Happy Stef and Abby Go To The Movies Day

Do you ever invent your own holiday? This is what one of my best friends Abby and I did.

Stef and Abby Go To The Movies Day was founded on December 30, 2016. It has turned into a nice interim holiday for the two of us between Christmas and New Year's as well an opportunity for me to gift Abby a birthday present my own way.

This holiday actually somewhat has a negative origin story. On December 29, 2016, which is actually Abby's birthday, I was fired from my job at Mighty Quinn's and was heartbroken. I thought that I was improving but it turned out that I wasn't. I didn't know where to go from there because I had struggled so much to find a job after college and now I was back at square one. 

I told Abby about this, so she suggested that we go to the movies to cheer me up, so we ended up seeing La La Land. This would begin a tradition. 

The following year, I picked the next film as a surprise. From this point on I kinda treated SAAGTTMD as my birthday gift to Abby. We saw Downsizing, and it was horrible and I felt bad that this was what I chose for my birthday gift to her LOL. But our experience was an interesting one. We went to a local theater and for the particular showing room for Downsizing, the heater was broken, so the guy warned us to give us the option to even buy our tickets. Mind you, this was late December in winter and the weather was normal back then. Because it was snowing outside, we were already bundled up and felt prepared, so we agreed to purchase the tickets. Well...we were freezing in the theater...and I think it was us and like one other person in the entire room. The other person may have left, but we stuck it out. I couldn't wait for the movie to end so that we could end our discomfort on every level.

Do you remember Stardust? It was a movie reviewing video app that has been shut down now since this past summer. Downsizing was actually my first attempt at this app. The catch was that you only had 30 seconds to record. This was us after the film lol:

I don't remember how we celebrated in 2018, (we may not have because Abby was out of town during that time). In 2019 we actually saw two movies, Frozen 2 and...gulp... Cats.

Initially Abby and I had just planned to see Frozen 2 and we debated on the Cats showing. We decided to see it because when else would we be able to? We attended a 10 PM showing, which is a perfect delirious twilight time to watch a movie like that LOL.

I didn't hate the movie, but then again I'm not a diehard fan of the Broadway version, nor do I know much about it, so I wouldn't really know how faithful an adaptation it was. But it was still a fun experience and I'm glad we did it.

In 2020, we unfortunately didn't celebrate SAAGTTMD due to the circumstances, but it was okay because we saw two movies the year prior, so it made up for it. 

This year we decided not to celebrate either because of the surges, even though we were considering to attempt it this time. But now we are instead opting for video chatting this year.

I'm disappointed though. I'm actually kind of a loner homebody, so social distancing and quarantining and stuff doesn't affect me that much, but I am still severely lacking a social life. I also have some Paper Cup Reviews ideas that I can't put into action just yet. And none of this seems to be getting resolved anytime soon.

So then I decided that if I can't celebrate Stef and Abby Go To The Movies Day by going to the movies for the foreseeable future, I can still write about it to honor it and celebrate that way. 

We'll see if we will be able to celebrate  Stef and Abby Go To The Movies Day next year.