Vacation, All I Ever Wanted
For the record, I feel that the untimely passing of John Travolta's son is quite sad indeed. The idea of losing a child (or any loved one) is horrible, and I absolutely feel sympathy for Travolta and his family. But as with all celebrity-related deaths, it's not a personal tragedy for me or someone close to me. I don't mean to sound cold about it, but it always strikes me as odd when random people become affected by something like this. It was like with Heath Ledger...was it sad that he died? Sure. As a fellow human being, it's worth acknowledging that someone has passed away. Does it affect me personally? No. Do I feel the need to talk about it with my friends and say, "Isn't that sad?" No. I guess I just find it strange when people make it a conversation topic beyond, "Did you hear about this?" But yes, this recent death is unfortunate, and if I personally knew the people involved, I would certainly extend my sympathies. Also, Heath Ledger over-medicated himself while this kid fell down in the bathtub...one of them is getting a little more sympathy under their pillow....
Forgive my slightly cranky tone...I'm filled with dread. Today was the last day of my vacation...tomorrow, I go back to the office, and Tuesday morning, I fly to Las Vegas for CES. It's hard to say whether my dread is justified or not, as it's been a while since I've really thought about or been immersed in work. Surprisingly enough, I got less than ten work e-mails throughout the whole break, and I've made a concerted effort to put it all out of my mind. That was nice for the eleven and a half days I was off, but now that I'm about to dive headfirst into the deep end again, I can't quite be sure if I should be anxious or not. Did I really get everything settled before the break? Is all of the content actually ready and in hand? Am I forgetting something? Are all of the potential issues addressed?
It's strange: I really haven't planned much of anything beyond CES this week. Yes, I have my trip in March, but in terms of immediate plans (say, for Martin Luther King weekend), I haven't even considered anything because CES is such an immense stone wall. All I've been able to see in the distance is that wall and I'm going to be spending the next week scaling it and hopefully not falling to certain doom. I'm currently dreading this event...even if, knock on wood, all of the content and planning is set, there's still the fact that I'm scheduled to run our booth for the entirety of the convention, all day, Wednesday through Sunday. I know I've complained about this before, but now that it's here...ugh. I'm just mentally bracing myself.
And then there's just the fact that I have to go back to work tomorrow...it's the other piece of bread in my dread sandwich (with the filling being a mealy sort of canned ham loaf). It's weird to think that, even after having the most consecutive time off since I started working here in Los Angeles, I'm still hungry for more. Usually, my solitary weekends bore the hell out of me, but somehow I made it through eleven and a half days of solitude and want more. It was basically hibernation: I didn't see a single friend or co-worker the entire time. I'm not sure if that's something I really want to point out, but that's the way it was.
On the other hand, I did see a lot of movies, both at home and in theaters. The last movie I saw in theaters was Seven Pounds...the movie has a shockingly low rating at Rotten Tomatoes (somewhere in the 20% range), which is sort of undeserved. It's not great and it does toe the line of being manipulative to a fault, but it's still a pretty decent story. Still, without ruining anything, I will say that the event that starts Will Smith's character down his path toward redemption, while awful, wasn't quite what I was expecting. I guess I thought his character had been a truly bad person who, spurred on by this life-changing event, decided to sacrifice himself. But really, his character before the life-changing event wasn't a bad guy at all...he was just kind of busy and made a bad decision. It kind of makes his extreme sacrifice a little too self-critical, in a way.... Anyway, the movie is fine and apparently makes all girls cry (at least, all of them in the office cried at it, even though they acknowledged that the movie wasn't spectacular), so use that knowledge as you will. Will Smith and Rosario Dawson do give great performances, as well. I'd put this on my list of movies I saw in 2008 that I'd recommend.
Anyway, I'm getting tired and I want to get a good night's sleep before the week starts. For all of you who also have to go back to work tomorrow after your respective holiday breaks, good luck...I suspect tomorrow will be a sad day for a great many people.
