It’s Sunday, March 9, 2025.
I went to the movies yesterday. As I mentioned in my last post, I LOVE going to the movies. I love the experience of sitting in a dark theater with a huge screen in front of me, immersed in sound, munching on the unmistakable movie theater popcorn.
Sure enough, I walked in to the Ottumwa 8 theaters and was immediately greeted with that oh-so-familiar smell of the popcorn popping in the machines behind the counter. I ordered a medium, along with a medium Cherry Coke and a bag of peanut M&Ms, which I dumped into my popcorn when the movie started.
I saw The Monkey, an adaptation of a Stephen King story. It was an absolute riot. Definitely lived up to its Horror-Comedy billing.
Sunday
Sundays have been a wonderful thing for me for years. As a teeneager, I spent a summer with my grandparents. I remember waking up every Sunday to the sound of Charles Osgood on the CBS News Sunday Morning, and the smells of coffee on the stovetop percolator my grandpa used and breakfast cooking in cast iron.
Since those days, I’ve done my best to honor and cherish those memories and do my best to relax every Sunday morning with coffee, a good breakfast and (now) Jane Pauley on the same program. The show ends the same way every week- a short, 30 to 60 second clip of just nature. No voiceover, no music, nothing. Just the sounds of nature. That was my first experience with ASMR, before in launched into the wildly popular thing it is today.
Because today was the start of Daylight Saving Time, I woke up later than I normally would and wound up missing most of the program today. I did, however, at least get to watch that last “moment of nature”.
The day wound up being pretty productive, in that I changed the air filters and cabin filters in both of the vehicles today. Popping the hood to change the air filters, even if that’s, like, the easiest thing to do in a car, still gets a little something going in me. The feel of tools in my hands, the smell of the grease and oil emanating from the engine bay, and the sense of satisfaction once it’s done is something I hadn’t felt in a while and it was nice to do something like it again.
Back to Work
Work days tend to be a little difficult for me to find anything to be super grateful or optimistic about. I usually wake up, shower, go to work, make dinner, clean up, maybe walk with Ash if the weather is right, then go to bed.
But that’s the point of this. I want to make that elusive effort to find things to be grateful for, even if it’s something like the familiar fanfare of the CBS Sunday morning program, or the smell of coffee steeping in my French press. I figure, if I make it a daily “requirement”, maybe it’ll help me do that.
It was a great weekend. The weather was great and getting better, I got a lot done, and things only keep looking up for me.
See you tomorrow.
Phil