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Last night I took myself to see a rather obscure, but very well reviewed, movie called
Linoleum, at SIFF Cinema at the Uptown on Lower Queen Anne. The showing was at 4:45, and I had my bike, so it was pretty perfect for timing after I left work at 4:30.
There might have been, I don't know, 15-20 people in the theater. When I walked in, there was a lady in a wheelchair at the accessible seats behind the small wall at the back of the stadium-style seating. Except, she wasn't in her chair. She was actually on the floor, facing the seat rather than facing the movie screen. She had a face mask on so it was difficult to understand her at first, when she asked me to go ask an employee to come and help her.
I suppose I could have offered to help her myself. I had no idea what she needed though, although I suppose one could assume she needed assistance getting into her chair. She didn't seem all that perturbed or concerned though. To be honest I was relieved when she asked me to get staff to help her rather than asking me directly.
Then, I got the sense that this was a familiar woman to the staff. At first I went to the guy at the concessions counter, who asked me to go to the guy taking tickets at the door. In the middle of my talking to him, the concessions guy came over and said he could go ahead and go in. "I think it's Katherine," he said, or whatever her name was supposed to be. I walked in behind him to find my seat, and the guy seemed to just chat with the woman while she stayed sitting on the floor. All righty then.
The movie was just started when I got in. I used the 6-punch card for free popcorns that I get whenever I renew my annual SIFF membership; I have one punch left on it. I snatched a sample Zevia Root Beer that happened to be at work, so I had popcorn and a soda to inhale while the movie began. There were also apple pie samples at work yesterday. Let's just say that "skipping lunch" likely made no difference yesterday. I haven't been able to weigh myself in a couple of days though, because the batteries went dead in the scale. I bought more from Amazon and they were even delivered yesterday but I haven't yet gone to the package room to pick them up.
Anyway,
Linoleum was
quite lovely, a B+ movie that deserves way more than the shockingly paltry
$65,000 box office it's earned in five weeks of release (fewer weeks than that in my region here in Seattle). So it goes with theatrical releases of more obscure movies, though, I guess—especially these days, post-pandemic. If nothing else I can feel confident SIFF will do whatever it can to keep offering movies like this in theaters as long as they possibly can. Nevertheless, I can't see any way around more movie theater closures sooner than later. Things just aren't what they used to be.
I rode my bike home, and after nearly a week of relatively warm weather, highs in the mid- to upper-fifties, it was probably around 50° or so, made much colder by it being rather breezy. Not my favorite thing to bike in. Today was actually my first day this week back to taking transit, with rain finally in the forecast again. It wasn't even forecast to start until this afternoon but it sprinkled on me walking from my bus stop downtown this morning.
Anyway. My review was shorter than usual, but I was fine with that. I didn't want to spend a lot of time writing it, nor did I want to spoil any of the movie, if by chance it could convince anyone to watch it. It's best seen the way I saw it, I think: knowing very little about it.
After that, there was barely enough time for Shobhit and me to watch this week's episodes of
Perry Mason (from Monday) on HBO Max, and
Ted Lasso (from Wednesday) on Apple TV+. We still have many episodes to watch of
Shrinking, also on Apple TV+; and I still need to watch Wednesday's Disney+ episode of
The Mandalorian. I think we'll get on that tonight; I could go see yet another movie, but in spite of the sparseness of my movie-going so far this year, I'm not keep on going to a movie three nights in a row. I'll probably see one two nights in a row next week on Monday and Tuesday, due to other plans tomorrow and Sunday. We
were going to do the next "Harrison Ford-athon" with Alexia but she's had a bad cold all week, and although she says she feels better now, she's still coughing a lot she says, and we don't want to take any chances with Shobhit being just post-appendectomy, him also doing a lot better now notwithstanding.
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I still have a minor social engagement to note for today: FaceTime lunch with Karen, which I just finished with. Even though all I ate was a couple of small high-protein cookies.
Apparently Karen only checks Facebook every couple of days, so she didn't even know Shobhit was in the hospital until she saw
my post that he was back home.
Thus, the vast majority of our hour was talking about hospital stays, both Shobhit's and her own—I guess she also was at Virginia Mason when she was hospitalized for several days in 2021 with pneumonia (but not covid; she didn't get that until this year)—as well as discussions about the building itself, because of how mystified I was by Shobhit's room apparently being on the "16th" floor. Karen's friend Diane actually works at that hospital though, so she can ask her about it! would love to get some actual answers.
There really was very little else we actually talked about. Oh, we did talk about the fact that this was Shobhit's first-ever surgery of any kind (including oral surgeries), and somehow that got us talking about when
I was in the hospital with a broken leg at the age of five. I now know that my leg is indeed "in traction" in that photo. With Karen's condition, which contributes to her being a little person, she has a history of bone fractures, and she found a couple childhood photos of herself in traction, two different times. In one, she was so limber she had her entire body bent in half backward, with both legs in traction
behind her, sticking straight up behind her and above her shoulders. It looked kind of nuts.
Still, it was fun to swap childhood hospital photos. I also shared
this one from the same hospital stay, in which I'm using the wooden board Grandpa Minor made for me, to make it easier to color in my coloring books. Those are the only photos I have from when I had a broken leg; I have no photos of the huge cast I got later, all the way down to my toes on one side and down to my knee on the other, with a bar between my thighs. Karen was very familiar, and knew what function that kind of cast served.
Anyway. I guess I can get back to work now.
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[posted 1:11 pm]
