Closing windows

Last weekend we had some old college friends over for brunch, including one buddy who travels internationally for work more weeks than not, mostly to the UK. So because Captain America: The Winter Soldier opened overseas before it opened in the US, and he happened to be in London when it opened, he had already seen it by the time we got together. He gave it a non-specific yet strongly positive review (my favorite kind) and mostly just wanted to talk about the logistical details of actually taking in the showing. He went to a midnight screening, the movie is over two hours long, and so he got back to his hotel well after 2 a.m. and had to catch a 5-something a.m. flight out of Heathrow mere hours later. My buddy related all of this info with a certain self-deprecating, chuckling ruefulness, and I was quick to reassure him that I understood where he was coming from, on both sides. It does seem like a fairly unwise thing to do, staying up until the wee hours for the sake of a popcorn flick, not only when you have an early start to the following day but when you are in your late thirties as opposed to some dumb kid. But on the other hand, as I elaborated to my friend, it is still possible, however barely, for us to get away with that kind of foolishness at this point, even though we can all see that the window for such hijinks is rapidly closing. So we might as well keep indulging, until such time as we're forced to stop.

Of course I had an ulterior motive in lending a justifying hand there, because I was planning on going to a late show on opening night for the movie in the States myself. Which was last night, and I did indeed stay up way too late, compounded by the fact that I consumed a large caffeinated soda to make sure I would be alert enough for the drive home and then, once I got home, was still a little too wired to immediately fall asleep. I'm not bringing this up to elicit any kind of sympathy for self-inflicted suffering; I deserve my dumb-uppance most especially because my patient and indulgent better half wound up impacted by my late night as well (she woke up in the middle of the night and instead of rolling over and immediately going back to sleep, she came almost fully alert due to the physical strangeness of my absence in the bed, and the had to contend with her own difficulties getting back to a restful state; if I'm fishing for kind thoughts, they should all be directed at my wife). But I did want to provide a modicum of context for the short and nearly content-free post today. The movie was really good, worth taking drastic measures for to see spoiler-free, and I will post a proper review of it at some point, but today I'm a bit too groggy.