I have to applaud my employer for making the segue back to work after the holiday shutdown so easy this time. In past years, I’ve spent the final few days of the break dreading its ending; fretting the thought of plowing through snow and ice on my monumental commute in this worst month.
Okay, I guess I still feel that way, but it’s better this year. For one thing, Owen and Isla had to go back to school today. I dropped off Emmett at my sister-in-law’s house to be babysat for the day, and Jennifer and I went out on a date. We tried to see a movie at Marcus Theater, but when we got there, there were no tickets remaining. The cashier explained that most people buy their tickets online now, that way they can arrive late and not have to sit through all the commercials. This begs the question of why there are so many goddam commercials prior to a movie, and since an online ticket purchase comes with additional fees, it gives theater patrons the added “convenience” of paying even more for already bloated prices. Actually, there were two seats available, but they were on opposite sides of the theater, and in shitty locales. We told the cashier how stupid we thought this was, and we left.
Then we headed to a restaurant in downtown St. Paul, but it turns out that, as of 2017, the restaurant is now closed on Mondays. So then we went to another theater, bought tickets, then raced to a nearby restaurant for a middling meal, then raced back to the theater. Looking at her ticket as we walked down the hall toward the theater, Jennifer remarked how pathetic tickets now look. “They’re really cheapening the whole theater experience nowadays, aren’t they?” she said. I concurred. Movie theaters, like Tonka Trucks and the Guinness Book, are one of those things that have gotten noticeable worse since my childhood. Manchester By the Sea was a well-acted, plodding, depress-fest. Upon the film’s completion, the quasi-old man to my left expressed that “That might’ve been the saddest movie I’ve ever seen.”
Today, though, I’m back at work. But it’s a Tuesday, and I work from home on Tuesdays. So I’m slowly easing into being a grown-up this calendar year.