My morning wasn't particularly exciting, but Stockton and I met up this afternoon so he could drive me to the DMV. I had some paperwork to fill out, but not as much as I was expecting in order to receive a new driver's license valid for the next several years. I have a temporary paper one valid for the next six months until my new license arrives by mail. Funny. The next time I renew my license, I could be married and putting a different last name on it
Stockton and I picked up food to-go at Morty's Cafe, at the base of my apartment. At first, we'd parted ways and I'd gone inside the Bull's Head Bar and Grill instead, because I'd been told they offered pizza there. Only, I'd never tried to eat there before. The man at the front desk was very confused and told me they hadn't sold pizza there for four years. Oh. I could have sworn that two years ago when I swung by with Mom on tour, they did. I guess I just remembered wrong.
I bought a grilled cheese at Morty's instead for just under $4, which wasn't too bad. Only, when I did open the sandwich, I was a little disappointed because it was pretty burnt. Oh well. It still tasted good. I didn't know how many calories this particular sandwich was, so when I logged it in my meal-tracking app, I searched "grilled cheese" and selected a pre-filled option. A warning message popped up telling me that my sandwich was "high in saturated fat." Yeah, I figured. Definitely not a food you'd want to indulge in regularly. I don't think I'll buy it at Morty's again. The grilled cheese they make at the Marketplace is way better, and so are the fries.
Stockton and I lounged in my room on beanbags and watched the 1993 version of Much Ado About Nothing from my laptop for our Arts Symposium assignment. I wasn't too impressed. I didn't like the play itself to begin with, but the film itself was just very... silly. As in, "Benedick sits on an anachronistic beach chair in the garden and it collapses underneath him" and "Benedick jumps in the fountain and kicks the water around during a dramatic montage" silly. I told Stockton that it definitely felt like the humor was aimed for an audience 20 years ago, but in modern times, it felt a bit... "cringe-y." The semi-slapstick aspects just didn't match up to the super dramatic and poetic dialogue. Although, it was quite interesting to see a black actor play Don Pedro, since Don Pedro's entire plotline revolves around pretending to be Claudio (a white man without a beard). No attention was ever called to this fact. He just... apparently did a stellar job of being Claudio and the other characters just totally went with it.
Stockton and I also laughed a lot about one of the play's supposed main characters, Hero, who didn't have any speaking lines until 40 minutes into the film, despite all the times she was onscreen. She mostly stood around and smiled awkwardly. Seriously, Stockton leaned over to me in one scene when Hero whispered in another character's ear and said, "When you have to give Hero lines." Many jokes were made about Beatrice's follow-up dialogue, where she announces to everyone what she somehow overheard Hero say despite being several feet away from her. If she could hear her cousin's dialogue, it seems like everyone else should have been able to. It was a big deal when we heard her giggle. Half an hour in, Hero even had her first kiss before she had any lines, which Stockton described as, "Hero wins by doing absolutely nothing," in reference to the famous "Luigi wins various Mario Party minigames by doing absolutely nothing" videos on YouTube. Many laughs were had all around.
I guess I'm just not very good at appreciating Shakespeare's oh-so-wonderful masterpieces. Didn't help that I by default dislike stories that revolve around two characters who claim they aren't in love and don't want to get married, but who finally decide that despite the fact they fight constantly, they're actually totally in love and are totally capable of having a healthy relationship without any further character development on either side. As someone who just wants to be taken seriously if I tell someone I'm not attracted to someone they think I'm attracted to... it's always an annoying story plot to swallow. Is it too much to ask to see a character who claims not to be attracted to someone actually NOT end up with that person by the end of the movie, for reasons BESIDES the fact that there's another romantic interest involved? Can I just see a character someday realizing that they aren't compatible with the other character everyone expects them to be with, and that's it? No love triangle? Just an understanding that you don't click with that other person, and that's okay? Seriously, that's an interesting relationship dynamic I want to see, and I don't think I ever have. Ever. Well, beyond my own writing, I mean...
After finishing our film, Stockton and I headed down to Lee's to buy some groceries. I bought a lot of canned soup. I was specifically studying the nutrition labels and trying to find soups with at least 5 grams of protein and 3 grams of fiber, which my online research about soup had told me was what passed for healthy canned soup, but most of the soups I picked up had only 1 or 2 grams of protein. Until I picked one up that had 8. Oh. Okay. Someone showed up to this party beefed up and ready to take their job seriously. Get with the program, other soups.
I dropped Stockton off at his dorm, then spent the rest of my day resting and reviewing notes for my Literary Analysis midterm tomorrow. I'm not worried about it, but it will be nice not to have it hanging over my to-do list anymore. I also gathered some clips of Cupid from "Fairly OddParents" and emailed them to Erica, since she'd asked for some good ones she could use in her project on different portrayals of Cupid. Hopefully she finds those useful.
