CoronaQuarantine, Day 95: Seattle Protest, Day 16
Okay so I have a shit ton of work to get done today so I'm going to try to get through today's DLU relatively quickly as I recap my weekend.
And it was an unusually social one: a Social Review point for a different person on each day! None of them for Shobhit, though, unfortunately. It's a given now that he won't be #1 on the social standings in my Spring 2020 report. He really could be, but each time I suggest we go on a walk, or he go check out the "CHAZ" (or as they are now calling it, "CHOP," Capitol Hill Organized Protest), he declines. He has only himself to blame!
So anyway. Friday. That evening I had my monthly Happy Hour with Laney, the fourth one in the row done virtually, as you can see by the photo above. We had long ago made plans to do our Happy Hours at places with city views for three months in a row between May, June and July—the first two of those have already been preempted. July is very unlikely to happen the way we planned as well, although last month Laney had suggested we could meet at the park to sit social-distanced outside; I even thought about suggesting it for our Happy Hour this past Friday, and only discarded the idea because it had rained much of the day. It wasn't raining by the evening, but it was still too wet to sit outside anywhere.
So now we're looking at doing that for July, assuming the weather cooperates. I just looked at my calendar and we had made a plan to eat at La Cocina Oaxaqueña, which I realized just now might actually still work: they have outdoor seating, which we had also used the last time we went there for Happy Hour. That would be nice.
Our options for socializing remain limited otherwise, though, and I came up with an idea that Laney seemed very much into, so we can do something beyond just the monthly Virtual Happy Hours: we're watching a movie together! Not "Netflix Party" exactly, but we'll get on Skype together and watch the new Spike Lee movie, Da 5 Bloods, on Netflix at the same time. And then we'll spend time discussing it afterward. Yay! She wasn't available for it the rest of this past weekend so we marked our calendars for Saturday next weekend—which will make that four-day weekend plenty busy for me: the movie with Laney on Saturday; then Shobhit and I will drive to Long Beach for our two-night stay for this year's one-week-delayed anniversary trip for two nights on the coast. I finally confirmed with Dad via text that we'll stop by their place on the way as we drive through Olympia.
It's nice to feel like at least certain aspects of life are returning to normal. We still wear masks everywhere, which are proving to be very effective, which I find a great comfort, and may actually result in my being willing to go to a movie theater again maybe a bit sooner than I thought. I can't say the same about dining in at restaurants, depending on their setup, since you obviously have to take masks off in order to eat.
The socializing I did on Saturday was a bit more sort of spontaneous. Danielle had texted me a few days earlier to say Let's catch up this weekend, so after a few further text exchanges Saturday, and then I asked what she was doing and she just sent back a photo of herself with Cloud, her cat, lounging on top of her, I called her via FaceTime. And we did indeed catch up . . . and then she suggested we watch a movie. I offered several options, which she kept rejecting, until I landed on Knives Out, which was now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
I had already seen the movie twice, and was slightly reticent to watch it a third time—until we went ahead and started it. It's such a good movie. And Danielle did seem to be enjoying it, until just a little more than halfway through, she fell asleep. I stayed connected with her until she woke up again about ten minutes after the movie ended, and it freaked her out to see me still there on her computer "staring at her." Which I wasn't actually doing; I was catching up on social media on my phone.
Anyway. I spent pretty much the rest of my time just watching Netflix shows: Ozark with Shobhit when he was home; and I started watching Dear White People and did that while he was at work.
Yesterday, though, Alexia walked with me to my office and back. She got on a new medication and says she has bounced back; it doesn't sound like there was much of any risk she actually had COVID. She had other issues with just getting enough sleep, and on Saturday she went hiking with her couple of friends, as she has been doing nearly every Saturday during the stay-home order. If not for that, we would have walked to my office on Saturday, and I only waited until yesterday so she could join me. She'll probably join me for most of the walk back there again after work today as well, assuming I can get through the rather thick stack by the end of my work day today. I think I will, I just need to hunker down and hopefully not distracted by too many more store email needs like I did for much of this morning.
Alexia and I walked through the CHAZ/CHOP on the way down there, and then came back via Cal Anderson Park to see the garden they planted. I'm kind of glad they are renaming it Capitol Hill Organized Protest, as the focus of CHAZ, in spite of the huge lettering on Pine, is kind of losing sight of Black Lives Matter. As Charlie posted to Facebook last night, "#CHAZsoWhite." I don't know how fair that is, but it definitely has some truth, and they need to be careful not to let a bunch of privileged white locals pre-empt the messaging, which is likely what the authorities actually want.
Alexia herself keeps complaining about all the graffiti, much of which is sprawled all over what had been beautiful murals originally painted to brighten up closed-down neighborhoods during the stay-home order. And it's true, it is ugly, but I'm not ready to bitch too much about it, as it's a little beside the point at the moment. I finally had to say, "Well, it sucks. But, I don't consider it really the highest priority right now."
When we were both getting ready in the bathroom yesterday morning, I said to Shobhit, "Happy anniversary." He was very mildly startled to hear that, and said, "Happy anniversary. Is it the 14th? All the days blend in together." And, I get it. Our trip for this year is postponed a week anyway, as I already stated.
Still, he later texted me from work to ask if I had eaten (no, although I had heated up some of the large amount of leftovers we still have) and whether I wanted him to order something from Saffron Grill. I said sure. So, when he came home he had naan and two dishes, and we had three dishes to eat from since we also had some of what I had reheated, after making extra rice and adding some veggie sausage. Given the Saffron Grill stuff came with lots of rice as well, we have a ton of rice to burn through now.
We sat down to eat while watching two episodes of season 3 of Ozark. I asked him to put a shirt back on for the photo. It was a very nice dinner.
[posted 12:42 pm]