The weekend
I had an interesting, depressing weekend:
- On Friday I received a panicked email from my mom stating that Julie the cockatiel was very close to death. I called my mom on Saturday and she was an emotional wreck. Maybe her feelings would have been buffered by time and acceptance, but I called her one hour after the bird died in her hands. Mom was not in a happy place. Neither was I. Most of Saturday morning I was a blubbering idiot over a bird. Then I had to drive to Chicago.
- So Kevin and I start to drive to Chicago for a planned weekend with Bob and Steve. I barely made it out of Urbana when I ran a yellow light. Kevin freaked out and told me to pull over. He told me I shouldn't run red lights. Jesus Christ, I wouldn't have crossed that intersection if the light was red, or approaching red. The intersection lights just turned yellow and I relized I would have had to brake aggressively to stop before the lights turned red: So I went through. Now we are both pissed at each other. It was early Saturday afternoon.
- We arrive in Chicago and eventually meet up with "The Twins." We putz around the city. I'm trying to take pictures with my new camera to see how the pictures look. I must have stopped too many times because Kevin is yelling at me to keep up. Angrily, he tells me to put my camera away because we aren't going to stop every minute so I can take pictures. Blah. I don't understand why I have to stay with the group. I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself.
- Speaking of pictures, I realized I forgot the SD memory card for my digital camera in Urbana. The camera has 75MB of internal memory, which means it can only hold between 12 and 30 pictures. Near Bob's apartment there is a CVS drug store, and since drug stores are basically mini-super markets I knew there would be memory cards there. I also knew, KNEW, I would be completely and totally screwed on the price of a new memory card for my camera. I'm in the CVS looking at the prices of the 4GB and 8GB memory cards, and I just decide to bite the bullet and buy the 8GB version. I paid $50, plus tax, which made that memory card around $57 total. It came in handy, but I'm not going to lie: I had this niggly feeling, the entire weekend, that memory card cost me a fortune. Yesterday I knew I was in for a stupendous surprise. I checked Amazon.com to see how much I overpaid for that 8GB memory card. I looked at the prices online, and I overpaid by about $37! Holy fucking shit I want my money back.
- After that unpleasant surprise I thought I would treat myself to a cinematic treat. It has been a while since I've seen a movie, and besides, nothing beats the experience of a huge movie screen. So I chose the movie The Road. Yes, The Road, the movie that shows where humanity is going because of affluenza and environmental neglect. Early in the movie, as The Man and The Boy are scavenging the landscape for necessities, they infiltrate an abandoned shopping mall. As they are exploring the abandoned stores, they step over piles of fine jewelry and paper money. They didn't even notice those things on the floor. I guess when the biosphere gets destroyed, and food is incredibly scarce, money and style go out the window -- they get set aside for the real things that count. At one point in the movie, the two characters are so starved they have to share a cricket. Of course, a movie this visceral has to have a semblance of optimism and hope at the end. Near the end of the movie, The Boy finds a beetle, but he didn't know what it was. He shows his father the beetle, and the father was amazed, too. The beetle flies off into the distance. At the end of the movie, The Man dies leaving the young Boy all alone to fend for himself. Not too soon after, he gets discovered by another family that was following The Man and The Boy to make sure they were OK. The Boy being rescued, and the living beetle, show the movie audience that someday the biosphere will come back, but that point is still far into the future.
- So yeah. My weekend could have been less depressing. The death of a beloved pet, the bickering, and a really depressing science-fiction movie set my mood. I really hope this upcoming weekend is better.