For my second week, I had to get creative and had very little time to work out a plan. Amy planned her first event last Saturday and her next one, this Friday (tomorrow), so I really only had a window of five days. I had considered skipping my week, but doing a DVD at home was easy.
In fact, Watchman was a DVD a friend gave me for Christmas. My game night friends have been giving me a hard time for the better part of a year for never having watched Watchman. It still hasn't come out on Netflix and when a friend lent me his copy, it was actually the digital copy which didn't play in a DVD player.
So, with a copy of Watchman in my possession and pressure from friends to watch it, this seemed like a perfect last-minute fit. But I didn't want to completely mail this week in, so I bought a new hot air popcorn popper and some flavored seasonings to give the night a more "big event" feel.
After the kids went down for bed, I popped a couple bowls of popcorn and we picked the White Cheddar for one bowl and the Garlic & Parmesan for the other, turned down the lights and sat together on the couch to view Watchman.
The movie was quite a bit longer than either of us anticipated. I thought it was a lot more cerebral than what I assumed and Amy thought it developed slowly. She actually fell asleep for about thirty minutes near the end. We both felt the movie was decent, but certainly not an action blockbuster or an edge-of-the-seat experience. This was my second stay-at-home event, but seeing Amy's first was out of the house and her second will be too, there is some good balance.
Things I Learned:
- Adding an extra "feature" such as the gourmet popcorn to the DVD, gave a typical DVD night a little more flair. It was fun to pop the corn and pick a couple flavors.
- Set time expectations before the event. We both assumed the movie would be about 90 minutes. It was much longer and I think if we both knew that going in, we would have been better prepared. For the Stained Glass event, we knew that it would be a three-hour class, so we were ready for that level of committment.
- I will need to consider not only balancing my own weeks, but also account for Amy's. There may be times when back-to-back events could be a positive or negative, so I should take what Amy is planning and factor that into my own weeks.
Obviously a movie night at home is a pretty typical "date" for most people, but I completely agree that adding a little more flair to a common date makes it a lot more special. In fact, I think just putting a little more thought into any date makes it that much more special. Even just insisting that I not crochet during the movie made the evening feel more special and felt like we were doing something together instead of just sitting next to each other, yet being in our own worlds, which I think we tend to do a lot! So while I can't say that I loved the movie, I did still enjoy the evening together and appreciated the thought and effort that went into it!
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