Extra Hour

I wanted to use my extra hour to call everyone I know just to say hello. Chit chat. Catch up on everything, but more importantly, nothing. Just hear voices of the people I miss and eventually laugh so hard my stomach hurts. The usual. However, I think everyone had the same idea because I got a few busy signals, tried again -- got distracted and felt panicked as my extra hour sneaked away from me. My biggest success? IMing MB in London -- it was already evening there -- I was ahead of the clock, yet I was (still) frantically trying to squeeze more out of that hour.

Seeing that I was about to have a panic attack, the Chef agreed to go to see "Lars & the Real Girl" with me. Or as he said, "Might as well only waste one hour watching a bad movie instead of two!" The Chef has been cynical about movie watching these days (I blame "Waitress.") However (for me at least) two hours spent watching Ryan Gosling act like an anti-social weirdo from Wisconsin (!) was well-spent.

"Lars & The Real Girl" also managed to capture that ugly, stuck-in-brown-road-slush, woods without leaves drab Midwestern wintertime of February/March -- and that familiarity made me incredibly homesick. That, and the illusion that all people who live in small towns in Wisconsin are kind-hearted and supportive to delusional outsiders. I fell for it, even though I knew better. I recommend getting sucked into that particular movie magic.

That small town in Wisconsin even turned out to be Toronto, eh? What a coincidence -- I'm flying there tomorrow for work. I'm going to pretend it's Wisconsin and keep my eye out for Ryan Gosling.