— पांच हजार एक सौ इक्कीस —
This past weekend was actually relatively uneventful, except to say that I went to not one, but
two movies—in the theater! I suppose I should have expected this to be a possibility, but while I hesitate to call it an "opening the floodgates" moment, my decision to see a movie on Friday certainly made it easier for me to go see one again, sooner.
I will say that what I had hoped for in regards to the Friday night showing of
Parallel Mothers basically bore out. Even though this was opening night, and Pedro Almodóvar is easily one of the most famous directors in the world, he's still Spanish and not American, and I went to a non-peak early evening showtime, at 5:00.
So, as I had hoped, there weren't really that many people in the theater. Even better, the balcony was indeed open, and so I went up there, hoping to get the balcony entirely to myself, as Ivan and I had when we went to see
Nightmare Alley last month. I think Ivan may resist ever sitting up there again; he complained about how very uncomfortable the solid, wooden seats were up there, and the seats down on the main floor are all upholstered. Anyway, this movie I went to see alone, and while I would agree the seats are far less comfortable, it was a small price to pay to get some real distance between myself and everyone else in the theater. Well, almost everyone: two other people did come up to sit in the balcony this time. They sat a good thirty feet or so away from me, though, so I still didn't worry much about it.
"Layers of mitigation." This is what people say a lot. Vaccines
plus masks
plus social distancing, that kind of thing, to really minimize risk. The most minimized risk of course was just to stay home. I wanted to see this movie in the big screen. More layers of mitigation: SIFF Cinemas require proof of vaccination, and have been for months, literally since they opened last year—before Omicron or even the Delta variant. They don't even accept proof of negative test within the past couple of days. I haven't been anywhere else this strict about it, and I love it. And to SIFF's credit, few people seem to give a shit. A large majority of Seattleites are vaccinated already, and I'll bet anything an even larger percentage of SIFF's specific audience are. So, in this case, it's all but guaranteed that everyone I am near—and I still sat far from anyone—was vaccinated.
Also, this being my first time back to a movie theater since the peak of the Omicron surge, this was also my first time wearing a KN95 mask rather than a regular cloth one to a movie theater. Yet another layer of mitigation.
I was really happy to have been able to see
Parallel Mothers in a movie theater, too. The Egyptian has an odd sound system that often leaves me unable to make out anywhere from a quarter to a third of the dialogue, which means a subtitled foreign film is especially ideal at that theater. I was able to read every line of dialogue. And the movie was excellent:
I gave it an A-.
Now, in terms of layers of mitigation, the movie I went to yesterday was a little trickier. Emphasis on "little," at least. I kind of went back and forth in my mind on this one throughout the day. Should I see it then, or later this week? If I was to decide to see it at all, the timing was best if I did it yesterday. I'm going to need to drive to the office and back to swap out paperwork this evening, which I'd rather not do on the same evening I go see a movie. Tomorrow there's a virtual PCC Board Meet and Greet at 4:00. The cats have their first vet appointment since before the pandemic at 5 p.m. Sunday. Did I want to push this movie all the way to Thursday? I just now checked showtimes and it turns out I could have. But whatever, I went yesterday.
Now, this is also at a SIFF Cinema theater, this time at SIFF Film Center at Seattle Center, which is usually where they show films with lowest demand, so the first showing of the day might not have many people. That was my hope, anyway. The showtime was at 4:00, and I took Light Rail and then the Monorail to get there, kind of just in time with ten minutes to spare. Now, that theater is pretty small to begin with, and when I arrived I was surprised to find probably a good twenty people already in there. At least of them had masks off, eating popcorn and snacks. That gave me pause, slightly, but whatever. Again to the credit of SIFF audiences, by the time the movie actually started, everyone had their masks on. Not that that really makes any difference if any unmasked person had been infected. Well, it must make some level of difference: ten minutes unmasked is far less dangerous than, say, two hours unmasked. That said, the margin of difference there is a lot narrower with the Omicron variant.
In any case, I found a seat in the back row, off to the left when facing away from the screen, and was relatively comfortable having found a seat still a good fifteen feet or so from the closest people. And then, just before the movie started, this couple came in and sat down right in front of me. Dammit. On the upside, they did not have any snacks and they were wearing the same KN95 mask that I was wearing. I decided to relax.
Layers of mitigation.
I then proceeded to see what of the most visually beautiful documentary features I have ever seen,
The Velvet Queen, about a French wildlife photographer and his adventurer-writer friend on the Tibetan plateau in search of the elusive snow leopard. This was another reason I wanted to see this one on the big screen: I knew it would feature great wildlife and landscapes, and although I would have certainly still enjoyed it later streaming at home, it would be way better in a theater. So, I went to the theater to see it.
And boy, was it worth it. Even though, full disclosure, I had one of those periods, or episodes if that's what you want to call it, where I had something akin to a "carb crash," where no matter how great the movie was onscreen, it took a herculean effort not to nod off. This happened for maybe the first fifteen or twenty minutes of the movie, where it was practically impossible to keep my eyes open or to keep from nodding off. I don't know why this happens to me, unless it has to do with the somewhat large tofu banh mi sandwich I had somewhat recently had for lunch? Maybe. I don't know. Whatever the case, the problem finally passed and I was able to appreciate the rest of the film for the gorgeous glory that it was. Yet again I gave the movie an A-. So, it was a good weekend for movies.
