Chad was at a conference most of last week, during which time I
failed to sleep but mostly ate properly, so that's an improvement
over the last time he was away for an extended period of time. I
was scheduled to donate platelets and plasma on Saturday, but my
red blood cell count was just a hair too low (they require that you
meet the threshold even for non-red-blood-cell donation, in case
they can't return the red blood cells to you). I was rather
disappointed—I'd gone to a lot of trouble to get
properly full of calcium, for one thing—but it was probably
for the best given my fatigue.
This Wednesday, we had Chad's current and former research
students and advisees over for dinner. All the traditional elements
were present: Chad's spiedies, my chocolate chip cookies, and my
kicking them out at 9:00 p.m. (I would have just gone up to
bed and left them to it, but one of the quieter ones had been
looking at his watch for a while, and was giving several others
a ride.)
My parents had been thinking of coming up this weekend, but it
didn't work out. Instead, we did exciting things like napping,
playing with the dog, and yardwork (dandelions everywhere fear me!
or at least the ones in the landscaping and the more obvious ones
in the yard, since they're hard to spot when they've just been
mowed). We also saw Revenge of the Sith, which was
dreadful (since I'm cut-tagging something else, I think I'll put my
spoilery comments in a separate post), and Chad played in a charity
student-faculty/staff basketball game. I had today off, and did a
little work, a little reading, and a little basking in the sun. No
nap, though; I might be almost caught up on my sleep, and didn't
want to mess with my sleep patterns.
On Saturday we had a nice dinner out at Provence, a local
French/Mediterranean restaurant. The food was delicious, but what
made it memorable was
( the gentleman seated next to us. )
After he left, I leaned over to Chad and said, "We are
so in a different movie than that guy." Chad's response
was something along the lines of, "Let's hope so, because if we're
not, this is the point where a car comes crashing into the
restaurant."
Fortunately for everyone, if the gentleman next to us was in a
James Bond movie, the next action sequence took place
elsewhere.
This led to a discussion about feeling like you're in a movie,
what your movie would be, and so forth. I'd never before been so
conscious that someone else's movie was going on right next to me.
I'm probably an extra in other movies—dramas of family
members, the re-enactment of Reality Bites by some
college people, things like that—but I rather doubt that I'm
in a movie of my own. Chad and I were insufficiently zany for a
romantic comedy, I have no long-supressed desire to find my
biological family, and civil defensive litigation is not the stuff
of high-powered legal thrillers. (This bothers me not in the least,
mind.)
What about you? Have you ever had a moment when you were sure
that you'd inadvertently wandered onto a movie set? Are you in a
movie now, and is it yours, someone else's, or both? Or was only a
specific portion of your life a movie?