Friday Night Fever

We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy
even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
-E.B. White

This is Friday. Soon it will be evening. What, oh what, do we have planned?
-Dinner will be rice and absolutely heavenly home-cooked chicken. There may be wine; recently we were married for the second time (it came with even less fuss than the first) and friends gave us a bottle of wine. We have yet to open it.
-We will perhaps watch fifteen minutes of a DVD while we eat. Our television is not connected to enable us to receive any channels and so we live exclusively on our collection of DVDs.
-A trip to the library to pick up four Akira Kurosawa films we had ordered. There is something unequivocally soothing about Kurosawa's work. They always make us feel better for watching them, and a little wiser too.
-There is an unexplored grocery store across the road from the library. We do not usually deviate but in recent weeks we have seen an alarming increase in the price of food. Our breakfast cereal went up by 50 cents overnight. As the price of dried fruits, milk and other goods seemed to be heading in the general direction of up we decided to try a new grocery and hope that the issue is confined to that one particular store. It will be quite interesting. We may find new items, or our favourites for better prices.
-We will scan a stack of papers, mostly ten year old bills and statements, and then shred them; thankfully, one more box will be emptied and we can waltz on its crushed remains.
-As we scan/shred, we will listen to some music. I had been playing some Christmas music in recent days but 'Mele Kalikimaka' just will not stop haunting me and has soaked into my brain like a weed to the point where, if I find myself singing it one more time, it may have to be deleted from the computer. So, no Christmas music tonight, then. I quite like Carla Bruni for an evening of tidying. Her music is comforting, bewitching and classy.
While reading on the Internet some reviews of her album, 'Quelqu'un m'a dit,' I once came across a remark that I still cling to: “she is like a European massage.”
-We may do a laundry. Last week passed happily enough without us needing to do one, so we have earned, I suppose, some 'credit points.' That is a joke between us, of course.
-I may reread part of 'Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.' Perhaps I will write a review of the book at some point. It made me so happy when I read it the first time over a year ago and even reading small portions is still such a delight. It is a Winter book, in a way, full of rain, lit candles, dry, erudite gentlemen, manners and secret passageways. I read it in Spring last year, however and if I am ever at a loss for a book to read I pick that up.

For a super Friday night, all it takes for us is a little bit of cleaning in our apartment, some music, and good food that we cooked ourselves and know exactly the cost of.
For a long time we asked each other, baffled, “what do couples do on a Friday night? Aren't we supposed to be going out and committing our souls to a video store, or lining up in a movie theater or something?” We stopped asking that rhetorical question a couple of years ago because those things just do not work for us. I am not fond of video stores myself because I find their selections awfully limited and the money they charge horrifies me when I remember it. The thing to do is find an effective, hopefully cheaper but happy way of spending a Friday. You could telephone somebody. You could dig up some books that need rereading or visit the library for some new ones. There is absolutely always something good to do.