Hotel Life

I really hate having sheets tucked into the foot of the bed. It makes me feel pinned down, plus I like to use my feet for temperature control (too hot, poke them out). It sounds silly, but that's the main reason I always put up the Do Not Disturb sign on my hotel room door. I never get the room cleaned while I'm staying in the hotel. I don't WANT my toiletries clumped together in a corner, the hairdryer put away, the sheets tucked in or all my sheets and towels washed every day.

Other than that, it's been wonderful to drift to sleep without having one ear open for the kiddo. On the other hand, I can't get to sleep easily without Jrex nearby.

I'm realizing I planned this trip perfectly. Sunday through Tuesday I planned nothing social outside of work. It meant that Monday night I could decide to go to a movie. I wanted to see Silver Linings Playbook or Argo, but the one showing at the time I got there was Zero Dark Thirty.

Wow. Bigelow deserves all her accolades. Yes, I spent the first third of the movie with my fingers in my ears and my eyes squeezed shut as she showed interrogation techniques, but somehow in the midst of all of that, she allowed every single person and people group to feel human. There were no monsters in the movie. Even though we all know the 'ending', she created drama by letting us get to know the Navy Seals a bit and therefore giving the fear that they might get killed.

Jessica Chastain deserves her awards. Without ever having a big emotional scene, she conveyed a professional intelligence operative who had her emotions under control yet had a boiling mass under the surface. At the end of the movie (we all know she 'got' Bin Laden, right?), she walks alone into a military plane. The pilot comes out and says, "You must be really important, you have the plane to yourself. Where do you want to go?" The camera shifts to Chastain's face. There's no more dialogue. Just watching her face you see her realize she doesn't know what to do next, where to go, or even who she is now. You see her realize what she's accomplished. And that's it. The end. I don't know how an ending that quiet feels so powerful, but Bigelow pulls it off.

Starting tonight and for the next two nights, I'm going to friends' homes for dinner. I'm starting to really miss my family, so if I went alone to the hotel, I think I would start to get depressed. A couple days of luxurious alone time and now lots of wonderful friend time. Perfect!