The weekend was pretty mellow, but that was in large part because Mer had done something to her hip that caused her a fair amount of pain if she moved too much. Since it was “her” Saturday, she decided a homebody day was in order. It was quite an ambitious homebody day, though – she wanted to watch all four hours of Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, which is the only full-text version of the play available on film. It is not for the faint of heart!

I enjoyed it; the film-making was amazing, with a literal cast of thousands. There were famous actors everywhere, even in bit roles: Judy Dench appeared in a scene with no lines, Billy Crystal was a gravedigger, Robin Williams was a minor courtier, Charlton Heston was an actor in the players’ troupe, and so on. It was also good to see the scenes that no one ever does – it gave the play a fresh feel for me. Kenneth Branagh was excellent as Hamlet. The ending had some “oh, come on” kinds of moments, but the film overall is quite excellent.

On Monday, we headed down to Aunt Mary’s. It was Valentine’s Day, so we did what any loving couple would do – we played Wii Family Feud and Jeopardy with Aunt Mary. We also watched round one of the real show Jeopardy where the two best players of Jeopardy played against IBM’s “Watson” computer. That was interesting to see. “Watson” won the first day handily (and he actually won the tournament with over three times as much money as Ken Jennings, the second-place finisher). It was good to see Aunt Mary – it had been a few weeks. Sadly, we again had to avoid having supper out on the town. It made the evening slightly less festive, but Aunt Mary was a game soul and supported us by eating before we got there. We headed home around 8:30.