Weekly Round Up: OOO

Hi Friends, as of right now I am OOO - out of office.  Let's chat before I get on the road.

Family and Life

This week was a blur.  Stepson #1 adjusted to his new life as a high school graduate and stepson #2 finished up his sophomore year with The Chemistry Final From Hell.

Between you and me - I failed high school chemistry.  As best I remember I barely scraped by for the first two quarters and after Christmas break I realized that I wasn't going to make it so I stopped trying.  I took the easiest science class I could find to make up for it the next year.  My college major required four semesters of chemistry classes and I barely passed - 3 C's and one D==>the D was good enough for the degree!  We haven't seen grades yet, but I'm betting that at worst #2 got a B.

From there the menfolk switched to prep for their epic summer Boy Scout camp which is where they will be while I'm away.  The phrases "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" and "herding cats" are appropos for our home life right now.

As for me, I phoned it in at work and counted down the hours to 5:00 on Friday when I had the pleasure of turning on my OOO notification and updating my status in Slack to "off the grid".  In a few minutes I'll be out the door and on a WEEK LONG SOLO ADVENTURE!!!!!  Where to?  Don't worry, you'll be hearing all about it soon enough.  

I'm going somewhere with uncertain internet access, so if I'm scarce in commenting for the next week, that's why.  I'll most likely take blogging PTO next week as well.

Food

Nothing worth talking about.  My "meal prep" for my trip was making a batch of breakfast burritos and researching area restaurants.  For about one second I considered trying to do home cooked meals on the road before my common sense took over and said "Dude, stop pinching pennies.  You're already taking a budget vacation.  Let loose already."

Workouts

I did the one week long Caroline Girvan Circuit series and my review is two thumbs up.  My only complaint is that the workouts were on the longer side - 45-ish minutes and then a full hour for the Friday full body workout - but the format made the time fly by.  I also really liked the HIIT workout.

For two reasons I decided to not do any extra cardio this week - (1) to help with the time issue and (2) because I'll be making up for it with a vengeance next week.  The place that I'm going is not car friendly, so Bikey McBikerson will be my primary mode of transport.  My fitness plan for vacation is zero strength training and as many miles as my heart desires.

Watching

Hey who wants another one of my stories about 80s movies?????????????????????  The hubs and I saw some things this weekend.

I've mentioned before that I am an only child, and I went wherever my parents went and saw whatever movies they saw.  They always steered clear of anything with violence, but adult themes were fair game.  Previous examples that we've talked about are: Vacation is hysterically funny no matter what age you are, and I may not have understood Risky Business and Desperately Seeking Susan at the time but I knew that they were cool so no harm no foul.

And then there is Purple Rain.  For whatever reason, my parents loooooved that movie, and they saw it several times so I saw it several times. I was nine.

Meanwhile my husband was 16 years old and wanted desperately to see Purple Rain but couldn't because the theaters were strictly enforcing the age limit for an R rated movie.  At one point a friend's dad took the boys to the theater but they were still denied entry.  For context, his other memory of 1984 is regularly going to the bar for a beer after his Boy Scout meetings.

On Friday at the age of 54 my husband finally saw Purple Rain for the first time.

 

His review: Prince is awesome.  The plot is identical to The Karate Kid and a billion other 80's movies.

My review: Prince is awesome.  This movie makes exactly the same sense to me at 48 as it did when I was nine.

Next up: a movie that's so 1980's that it was made in 1959.  If I say "Eyes Without a Face" you of course think of this, and Billy Idol was thinking of this.

There are only a few things that a movie called Eyes Without a Face can be about so yes we are in the world of face transplants.  Christiane is a young woman who was disfigured in an auto accident.  Not only was her father driving, he also happens to be a surgeon with the skills to fix the situation.  His limitation is that the science isn't quite there yet and it's impossible to get willing donors.

I'd seen this movie a long time ago and I remembered that the horror was the typical old movie setup of building suspense by implying things without showing them.  Oh no that was incorrect because French movies had a little more wiggle room than mainstream US movies back then.  The movie stars by building up the suspense of Things That You Do Not see.  Then it changes gears and starts showing everything, and then says "OK, we made our point" and shifts again back to implied horror.  But still, it's a one of a kind, unique movie that's worth seeing if you've got HBO, oh excuse me I mean Max.

Books

Circling the Sun was good, sooooooo good.  I didn't know anything about Beryl Markham going in except that she was an early aviator.  Her claim to fame was being the first person to fly solo from England to North American from west to east non stop.  But there was so much more and all I will say about that is that her flying career starts at 85% of the way through the book.

Next up: a fan favorite.  I've started Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano.

It was time for another audio book, and a title from this Modern Mrs. Darcy post caught my eye.  MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend is an account of one woman's quest to make friends as an adult.  Where I can relate is that at this stage of life it's easy to meet new people, but hard to take the time to get to know them.  I don't have the solution but I know the problem.  My only quibble with the book is that she describes her meetings as dates which yes, it's very true that the difference between an acquaintance and a friend is chemistry, but she loses me when she talks about applying the stock dating rules to friendships - not making the first move, trying not to seem to too eager, waiting a certain amount of time to respond to texts and emails...uh yes I did that with guys which is why I was single until I was 37 but with casual friends?????????????????  Seriously?????????????

Werk

Speaking of dating, someone slid into my DM's on LinkedIn.  It was a local company so just for fun I talked to them and it was exactly what I expected.  They want in office AT LEAST three days a week "because that's our culture" and $30k less than the salary I'm targeting.

I'm banning myself from LinkedIn this week and I'll get back on the hunt next week.