A simple night – End of the Day for May 21, 2014

We’ve never been a couple to spend the night dancing or drinking out on the town. That is not to say we don’t have enjoyable evenings, though. Our typical good evening includes drinks and dinner with friends and a good couple of hours of conversation. If a friend dinner isn’t on the agenda, it is time for comfy clothes and one of our favorite, homemade dinners and maybe a glass of wine. We’ll put on one of our favorite, old TV shows — we are currently working our way through the late-1970’s show, All Creatures Great and Small. We first watched this on PBS in the late 80’s and early 90’s. We are watching the show from the very beginning via Netflix and remember all our favorite episodes. I is just as good — and sometimes even better — than we remember.

It is very interesting to watch from Episode 1 forward over a relatively short period of time. You start to see trends and story arcs that weren’t as notable when you are watching 1 episode a week of so. We are doing the same with Cheers which was one of our favorite shows when we were in college. There are some episodes, though, the seem a bit rough or outdated on this new viewing. We never seemed to notice that at the time. With Cheers, we also get to see how the characters go row and change over the seasons. The character of Cliff was originally just another member of the bar crowd, with perhaps a few more lines, but episode after episode, John Ratzenberger slowly gets more and more screen time as the relationship between Norm and Cliff deepens. Again, this is something that becomes much clearer when viewing episodes in quick succession.

After our TV viewing for the night it is typically and early evening for Rosanne, as she is the morning person in our marriage. I will sometimes stay up until 1am, but typically no later. Rosanne and Joe will be up and off to work and school by 630′, while my work day typically starts around 8 am.

I do find my few hours of alone time each evening quite enjoyable. Sometimes I use it to catch up on a few final work tasks. On other evenings, I simply catch up on my own YouTube viewing or RSS feed reading. Then, of course, there is the writing of this piece before I head to bed. This is a new part of my evening routine and I am actually quite surprised that I have only missed 2 nights so far since January 1. That means over 100 End of the Day essays so far.

Once I am ready to retire, I tend to any final kitchen cleanup, set my coffee pot to start automatically in the morning, check the doors and windows and use my iPhone go light the way to bed.

Our evenings can be quite simple sometimes, but over the years it seems we have honed them to fine perfection. While we may occasionally “step out of an evening”, I think we have come to relish our quiet nights at home as a chance to reset and recharge so we can do our best in the coming day.

Previously on End of the Day: