I somehow managed to fit in watching three movies this weekend and it started with a random pick off Netflix called Code 3, a Rainn Wilson tragi-comedy about ambulance drivers in Los Angeles. Also, it turned out to be a biting indictment of American-style health care, and a bit of an unexpected tear-jerker in the end.

Saturday morning got myself out of the house pretty early because the orchestra was doing our first spring concert. Don’t worry, you didn’t miss it. It was not a public concert. As part of our mandate as an organization we do a few concerts every year in seniors residences for the folks who live there. We packed a small hall in the facility and played an hours-worth of repertoire with only a couple small snafus—not that anyone would notice besides us—and put a lot of smiles on faces, which is a pretty slick way to start a Saturday… despite the long icy drive into downtown.

My migration away from caffeine tends to hit me pretty hard on quiet days like this when I’m not actively working on anything important. I made the mistake of putting on The Princess Bride (the second movie of the weekend, by the way) and I am one hundred percent certain I napped through half of it—but not a specific half, just fifteen minute chunks in fits and spurts. The dog didn’t move, either, cuddled up as she was next to me on the sofa. 

I woke up and took her for a walk because the day had warmed up considerably. It’s pretty much spring now, but that only means that the cold has restricted itself to the shoulders of the day—not a problem unless you a morning or evening person.

We had a quiet evening and the Kid wanted us to watch a comedy special that she was enjoying. I think she does that sometimes, just to watch us watch something that she likes so that she can gauge how aligned we are with her frame of reference. That’s just speculation tho—and overthinking it. It was pretty funny.

Sunday morning I met the usual crew and we started the uphill push into more serious training. Winter tends to be a maintenance phase for us with anyone rarely doing serious racing between November and April. Spring means better trail conditions, of course, but also the clock suddenly ticking on everyone’s summer and fall race schedule. I haven’t signed up for anything yet—tho I really should—but I do my best to keep up with everyone who has something in their docket. In other words, we did my literal longest run of 2026 on Sunday morning which wasn’t particularly long in the grand scheme of things, but was long enough be considered a change from the so-called long runs we’ve been doing since about October. No problem. And of course, a coffee (tea for me) meetup followed as usual.

Our third movie of the weekend was the one everyone is talking about this month. We got tix to Project Hail Mary which came out on Friday and engaged with the zeitgeist of the film-going universe for the afternoon. I had read the book for the second time almost a year back, one of the first I tackled on my new (at the time) e-reader. It’s a great story, and they did an excellent job of turning it into a classic film that I’m sure I will probably buy on video and watch a dozen more times. 

Going to the movies in the afternoon, tho, means that your evening feels a bit anti-climactic and so we had dinner and chilled on the sofa with the poor neglected dog (who did not get to come to the movie) and wondered what strange adventures awaited us in the week ahead.