— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ पचानवे —
Last night Laney and I went to see
Project Hail Mary, the first movie of the year I was super excited for—in fact, I had just finished reading the book in January.
It's opening weekend, and has been the case for years now, even though today is the published opening date, there were showtimes last night. There were only three showings at Pacific Place, however, and they weren't the greatest options; one was at 2:30 and that would have been way too early; the next was not until 6:00 and so that's what we went for, even though the movie is 2 hours and 36 minutes long which means it was around 9:00 by the time we actually got out of it. I did check to see if there were any better showtimes tonight to possibly choose from instead, but a) Laney often has other plans on Friday nights; and b) as of yesterday, the showtimes were all the same. Annoyingly, I just checked again while writing this and
now they have more showtimes today, including at 4:00, which we would have preferred had that been an option yesterday.
Oh well. I left work at 4:15 yesterday just so I would get home early enough to make chai and have dinner before needing to leave again to go meet Laney on Broadway. When I got in the house, Shobhit was on a video chat with Sachin, who was home in Nashville. They continued chatting neary the entire time I was home; I barely had the time to make the chai, dish up the dinner (a very tasty tofu and vegetable soup Shobhit made), eat the dinner, and drink the chai. I had gotten home at about 4:40, and then needed to leave to meet Laney at 5:20 so I could meet up with her at 5:30. So I had about forty minutes at home; walked roughly half an hour from home to Laney and then the rest of the way downtown; was at the theater for roughly three hours; then we took the bus back together.
Under normal circumstances I might have waited until this morning to write the review, but I sat down just minutes after getting back home to write it last night. I had too much I wanted to say about it and too many other things going on at work this morning to accommodate that. Thus, I posted the link to my review to my socials at about 10:30.
Gabriel sent me a screenshot of my blog late last night, which I did not see this morning: I had said in the review that it was the best movie of 2025 so far. Not 2026. Gabriel's way of communicating this was not just the screenshot, but with Ha ha! and an arrow drawn over the top of it. Nice. So I went to my socials, and I had even posted it everywhere with "Easily the best movie of 2025 so far." Goddammit. Facebook and Letterboxd (and Squarespace, which hosts this blog) make it easy to edit and fix that mistake; Threads and Bluesky only offer editing capability for something like 15 minutes after posting, and I did not see this until this morning. So on both Threads and Bluesky I had to reply to my own post with,
Okay I meant 2026, followed by the forehead-slap emoji.
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ पचानवे —
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ पचानवे —
Here's the other news, farly big news that came along at fairly short notice: Ivan is visiting this weekend. He only texted me on Wednesday if he could stay with us for a couple of days so he could go investigate this possible job opportunity in Edmonds; when I asked when he said, "What about this weekend?" I asked him to let me know when he decides what day he'd come, and he said late on Wednesday evening that it would be Saturday.
Ivan likes to be annoyingly cagey about the weirest shit, and it felt a bit like he was being that way about this plan, which is a little inconvenient when we really know the timing of things. I messaged him at 5:30 yesterday morning to ask if he had indeed booked the trip; he did not bother to reply with confirmation until 8:00 last night. That was during the movie, so it was around 9:00 last night that I even saw that, and replied back to ask what time and how long; as of now I still only know "Saturday afternoon" and "until Tuesday" (to be fairk he did ask if until Tuesday is okay, and of course that's fine).
I did tell him Alexia and Shobhit and I were doing our day trip to Whidbey Island on Sunday, and told him he'd probably be welcome to join us, but Alexia plans to pick us up at 7 a.m. Ivan's reply was "That sounds lovely," which honestly with him could mean anything. Still, I texted Alexia this morning to throw out there that he seems interested in joining, though he does have a history of stringing me along and then bailing at the last minute. Alexia was very happy for the opportunity to see him as I expected, and even said she hoped we could all get together for dinner while he's here, if he doesn't come along on Sunday. When I mentioned this to Ivan, he still replied "Sunday," followed by "I'm so thrilled!" which makes it sound like he genuinely wants to come along. But frankly, with his history of mixed signals—which he openly delights in—I won't be surprised at all if he still decides not to go on Sunday, or if he actually does come along. I do find myself wondering whether he'll actually be ready to go as early as 7 a.m., but I guess we'll see.
Either way, and in spite of all I said above, I'm actually thrilled to get to see him again myself.
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ पचानवे —
[posted 12:32pm]
