Watching the World Go By From Vacationland - things I've missed

I don't think I've taken this much time off from work... ever.  At least, not for "let's go have fun" reasons.

But skipping town for a while also means you might miss whatever is going on in town.  Or on TV or whatever.  The only TV I've watched in the past week was 40 terribly depressing minutes of something on TV about the Dust Bowl while Jamie was at dialysis.  Did you know the Dust Bowl was even more depressing than you thought?  Well, however bad you thought it was, multiply it by ten then double that.  So, fun programming about babies dying choking on dust.  VACATION.

Anyway, I'm desperately trying not to get spoiled as I have been unable to watch with The Flash or Mad Men.  Flash I could handle spoilers, but Mad Men...?  And it's not like folks don't put spoilers right in headlines and social media doesn't just feed up those headlines whether I asked for them or not.

I could go see this, or be there to watch "New Girl" at home, I guess

I should be home for the Mad Men finale, so hopefully no one will ruin it for me.

Seriously, I will stab you.

I missed Free Comic Book Day this year, which is okay.  I think the day has finally found a way to aim itself at kids, and I sort of figure that if DC and Marvel are shoving event comics at me at FCBD, they really don't get the premise of an event comic or building a new audience.  I managed to not pick up DC's Future's End a while back and you know what I think I missed on that series?  The same thing nobody else has been missing by skipping it.

I haven't seen Avengers: Age of Ultron yet.  I guess I need to see it.  I mean, I want to see it, so don't worry there, but there's a place where headlines and having read comics for 3 decades have left me pretty sure all that's left for me is to see how it plays out for myself.  All I know right now is that everyone is mad about Black Widow for some reason, but I haven't been reading articles, so...  there you go.

Once again, The Alamo Drafthouse really dropped the ball on their Film Noir Fest, announcing it with what I think was less than a month lead time.  Apparently the Drafthouse believes everyone can just clear their calendars for a full weekend of movies - no problem.  Which is weird, because they're generally good about planning things in advance, but since Zack and Lars left the Drafthouse, the level of management just feels like it's sorta gone to heck.  I literally got a tweet back from The Alamo telling me "well, we announced it as soon as we were ready", which is some pretty weak sauce.  You can always start planning and scheduling well in advance.

Anyway, that's going on this weekend, and I'm here and they're there, and on the whole, I'd rather be here.  But I also get concerned because they aren't going to figure out that the reason attendance is spotty at this thing is because of their half-assed promotion and planning.  We'll see what happens in 2016, I guess.

And, last but not least, I had bought tickets for last weekend to see Die Walkure at the Houston Grand Opera some time before we planned our trip to Hawaii.  So, an old high school pal should have been enjoying that show.  I'll ask him about it when I get back.

I was kind of shocked as thing after thing seemed to be lining up with the trip.  But, you know, while this will come as a shocker to folks who say otherwise routinely on tumblr... all that stuff is fun, but it should be secondary to getting to take Jamie to a place she's talked about for two decades, and getting to enjoy ourselves mostly unplugged and to remember there's a world out there when you look up from the monitors or comics.  And it's a world that's generally way the hell more fulfilling than the tunnel of shrieking banshees that is the internet.

All of this stuff will be here.  Even the opera I missed will play again somewhere in my lifetime, and I'll see it.  Avengers will be on.  I can look at the list of movies from Austin's FNF and just track them down.  It's not like the world will have a shortage of comics or Avengers movies.  And while hopefully the beaches here won't go away, you don't want to give up opportunities like this for the small stuff (but even grabbing the small stuff needs to happen, too).

Sometimes it's good to step away from the usual obsessions and try getting a little sun.