railed

— छह हज़ार उनसठ — Not much to report on today. Shobhit picked me up after work so we could go straight down to Costco and get some Omeprazole (heartburn medicine) that's one sale; we went home and heated leftovers for dinner. Shobhit got all into his MSNOW shows even though his only option is to listen to the audio versions online. I went into the bedroom and thought: I want to watch a movie. Okay, first I attempted to start the Hulu show Love Story about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. I got bored within five minutes and turned it off. I gravitated toward the 2014 Christopher Nolan film Interstellar instead, which I saw twice in theaters, then watched again on DVD in 2020. I did a bit of research to figure all this out and properly log all the times I've watched it on Letterboxd. I was fascinated to realize that when I last watched it, in 2020, it was six years since its release; it's now six years since then. I only got about a third of the way through it though. Shobhit came into the room with his laptop, looking up stuff about Amsterdam, and that wound up taking my attention for basically the rest of the evening. — छह हज़ार उनसठ — — छह हज़ार उनसठ — Shobhit has been trying to find a way that any kind of public transit pass might be worth buying, but I really don't think it's going to work out. There are some pass options, but the only ones that cover all transit agencies is both expensive and difficult to obtain if you do not have two different requirements, both a sort of ID you have to get and a European bank account. The IAmsterdam City Card we already ordered, which we will use the first three days in Amsterdam, will work on all local, city transit (not including the train from the airport, which is part of NS Rail, the national rail network), will be good enough. Everything else we'll have to pay for as we go along when we get on trams or trains or whatever. This did start from me looking up transit maps. I found this fantastic web page, part of the GVB website (Gemeente Vervoerbedrijf Amsterdam, or "Amsterdam Municipal Transport Company"), which provided separate context that clarified things for me in a way I had not yet managed: I'm finally starting to get it! The Amsterdam Rail Network for NS Rail, the national rail network, is what the train from the airport runs on, and it's why a ticket on that train does not count toward either the Metro or Tram trains, which are separate networks—those, indeed, are both part of GVB. Their Metro, which is essentially their subway system (they run both above and below ground), has five lines; their Trams, which runs exclusively above ground, consists of 15 lines. They also have a ferry system that's part of GVB, with a cluster of seven routs across the IJ waterway at the city center, and another cluster of three routes across the North Sea Canal, about 12 miles northwest of the city center. The GVB passenger ferries are free. That's not even to mention the couple of dozen GVB bus routes, which we will probably do our best to avoid, what with all the rail options. I'm just glad to finally have all this straight in my head; all these different transit agencies are easy to get confused by when first learning about them. And I haven't even gotten to the distinction between NS Rail, the national rail system in The Netherlands, and the Eurostar, which is the European rail system and what we will ride (and have already booked) from Amsterdam to Brussels and back. NS Rail even has two different types of trains, one called "Intercity" and one called "Sprinter," the latter counterintuitively being the one that has more stops between cities. The Intercity trains are longer distance, express routes between cities. See? I'm getting it! Good thing I managed this three weeks before we actually head over there. — छह हज़ार उनसठ — [posted 12:33pm]

project hail walky

— छह हज़ार अट्ठावन — There were two major movie releases over the past two weeks, just before and during the 4th of July holiday weekend: Supergirl and Minions vs. Monsters. I had no interest in either one so I didn't go see them. They both kind of tanked at the box office, and I'm generally not interested in Minions movies anyway. In spite of my minority take that last year's Superman was not good, I might have been interested in Supergirl had the reviews even been decent; this was a female-superhero-focused film, after all. But, reviews were mixed enough that I thought: why bother? Oh. Also released June 26 was the latest Jackass movie, and: no thank you. I haven't seen any of those and don't feel like I have missed anything. I don't care how many people whose opinions I actually respect have loved them. Watching goofball straight guys pull stupidly dangerous stunts is not my jam. All of this is to say, I haven't gone to see a movie in the theater since Monday, June 22. That's over two weeks ago, and I'm not likely to go to another until Monday next week—a three-week break in which I wasn't even traveling. A sad state of affairs for the movies. There have been plenty I have not see that I could have gone to, but none appeal to me at all. Everything in theaters right now, I have either already seen or looks stupid. I suppose I could have seen the Hong Kong action film The Furious, which people really love. I kind of doubt I would have loved it that much, but it might have been serviceable in the absence of any other options. Unfortunately I seem to have missed my window; it's still in a couple of theaters in the region but not in Seattle proper and only a single showing each day and late in the evening. Hey, wait a minute. I just looked at my calendar. I can totally go to a movie on Friday. I think I'll do that. A two and a half week break, and not a three-week break! I need to see The Invite before people start talking about it and spoiling shit anyway. Okay, I feel a little better! I'm just feeling starved for quality content in movie theaters these days. The Odyssey is the following weekend, so there's also that. And I've already heard very good things about both of these movies. — छह हज़ार अट्ठावन — — छह हज़ार अट्ठावन — Okay, what else? I almost made chai last night, but Shobhit wasn't super into having some and I agreed it might be a good idea to skip it anyway. I don't need to have chai every day. I had a soda instead. We walked to the Tuesday Farmers Market at Cal Anderson Park. Not much going on there, Tuesday is much smaller. But, it got us out for a bit. We also walked further up to QFC so he could check his lottery tickets, a dream he refuses to give up on in spite of the astronomically low odds of winning. I wasn't up for another three-mile walk like we did on Monday. He went out for his other walk later, during which I washed the dishes and went to bed. In the meantime, we watched Project Hail Mary on Prime Video. Shobhit seemed kind of netural on it. "It's a very happy movie," he said. That was his basic, overall assessment. I love that movie, and if I were to make a top 10 for 2026 right now, it would at the very least rank #2, after Pillion (which is listed as a 2025 movie but didn't open until February, so for my purposes it's a 2026 movie). It's long, though: two hours and 40 minutes. So that took all the time we had between returning from our walk and Shobhit heading back out again to get his steps in. — छह हज़ार अट्ठावन — [posted 12:33pm]