Superman – Sara Mazariegos

In Superman (2025), Clark tells Lois he’s making her favorite dinner: breakfast. “You love breakfast!” he explains. “For breakfast,” she retorts. This launches them into a big argument about journalistic integrity and Superman’s moral dilemma of whether or not he should get involved in countries’ disputes. The “for breakfast” has stayed with me, though. What starts out as a run-of-the-mill argument turns into this big, philosophical question. I really love James Gunn’s writing.

They’re working on installing a few security cameras in my office, mainly to keep track of the mail handling. I think it’s more of a concern in our Miami office, because it’s much busier and bigger, but they’re trying to be uniform with it and have all of the offices the same. So a guy came to look at the places where we’ll put the cameras, and then we’re going to order them and he’ll install them. This process has taken a long time, but hopefully it will be useful eventually… I don’t foresee misplacing any mail items, but who does? I think it’ll mostly showcase how calm this office is by comparison, and how organized I am. 😇

Last weekend, we saw Weapons. We went into it not knowing much about it. I thought it might be metaphorical about school shootings, so I was prepared to cry. I really like the story structure of it. The perspectives change, like the screen says Justine and then we see her part of the story, then James or whatever. I thought that was cool. It all pieces together nicely and things gradually make more sense the more you see. I thought it was building up to something interesting and (like I said) tragic. But then it just got dumb. It became less unique in the last bit of it. There were still some good moments, but I get annoyed at certain types of movies. I don’t want to give it away, but if you’ve seen it you know what I mean. Hereditary is the same way. I really liked it until the end. This one could’ve done so much more. Also, there was a random moment that seemed like it was referencing school shootings, but then it never came back*.

So frustrating. I’m surprised how well-reviewed it is. I guess no one else is over it like I am.

We have some fun, casual Labor Day weekend plans. We’re going to see Honey Don’t! starring Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza. I saw the poster a few weeks ago and knew we needed to see it because I like both of them, and I like the 70s aesthetic. We’re also going to have dinner with my parents at Hell’s Kitchen, Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant. We’ve been there once before, and once in London. We like him. Especially his sticky toffee pudding. And then on Labor Day, we’re going to relax and enjoy the day off. I hope to finish reading at least one of the books I’m reading. (Not House of Leaves; that’s going to take me at least a year to finish.)

We started watching One Night in Idaho, about those poor college students who were murdered in their house. I don’t know very much about it yet, just that it’s sad and horrible. I didn’t know one of the victims was a triplet. His poor brother and sister… Sometimes it feels weird to watch things like this for fun, but y’know. It’s interesting and a way of remembering those lost. It’s also not as exploitative as some of those true crime shows can be.

On the writing front, I’m at 64K words and the pieces are all falling nicely into place. I’ve noticed I’m having an easier time pinpointing the places to edit, and the things I know have to change. Sometimes I just wish I could wave my hands and make paragraphs better, like when the kids decorate the tree in A Charlie Brown Christmas.

* Please don’t misunderstand me. A movie about school shootings would be very sad and I’m not sure if I’d be comfortable going into one knowing that’s what it is. I just thought it would be alluding to that sort of subject matter, and be a drama, not a horror movie. This is why reading about movies first is sometimes better.

Like millions of other people, we saw Superman last weekend. I am a fan of James Gunn, and I really liked what he did with the characters and the world. Leave it to him to pick a few random side characters as the comic relief/help for the main hero. Nicholas Hoult was also really good as Lex Luther. I’ve liked him in everything I’ve seen him in, including when he was elevenish in About A Boy. And let’s not forget about Krypto. He reminded me of our dog Scout. I was tearful when he first appeared, but thankfully I didn’t cry every time I saw him. That would’ve been very dehydrating.

A big aspect of my job is mail handling. There are a lot of folks who don’t seem to understand how mail works. For instance, you have to let people know your address if you want to get mail delivered to it. It doesn’t just magically arrive because you want it to. I’ve gotten pretty good at forwarding people’s mail to them, but the patient FedEx worker alerted me yesterday morning that they don’t deliver to P.O. Boxes. I’d packed up some mail nicely to send to one, but I had to carefully repackage it to go via USPS. Thankfully I didn’t lose much time on it. I’m trying to do better at not checking the tracking or requests when I’m not at work. I become too invested in each delivery and want to make sure they work out well, but I need to stop caring so much. It’s not my problem once things are sent!

Luis and I went out for a fancy dinner on the 14th, at a place really close to my office. Unfortunately, it decided to storm and he forgot his umbrella, but it was okay. It calmed down right as he arrived at my building to cross the street. Next month, we’re planning to go to another place near my office. One of the perks of my job is that there are fun places around. There’s also a big park full of squirrels, pigeons, and ducks.

I feel like a broken record about this, but writing 500 words each day works so well for me. It allows me to immerse myself in the scenes and think about them when I’m not pressured to write things down. For instance, I wrote 500 words today and now I’m planning what comes next before writing it. In the past, I used to crank out 2,000 words a day and I think a lot of it was with the “gotta fill this quota” mentality I no longer have. I’m enjoying my story more as I work on it, and I think it will help when it comes time to edit things, too because my writing sessions are more focused on the plot and moving things forward. I used to digress and meander in my writing a lot more, largely because I thought, “That’ll get more words!”

This really has become an adventure in learning how to write better. I know a lot of people have this issue with their writing. They get burnt out thinking they’ve got to write as much as Stephen King each day. They think too much in terms of the word count needed to make a novel and not the words needed to make a good one.

I’m going to write 500 more words later, and I know more or less what they will be.

Tag: Superman

Tried to see your point of view, hope your dreams will all come true.

Wish I could fly like Superman.