Well, movies in the theater, anyway. I just up and decided to watch a trashy horror movie at home on Saturday afternoon while Shobhit was at work: Robert Rodriguez's 1996 vampire film
From Dusk Till Dawn. Curiously, the half of the movie or so that goes by before you see any vampires holds up far better than the rest of the film does, when these ridiculous shape shifting vampire monsters show up. The makeup and effects are insanely dated and the chaos that suddenly reigns just doesn’t work as well as I assume it did for a movie of this sort in the mid-nineties.
— पांच हजार एक सौ इक्कीस —
— पांच हजार एक सौ इक्कीस —
So. This just in on the Omicron front: this morning I checked the
University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projections for Washington State, and to my genuine surprise, their "estimated infections" graph shows us, as of today, as having about the same amount of daily infections as we did as of Christmas Eve. Slightly less, even: 72,667 today vs. 73,959 on December 24. That's compared to a peak of 154,184 on January 7.
Now, this almost tempted me to consider shifting my work back to the office
far sooner than originally intended. But, remember, these are
estimated infections, far higher than reported ones. Shifting to "
reported," the metrics shift considerably: lower "official" numbers but with the curve on later dates: 18,486 cases today on the decline, vs 18,292 on January 13 while on the upswing, with a peak of 20,273 on January 19. My last day at the office before shifting back home was December 30, when daily reported cases were 6,171. If I wait for
reported cases to be that low again, we're looking at February 10, in terms of projections.
However! All these numbers are in reference to Washington State as a whole, and the rest of the state right now is actually worse than King County. If Washington State peaked on January 19, King County peaked January 10, a good week and a half earlier. The daily count in King County on December 30 was 3,431; on January 20, the most recent data they show, it was 1,451. That's already 57.7%
below where we were, locally, on December 10. If we go by the 7-day averages of those respective dates, the comparison is reversed: 2,540 on 12/30 vs 3,551 on 1/20: right now the 7-day average remains nearly 40%
above what it was on Christmas Eve. Either way, the numbers have been declining rapidly since January 10—not a steeply as the incline was prior to then, but it's a pretty steep decline nonetheless.
In any case, depending on how the numbers look, I may shift back to the office as early as next week. We'll see. I'll keep my home work station intact just to keep it easy to shift back and forth should I need to. I have already ordered the free home rapid tests through both
the federal government website and
the Washington State website, although it's unclear both exactly how many tests total I will get, as well as how the hell long it will take for them to get to me from either order. Also I was recently reminded that they expire, so I'm not sure how urgently I will need to use them before their expiration, regardless of level of urgency or need otherwise. When they expire seems to rang wide depending on the source; I'm finding
several months up to a year as well as
within two to three months. I should probably save at least one for the day I spend time with Gabriel during my Birth Week in late April. If he knows just tested negative from a home test it will probably give him at least some extra peace of mind.
I suppose I'll just have to wait and see what the expiration dates are printed on the boxes I eventually receive. Neither the federal nor state website says anything about their expiration date, which is annoying. I was considering the idea of using one before I go back to the office, but I'm afraid of that being pointless and wasteful. And the more I think about it, the more likely I think it is that I'll go back to working in the office before I receive the tests anyway.
— पांच हजार एक सौ इक्कीस —
So, now I guess I'll mention the one genuinely social thing I did all weekend: yesterday Alexia and I walked down to the PCC Downtown store, so she could see it. It was unusually foggy yesterday, so even though we left around noon, it was still very foggy and I got a couple of cool shots of Rainier Square Tower shooting seemingly endlessly up into the low clouds. I haven't uploaded them to Flickr yet so I can't share them yet. One or both shots will likely wind up a DLU photo one of these days.
After all the concern about security downtown, and Scott mentioning that all the Seattle stores have at least one cop patrolling the store every day, and this one has the added layer of the building security, I was still kind of struck by the sight right inside the front doors when we went in from Fourth Avenue:
four uniformed SPD officers, standing together. I wondered if there had just been a call to them over an incident or something.
Anyway, this was also when I bought the banh mi sandwich, which I had noticed at the grand opening on Wednesday, and figured yesterday was a good a time as any to buy one, since Alexia and I were walking down there at lunchtime. Before I did that, Alexia and I went out the south entrance that opens to the lobby area with the elevators to the parking garage (I think?—I still need to do more exploring of that area of the building) which has the mural timeline of the UW tract and the history of all the buildings that have been on this and adjacent blocks. It was fun to read all that stuff.
After getting my sandwich, I also got another box of Earl Gray Tea, and we were on our way. We excited out the north entrance, and even tried to see if we could go up the building at all in the elevators we passed, even though I knew we wouldn't. These turned out to be garage elevators anyway. What was on the other side, then? Actually they could very well be two separate sections of the garage, one for tenants and one for shoppers. Places do that sometimes.
Alexia and I walked back home, and as we chatted, we decided she would be the ideal person to join me for a Light Rail joyride for my "rail" themed Birth Week. She's never ridden it from one end to the other, and although I have, more than once, I'd be happy to do it again with someone who's doing it for the first time. It will also officially make Alexia a participant in my Birth Week for the first time.
Aside from that, a lot of my weekend was spent watching episodes of season four of
Ozark with Shobhit. The first seven episodes were released on Friday, and we watched the first episode Saturday morning before he went to work; episodes 2 and 3 on Saturday after he got home; and episodes 4 and 5 after he got home, and after I was finished writing my movie review, last night. In all likelihood we'll finish 6 and 7 tonight, after I get back from running by the office.
— पांच हजार एक सौ इक्कीस —
[posted 12:29 pm]
