There Will Be Atonement for Juno

I think it might be safe to say — knock on wood — that the rut is over, or at the very least abating. I realized this afternoon that the Netflix sitting atop my entertainment center have gone untouched for over a week. Where before I would go through one, maybe two DVDs of television shows a night, I now haven’t touched Alias Season 1: Disc 3, Buffy Season 1: Disc 2 or Grey’s Anatomy Season 2: Disc 6 in maybe a week and a half. It’s like that part of me suddenly turned off.

Last weekend I attempted to go out Friday night, and on Saturday I succeeded in catching dinner and a movie. I’m actually venturing outside my house.

This weekend, at the cool theater that I like, there are three movies that I want to watch playing one right after the other, with a two-hour or so break between the second and third one. They are all three Best Picture Academy Award nominees this year: Atonement, Juno and There Will Be Blood. I saw No Country For Old Men last weekend, and when I catch Michael Clayton when it comes out on DVD February 19, I’ll have seen all five contenders. I’m a dork like that.

That I am looking forward to being out in the world, even if it means being inside a dark movie theater for several hours, is a good sign that I’m moving onward and upward. I’ll never grow tired of lying around in my pajamas and watching DVDs in bed (or lying around in my pajamas and reading the new John Grisham), but perhaps it’s not all there is to do.