My final day of 2017 was a nice one. I woke up early enough to catch the moment of nature at the end of CBS Sunday Morning and then Rudi and I headed over to the farmers market to buy a few odds and ends, as well as breakfast pastries. We spent the early afternoon doing a little tidying and a little end-of-year donating before heading out for our traditional New Year’s Eve event — a movie marathon.
Sarah has joined us for most of the recent years we’ve done this, and Joanne had the night free and was able to make the 2017 group a foursome.
We started the afternoon with Coco, Pixar’s most recent film, about a boy who, while trying to make his musical dreams come true accidentally slips across the barrier on the Day of the Dead. He must get a blessing from a deceased family member before the night is over in order to get back to the living, but hijinks ensue. This was a delightful movie, and, if it’s still playing in your area and you haven’t yet seen it, all four of us recommend it.
While wiping away tears at the movie’s end, I managed to dislodge a contact lens, which decided to fold up and take a nap under my eyelid, from where it refused to come out for an hour. It did, however, eventually do so, and I was able to join everyone else at Lady Bird, about a third of the way into the film. Sarah had me worried when she said that it was supposed to make anyone who’d grown up Catholic and with a mother (I fit into half of those categories) cry, but rest assured that no one dies in this film. However, if you had a cantankerous relationship with a parent as a teen (or, I suppose, with a teen as a parent), you’ll find a lot in this movie that resonates. I look forward to it coming out on video, when I’ll be happy to watch it again in order to catch the early scenes I missed.
After this we took a supper break for drinks, pizza, garlic bread, and, because it looked so good when the table next to ours ordered it, a molten chocolate skillet cake with dulce de leche to split.
Our final movie of the night was The Last Jedi, which was a repeat viewing for three-quarters of us. I still didn’t love it, but I maybe liked it well enough this time around. We got to see the movie in recliners, which was a slightly weird experience. I’d say this was the film we most disagreed about, but that seems consistent with general public opinion.
We had an punctual end to 2017, with the show letting out about 10 minutes before midnight, giving us the opportunity to get down to street level before taking part in the final countdown to 2018.
Rudi and I had a little wait before our train, but it was quiet and uncrowded when it arrived, a perk of an early end to the festivities.
We toasted the new year’s arrival in the central and mountain time zones with tea and homemade gingerbread cookies before Rudi turned in for the night. 2017 has just said farewell to the Pacific Time Zone, too, so I think it might be time for me to do the same. There’s a parade to watch in the morning, after all, and new books and knitting projects to start and Christmas cards to finish (oops) and greetings to send around the world and maybe another movie to watch. I’d hate to be too tired to enjoy it all!
Happy 2018, everyone! May it be a better, more thoughtful year than last year, and may we be better and more thoughtful in it, too.