Nice, Naughty

Occasionally my mom will come to visit for the weekend and say, "You and Paul should go out and see a movie tonight." We like to do that and always appreciate the invitation. Unfortunately, her visits don't always correspond with movies we want to see. But this Christmas there are four movies in the theater that we (that's Paul and I collectively) want to see.

Thanks to my mother for putting the girls to bed at her house Sunday night and wonderful friend Jessica bathing the girls and putting them to bed at home tonight, Paul and I have actually been to two movies this week!

Tonight we saw Up in the Air at the Moolah Theater & Lounge in the city. The Moolah bills itself as "the civilized alternative to the multiplex," and it certainly is that (see below). Paul and I snuggled on a leather loveseat with our drinks on a little table nearby as we watched all the St. Louis landmarks in the film.

It was a lovely evening and the movie was very good, poignant, touching, not what I expected. After dinner we stopped by Maggiano's for dinner. It's ridiculous that sharing one half of an appetizer salad was enough to fill me up. I brought my dinner home in a bag for tomorrow, so I'm not complaining!

Sunday night we went to see Sherlock Holmes at a theater near my parents' house. From the previews, I feared they might have completely ditched the original Holmes and Watson in favor of classic action heros, but found a nice balance of new and original character traits instead.

I went to the restroom in the middle of the movie and found it quite nice. The restroom, I mean. The whole theater was lovely, actually, and pretty new. ("Lovely" here is compared to the old multiplex in my parents' town, not compared to the actual loveliness of, say, The Moolah.) But the restroom in particular was bright, clean, well-stocked, and nice-smelling.

I made a return visit to the facility at the conclusion of the film. This time the floor was scattered with refuse, a giant trash can was locked inside the handicapped stall, a large yellow wet floor - caution! cone was upended into a toilet, and the contents of the paper seat liner dispensers were shoved into other toilet bowls.

Who does this? And why?! I felt for the poor kids making minimum wage to clean up the mess.

But not enough to put my date night on hold and help them out.