Friday, September 17 2021

Dear Journal,

Good morning, everyone. Happy Friday. I hope your workday feels brief today, and being hot on the heels of another gorgeous autumn weekend, I see no reason why it shouldn't feel that way. Work feels so easy on a Friday, doesn't it? Good morning, good feelings, and good coffee.

Sip.

"Is your blog just a Snowpiercer blog now?" asked Marissa, just before I approached the keyboard. She went on to tease me about how hard I ripped on that movie yesterday.

"We had only watched twenty minutes," she laughed. "You went so hard at it."

I can explain myself. Yes everything about the first twenty minutes of Snowpiercer led me to believe it was going to be one of those movies that shirks on explaining everyone's motivations - why are the bad guys bad and why did they think this was going to work? Suppose we picked up the next evening at the twenty minute mark and the movie backtracked into a rich explanation of the context of this class warfare - you could be sure you would be reading a public apology right now that would say I'm sorry I prematurely judged Snowpiercer.

But I'm not sorry. When I'm right, I'm right. We watched more of Snowpiercer, and the way it kept ignoring our glaring questions even made Marissa turn on it.

Example: when the lower class finally revolts and attempts to capture the water supply, there's a beautiful moment where they all stare out the window into the beautiful snowy tundra outside. One of the characters muttered something about how they had never seen through the window before.

"Oh just put windows in the back of the train!" exclaimed Marissa.

This movie just... has serious problems. Like how could these people be so smart to build this fricken train, but so dumb to go out of their way to oppress an arbitrary group of people in their own population? What did they think was going to happen?

At least the action sequences are pretty cool. Night vision axe battles, long distance train car shootouts, and tense hostage situations. Perhaps we just went into this movie wrongly, and the shallow politics function the same way as the obligatory side salad you get with your deep dish pizza. Maybe it's supposed to be kind of silly.

As much as I'd like to continue ranting and raving about Snowpiercer, I'll save some for when we actually finish the movie.

We had a good day yesterday. Even though I was tired, I gulped down a legendary amount of coffee and feverishly worked on code until lunch time. I had one of those mornings where I didn't realize I had a terrible headache until I stopped focusing so hard. But a few gulps of water and a lunchtime walk with Ziggy helped clear things up. I thought of a fun fact my boss shared with my team the other day - you need two cups of water to offset the water you lose from one cup of coffee. In that way, writing code is kind of like an extreme sport - when you really get going, dehydration poses a risk.

When Rodney got home from school, he went right to work setting up his store front. Remember Rodney rehoused his stuffed tarantula in one of my spare enclosures? Rodney has really run off with that idea, and now everything in the play room is "an enclosure".

"He dumps out all the toy bins and uses them all as enclosures now," said Marissa. "It's really cute. But it makes a huge mess."

Rodney sets up his storefront on the couch. You can buy exotic creatures from Rodney's "Snake Discovery" - anything from green dinos, to baby shellvins, to Red Knee Spiders - maybe even a cement mixer truck if you get lucky.

Just after my workday ended, Marissa and Rodney called me downstairs. "We have an early birthday present for you," said Marissa.

I smelled a trick. Marissa loves birthday presents way too much to ever consider giving an early one. "I feel like I'm about to get scammed," I sighed. She and Rodney handed me a tiny wooden box.

I spoiled the surprise. I can explain why my reaction was so poor. The second I saw a pair of hairy legs at the bottom of the wooden box, I went into spider husbandry mode. Move slowly, stay calm, and be ready just in case the little guy decides to bolt. But then I saw a little metal rod attached to the spider, and after that there was little left to the surprise.

"I should have recorded Rodney instead," laughed Marissa. "He knew about it already, but he screamed so loud I think the rest of the neighborhood heard him."

Rodney claimed the spiderbox as his own. He pranked our neighbors Gregg and Morgan when we came back from the grocery store. He made a nearly convincing case for why he should also be allowed to take the spiderbox to school.

We have a fun weekend ahead of us. Our babysitter's COVID test came back negative, so Marissa and I have a green light to hit the town. Poppa Wilke is flying into town later tonight. And maybe we'll finally finish Snowpiercer. Thanks for stopping by today - have a great weekend everyone.