This is the first week of the new year where I’ll be flying solo.

It happens a few times over the course of the year - Kathy travels for a work conference for a few days.

This trip is one of the longer ones - she left this morning and is gone until Thursday.

I did take advantage of her being here this past week, as you’ll read about below…but for now, let’s look at the week ahead.

This Week’s To-Do

With Kathy away that means I have all of the Pick-Ups and Drop-Offs. School is usually my domain anyway, but that means I have extra back-and-forths for dance. There might have been one time in the fall this happened, but it hasn’t happened a lot this year that I’ve had to do that. It means I have to stay awake past 9pm, which is not the norm for me.

This Week’s May-Do

I’d like to start Ramping Up The Running just a little bit this month. With Kathy away I’m not sure this is exactly the time to do it, but maybe this weekend.
Maybe this should be the week I stop saying I have something I think I might submit and Just Submit It.
February brings with it the new Captain America movie. So I’m thinking about Re-Watching The Falcon and the Winter Soldier before the movie comes out just to refresh my memory on where things stand. I’ve always felt Marvel does a pretty good job of rewarding you for watching everything but not punishing you if you don’t. But I’d still like to have the events leading up to this point fresher in my mind. I think it was only 6-to-8 episodes.
This is the week the New York Times publishes the names of the winners of the Super Mega Crossword Contest. I don’t have my hopes up but maybe I’ll get an e-mail in the next couple of days telling me I’m one of the winners. (Don't hold your breath, friends.)

I don’t know where to put this fact, but since I wrote about it just this past week I’ll put it in between the two lists:

Update on a Recent Post

I wrote about watching ‘Glass Onion’ with my daughter, and in that post I mentioned there’s supposed to be a third ‘Knives Out’ movie. Turns out, I got an e-mail update from Netflix and it had its new releases on there. Among the movies listed as coming out in 2025 - besides ‘Happy Gilmore 2’, which is also exciting - is the third ‘Knives Out’ movie. How about that.

And, back to normal programming, let’s take a look back at how I did with last week’s to-dos - you can click here for more details:

Last Week’s To-Do

I think I’m doing OK with staying on top of these posts. I think I’m still about a week ahead. Some weeks will probably be more, some less.
My nephew and I did fine, with an assist from one of my daughters. We watched one episode of the new Spider-Man show. He’ll be a Spider-Man fan yet.
I watched an almost two-hour chunk of the SNL show Monday night, which was already pushing how late I should be staying up. And then I finished the rest of it folding laundry the next day. I think you can expect a ‘50 years of SNL’ reflection later this month after the other special comes out.

Last Week’s May-Do

I made myself a deal - if I could get a chunk of this week’s work done early on Monday, I’d take in a mid-day movie matinee. I got a lot done Monday morning, so I caught the 12:45 showing of ‘A Complete Unknown,’ as you probably already know. It did result in Kathy needing to do middle school pick-up, and she didn’t mind. It only occurred to me afterwards it was a good thing I did this last week and not this week, considering she’ll be away and it won’t be an option.