Hey gang!
For the last two and a half months I have been blissfully "retired".
I'm back at work now and once I got over my Couch Inertia I realized I'm really happy to be back at my contract gig. The team I work with is great and while it's easy to sink into those luxurious red couch cushions and snuggle under a blanket of cats, I really do enjoy connecting with actual humans.
So here is my "What I did on my summer vacation (in Winter)" essay.
I did a smattering of travel and a smattering of binge watching TV shows, not dissimilar to what I did last time I was "retired". It was glorious. Here are some bullet points illustrating what the fuck I was doing.
Travel:
- I did a quick weekend in LA with my friend Jen. We were down there because an animated short that she produced (Coin Operated. Find it. Watch it, it's great!) was at a film festival in Hollywood. It played in front of Mary and the Witch's Flower, a full length animated film directed by a former animator from Studio Ghibli. It was beautiful but a bit slow for my taste. I got to see my wonderful family and Jen and I were tourists for a day, going to Griffith Observatory and shopping in Venice. My favorite moment of our tourist day is when we wandered into a consignment clothing store. We were hauling our suitcases around and the store clerks happily grabbed them from us while we are shopping. They even remarked on how "professional" we were. I had no idea what that meant until I heard them mention something about a curling iron. We looked to find them riffling through our bags. Initially horrified, we realized they thought we were bringing suitcases full of clothes to sell to them! Um, NO!! We want to keep all our clothes, thank you very much.
Hollywood sign from Griffin Observatory. I promise it's there.
- A week later I spent a long weekend in New Orleans. It was a wonderful music, food and booze filled four days with a group of friends. We did a quick side trip to the Whitney Plantation Museum. If you are ever in NOLA, I highly suggest visiting this museum. Out of the couple thousand museums in the USA, this is the only one devoted to depicting the lives of slaves. I'm not saying this is an easy thing to see but I can assure you the experience will leave you more enlightened than when you walked in. (Warning: There are several doll-like statues of children scattered about that (obviously) disturbed me for a different reason)
- I was home for 48 hours then I was off to Boston to visit my aunt and cousins. This is one of my favorite things to do and this year's trip was no different. My cousin Cynthia and I also snuck off to Salem for a day. I thought I was being an awesome trip planner but the website I bought tickets through (including a hop on/hop off bus and 3 museums) wasn't clear (yes, I'm blaming the tool. Shush.) and we ended up needing to "Greek" at them to resolve things. We charmingly complained that we didn't get what we thought we were getting and ended up not only getting our money back but also getting into two museums for free. Being effusive Greek women can have its perks. The Salem Witch Museum has a bunch of animatronic people depicting the hysteria of the witch trials (this creepy doll thing apparently was a theme in November), so again, beware.
Bewitched in Salem.
- I rounded off the year by visiting Florida for New Year. I had to catch a shuttle to where I was staying and it was nearly as entertaining as my day at Harry Potter World (okay, that is a slight exaggeration - HPW was awesome! Well, except for the "Barfy Ride" in which I got a face full of steam and heat when the Dragon spewed fire at me.). Not only did I chat with a man from Deadwood (!) on the shuttle who has ELEVEN siblings (!!) but then an old lady and I got stranded at a motel waiting for the shuttle for the second leg of our trip to show up. We watched at least three episodes of Golden Girls in the motel lobby and when we finally got picked up, she was pissed. I gave her a KIND bar which mellowed her out, prompting her to tell me all about how she helps rescue cats in her community and adopted a 13 year old Siamese named Mr. Handsome.
In the bad part of town at Harry Potter World.
Binge Watching:
- Dark. This is the first Netflix original made in the German language. It’s about a seriously fucked up small town in Germany that houses a nuclear plant. This plant may or may not contribute to a time conundrum - creating portals to 3 different time periods 30 years apart. It's all sorts of weird and good and you seriously need a map to keep track of who's who. My favorite part is how it shows the same characters in the different time dimensions. Pro-tip: watch it with subtitles. The voice over acting is pretty bad. (Drink pairing: a good, wheaty Hefeweisen)
- Drop Dead Diva. This is a 5 season series that originally ran on Lifetime. Netflix kept "suggesting" it to me but I admit I was skeptical about starting it. I had a feeling I was going to end up being really angry about a show whose premise is a skinny, shallow girl dies at the same time as an overweight lawyer and Skinny ends up in Plus Size because of a computer error at the Pearly Gates. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I liked it! The actress, Brooke Elliot, who plays Plus Size (not her character's name) is really good. There are also fantasy elements within the show (much like My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) which includes her singing. It's good fun. (Drink pairing: Pomegranate martini!)
- The Alienist. Okay, to be fair I didn't really binge this because it's only aired two episodes (it's on TNT). I remember loving this book so I was excited to watch this show. I'm gonna say it right now - I'm not a fan. The sets are cool and you really get the feel of how gritty NYC was in the late 1800s. It's the acting that let me down. The actor who plays the Alienist, Daniel Bruhl, delivers all his lines in a kind of urgent whisper that immediately bugged me. His sidekick is an over-sexed newspaper illustrator played by Luke Evans. I can't get beyond him playing Gaston in the live action Beauty and the Beast, so there's that. And finally, the female lead is played by Dakota Fanning. Her delivery is so stilted and wooden that I kept imagining her script pages were taped to the actor she's playing off of so she can just read them. She was so great when she was 7 years old in I Am Sam. What happened? (Drink pairing: whatever makes you pass out because DAMMIT this show is annoying)
My takeaways:
#1 - I haven't seen La La Land yet and after being at Griffith Observatory I feel like I really need to.
#2 – I honestly am happy to be working again but I can tell this is going to severely cut into my TV bingeing.
#3 – I don’t think my cats miss me nearly as much as I miss them.
xoxo…hashtagSueslife
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