The Pen Pal Club

When close friends are separated by profession, time and distance but not shared interests how do they keep in touch? In the digital age we are all connected and the world is a lot smaller thanks to social media and the power of the internet. But somewhere along the lines of technological discovery we lost the power of real social connection. In How I Met Your Mother Season 7 the characters discuss this dilemma in Ted's dating life of "mystery vs. history." Because it is easy to figure out everything about a person online from their profile, you no longer need to have that first conversation where you learn a person's likes and dislikes. But they also show in a funny yet disturbingly true clip that because everyone has their smartphones, conversation dwindles to the clacking of a person's nails on the phone's screen as we are torn between various other worlds and distractions outside of the present moment we are in. But that's just me ranting about things that bother me. I work with Shakespeare every day so obviously I'm a fan of antique or "classic" things.
Even though I no longer live with Beth and V, I still consider them my roommates. Because "friends" doesn't do our relationship justice and even though they are as close to me as my own family "former roommate" is the only inadequate title I can think of that coveys this sense of closeness. One of the things I love about our phone conversations is that we never have any problems talked for hours, and that was before time got in the way and months would pass making "catching up" take a lot longer. When we lived together, we could all cuddle on the couch with blankets and a movie marathon or we could sit each other's rooms and just talk about anything and everything. That was my favorite part about college. D8
So in an effort of enacting a New Year's Resolution of doing better at catching up, we decided to start our own movie and book club that spans the country and keeps our friendships strong. Thanks to the glory of Netflix and our Kindles, we can watch movies that have always been on our "must watch sometime in my lifetime" list and read books while having someone to discuss them with. Instead of indulging in our obsessions solo, we have made this into a social experiment. And I'm the dork that misses school and loved homework so the first assignment is to watch Planet of the Apes and read Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice. We gave ourselves ample time for the first round to dive into the homework just in case work and real life got into the way. We have a little over a week to watch the movie and a month to read the book.