In college, I started measuring tasks based on the number of movies I can watch while doing them. When I worked as a lab instructor I would watch the Godfather movies while grading papers. The worst weeks would get me most of the way through Godfather Part III.

Wedding tasks are pretty tedious, but most are ideal for simultaneous movie viewing. Plus, now that we have a DVR I have no shortage of cheesy movies awaiting perusal. Here are a few wedding tasks and their movie lengths:

Task: Sorting 2000 marbles into bags of 80 for use with the centerpieces
Time: 90% of the Original Planet of the Apes
Pain: Minimal, PotA is a classic and Charlton Heston's scenery chewing acting style is always amusing. My fingers were dusty after sorting all of those marbles.

Task: Cutting 250 8" paper circles out of green paper for use as table decorations
Time: Part 1 & 2 of Empire Falls
Pain: Moderate, four hours of townsfolk with so much earnestness that my retinas almost detached from eye rolling. Also, four hours! I can't take bitter town life for that long. On the physical pain front, my arm was a little sore from using the circle cutter.

Task: Tagging and Assembling 20 children's treat bags
Time: Just my Luck
Pain: Moderate to Severe, I should really learn to avoid all Lindsay Lohan movies outside of Mean Girls. This one was especially insipid and saccharine. The physical pain was minimal, just a sore back from sorting toys for hours on the floor. Luckily, there were brightly colored doodads to distract me.

My precious bags of marbles:


Our kid's bags cost us less than a dollar each. Most of the toys came from post-easter sales and the Ikea clearance bin. Here is a bucket full of them:

Labels: marbles, wedding

posted by Alison 7/09/2007 03:51:00 PM : (0) comments : splink

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