A post in which I make my way home carefully

I still felt yucky today, but went on in to work anyway. I’ve felt worse, and I had my monthly meeting to prepare for on Monday. When I got to work, I wondered if this was such a great idea, but I got through the day, and got all my stuff done. Little Boots was off today, which made things nicer and easier. It was certainly a fairly quiet day.

The weather started to get bad this afternoon. They had called for snow, but my nose let me down. When I went to the door, I couldn’t smell anything. But then I do have an upper respiratory infection right now.

It started falling around 2pm while I was at lunch. The daycares and schools had closed, so a bunch of people had brought their kids in to work and dumped them in the cafeteria to re-create Lord of the Flies; so in addition to the kitchen crew music, the two televisions, and the bake sale going on in there today (to benefit earthquake victims), there were periodic stampedes of children through the room. Not a particularly restful break.

By the time I got off work, it was snowing pretty heavily but still not sticking to the roads. The temp had just dropped to 32F. I got in the car and began to make my weary way home. I’m afraid of the highway in the rain, much less the snow, and knew it was only a matter of time before everyone crashed into each other anyway, so decided to go through town. That was an OK decision. The South Carolinians were of course driving like dumb-asses, but the roads weren’t really bad enough for even SC drivers to screw up too badly. I did get involved in one small jam, but it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I made my way to the grocery store. For some reason whenever the weather gets bad I never have anything in the house to eat.

The grocery store was surprisingly quiet (I suppose because everyone else had already been and left – plus I’ve learned not to go to the one in my neighborhood) and I was through in record time.

I headed carefully home, tucked myself in, and enjoyed being out of the weather. I closed all the blinds and just snuggled in.

The Graduate was on TCM tonight. I had never seen it, so decided to watch it. It’s an important movie, and I usually really like Dustin Hoffman; but the movie didn’t do that much for me. Personally, I found the material dated. I could see the artistry of it, and why it was a hit when it was. It really embraced the nihilism of the late 60’s, and the period where disdain for one’s own wealth became the ultimate chic. It didn’t really seem to matter what you were doing, as long as it was anti-establishment and frowned upon. I also felt that the love interest was really just there to forward the plot – she was a passive character, and seemed to just be an object – more of a quest than a person. It didn’t seem particularly romantic to me. He seemed to be focused on her to the point of possessiveness simply because he had nothing else to focus on. I got the Holden Caulfield parallels, but without the stream of consciousness of Catcher, the material fell a bit flat for me.