Today's Keyboard Smash

Nnnnrrrrgggg... Well. That was an almost infinitely long work week. But the great joy of working overtime on Friday is that we only ("only") work eight hours and start and end early, which means I can do silly stuff in town afterward. I am, after all, already almost into town, so I don't have to weigh the costs of making a special trip. Often, I pick up a pizza to bring home for the family. Overtime Friday Pizza is a very good tradition.

All of which is to say, I went and watched Black Widow after work. In a theater. With people.

!!! *distressed pandemic noises intensify*

It was weird! And weirdly normal! I don't know how I felt about it! The experience of theater-going, that is. About Black Widow, I felt extremely positive.

I bought a truly, accidentally prodigious quantity of popcorn, which I never get normally. But I had bought a gift card during the lockdown as part of the theater's attempts to stay afloat while closed (it's just an indie place), and they gave you free popcorn if you did, and it was unexpectedly delicious. So yes. I ate enough popcorn to make myself feel unwell and watched a matinee showing that meant I had about three people seated several rows behind me and absolutely no one else in the theater near me.

This is my preferred movie-going experience, because in an ideal universe, I would just have a small home theater: big screen, surround sound, darkness and air conditioning, and NO OTHER PEOPLE. I am not interested in having a communal experience (though I will grant you, those can be enjoyable on rare occasions, with the right sort of movie and right sort of crowd). I will murder anyone who speaks during the movie, and I will barely tolerate audible laughter. Because I am this precise flavor of bastard, I aim to go to movies that are late in the run and/or at a day and time when few other people want to watch a movie.

Having my mask off for an extended time in a public space, isolated though I was, was...weird. I've only done that at work while on break, sitting by myself. I was only really consciously aware of it during the previews and credits, thankfully, but I definitely had some strange sensations of "this is neither right nor proper." If I hadn't had the popcorn, I would have worn it the whole time. It was probably good for my psychological health to use the popcorn as an excuse--I don't want mask-wearing to become a compulsion, for all that I'm perfectly happy to keep wearing them to mitigate covid, allergies, and seasonal colds/flus. And realistically, it was probably less dangerous than having it off in the work break room, in terms of how many people were breathing the same air as me at the time.

When I left the theater, I definitely had a feeling of needing to avoid humans at all costs. Not panic or anything, just...done being near them. Which was fine, because apart from picking up the phoned-in pizza order, I was in fact done with being near people. This was good practice, though. Because come the end of September (barring any new, wild developments in the pandemic), my succulent club will have their rescheduled show and sale. I've already signed up to work my normal full weekend of cashier shifts, which I look forward to with the glee of someone who enjoyed the technical aspects of being very good at customer service but didn't enjoy the whole part where my livelihood depended upon tolerating people's bad behavior. So I'm trying to reintroduce myself to the realities of existing in a society, however reluctant I am to do so.

Also, it was a really good movie, about which I will talk more later.