to be a long Monday with not enough sleep.  I am also scheduled to work at the food bank tonight.  Between all the running around I did this weekend and the work I’ll do tonight, I do not feel guilty about skipping the gym today!  I was far too tired.

And now it is March!  St. David’s Day!  Less than two weeks until Daylight Savings Time begins.  And I was on the Columbia College campus last week, and the daffodils were already several inches high.  Within just a few weeks they will be blooming and the grass will turn from dead yellow to spring green virtually overnight.  I love spring in Missouri!  You don’t even realize how dead the world is now until it starts coming to life in March.

On the flip side, I was having a guy come mow my lawn for the past few years, and this year I had to cancel that.  So as soon as the grass is green, it will be time to start cleaning out the garage, taking a look at the condition of my lawnmower/weed cutter, and begin the very time-consuming cycle of yard maintenance.  I am hoping to start a little early this year so that I resize some of the flowerbeds, which get unruly fast if not kept up.  I am such a bad gardener.  I have no follow-through.  Or, at least, I have not had any follow-through in the past.  But I have had time for many new activities in the past few months, so maybe I will give myself more time for gardening this year.

I don’t know what plans I have for March, except that I have one more month for my quarterly resolutions, and I have not been doing very well on my reading again.  I will need to review those and see what I need to get done.  I am hoping to take a road trip to Iowa later in the month, maybe the last weekend, if I can get schedules sorted.  I will be volunteering at the food bank through the end of March, but I am not sure that I am going to continue after that.  It is great to work there, and I definitely feel that I am working for something big and important that helps real people, but I’m also trying to meet new people in the process, and I’d like to find another place that might help me do that while still being big and important in a real-world poverty-and-hunger sense.  I know it shouldn’t be a social hour.  I might do the food bank again later in the year, but I’d like to see what else I can find.

I am freezing in my office right now.  I know, I hate it when people complain about being cold, because “put on another shirt!” is always the answer.  But I don’t have any more shirts with me.  And I have two shawls that I keep here for these occasions, and they are both draped over me.  It is really chilly in here, and playing with the thermostat never seems to make any difference.  But that is a fact of office life.  I should wear thicker socks and stock more blankets in my cubicle.