Dinner and a Movie

Being self-employed means I don't really have a normal schedule. For me, there's no week or weekend: I'm just as likely to be working on Sunday as I am on Tuesday. More often than not, I stay awake until four or five in the morning and sleep till nine or ten. No television or newspaper intrudes upon my sanctuary and I eat whenever I'm hungry, whether that means two meals a day or four. Coffee and the paper followed by morning commute, workworkwork, coffee break, workworkwork, lunch, workworkwork, evening commute, dinner, TV, bed is for me as exotic a schedule as whatever Tibetan monks do in their gompas.

Not that I'm complaining! I love my existence, but one of the negatives is that I rarely experience that early evening feeling of relief that I've gotten to the end of my chores and can relax. Today, though, I was unusually productive early on, so I decided to have supper at a relatively normal hour and watch a DVD my cousin had loaned me. Dinner and a movie: how novel!

Chickenless nuggets from Trader Joe's, sautéed asparagus, and a potato with my beloved pani puri masala takes about four and a half minutes to prepare. Erin Brockovich, a movie I had somehow missed since it came out in 2000, is a feel-good movie with great acting--not hard to watch. So it was a relaxing evening. Trouble was, once the movie was over and my plate was clean, I still had about six hours in me. So whereas my 9-to-5 counterpart might have washed up and gone to bed, for me it was back to the desk for almost another full day's work.