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It was yet another social weekend, as always, revolving around food and movies! I hung out with different people each day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Friday was dinner at Saffron Grill, with Shobhit and Alexia. Alexia had thought we had gone there with her more recently than when we all went on Ivan's and my birthday (April 30) in 2022, right before he last moved away, but that does indeed appear to be the last time we went with her—it's been nearly two years!
Mind you, I've been back several times since then, and not even always with Shobhit: Wednesday, May 11, 2022 I had lunch there with Scott and Elin; Saturday, August 20, 2022 Shobhit and I had dinner there with Lynn and Zephyr; Tuesday, January 3, 2023 Shobhit, Shivi and I had dinner there with Karena and Dave; Friday, April 7 I had lunch there again with Scott and Elin, the last time I saw Elin before
she moved; Wednesday, June 14, 2023 Shobhit and I had dinner there for our 10th (wedding) / 19th (first date) anniversary; Friday, December 22, 2023 Shobhit and I had lunch there with Karen.
In fact, pre-pandemic, it seems we never ate there more than once or twice a year. But post-pandemic, I ate there twice in 2021; three times in 2022;
four times in 2023 (three of those with Shobhit, two of them with Karen, one of them with Scott and Elin), and so far once in 2024.
As it happens, the two times in 2021, and then the first time in 2022, were all part of an effort to go there more regularly as a group, with both Alexia and Ivan. But then Ivan moved out, and we actually hadn't gone back with Alexia—until this past Friday.
I usually want Shahi Paneer and decided to mix it up and get Palak Paneer (spinach) instead, largely at Alexia's suggestion. I have to be honest, it was unusually bland. Luckily the naan was still delicious, as were both the pakoras
and gulab jamun we were given on the house (usually they spot us one or the other, not both), so there was plenty deliciousness to go around. But, next time, I'm going to want Shahi Paneer again.
I had budgeted a hundred bucks for this, which Shobhit and I agreed we would cover this time, thanks to Alexia's generosity in recent months—both looking after the cats over the holidays (which we swap back and forth regularly anyway), and especially for her last-minute agreement to pick me up after my colonoscopy, because Shobhit was working. Still, I was very happy we stuck with only two main dishes to share; had we done three, it absolutely would have come to a hundred bucks with tip. I didn't even eat the second dish, as Shobhit and Alexia both wanted okra, which I hate. Still I was stuffed with the amount of food we actually got, so even on that level we didn't need a third fish. And, my final amount with tip came to about $73. $27 under budget works for me!
Oh, we also drove in our car, which I don't think we've ever done before. Alexia always offered to drive in the past, but that was when she was driving a company car. She just got a new position at work that does not come with a company car, so she just bought a new one, and she didn't want to risk dinging it so soon in that super-tight parking lot. We were totally happy to drive us anyway. In fact Shobhit had me drive. I'm not sure I had ever actually driven Alexia anywhere before.
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Saturday was an almost-spontaneous hangout with Gabriel and Lea at their place, for about three hours in the evening.
This largely had to do with Shobhit's work schedule. Honestly, had it been easy to do so, I would have just rescheduled Laney's and my double feature in the Braeburn Condos theater from Sunday to Saturday, so that Shobhit and I could just have our Sunday together, a rare weekend say when neither of us was working. But, I have to book the theater weeks in advance, it's next to impossible to cancel a booking (I have to rely on the building manager to do that, and he doesn't work weekends), and the theater was booked through 1 p.m. on Saturday. So, I kept the plan with Laney on Sunday.
There's no great options for new releases in movie theaters this week, so I also had no movie-going plans on Saturday. It occurred to me on Friday to see if Gabriel might be free: I texted him to ask what he was doing and that I had no plans on Saturday.
He said he had a lot going on, but in the end he said he would talk to Lea Friday night and get back to me. In the meantime I coordinated with Shobhit, so I would take the car, but both drop him off and pick him up at work, his shift that day being 1 to 9:00. If he were working earlier I would have just asked him to take the bus home, which he has done before. But, I didn't want to ask him to do that at 9:00 at night, when the buses were likely to be less frequent and it would take even longer for him to get home. I don't like being out super late anyway, notwithstanding how often that happens when I hang out with Gabriel otherwise (Shobhit was half convinced he was going to wind up having to bus home no matter what, but I assured him I would be there to pick him up, and I was).
In an ideal world, I could have come down in the first half of Shobhit's shift, but Gabriel asked me to come at 5:00 instead. Stephanie was picking up Tess around that time, and he and Tess had some video game to play together, apparently—they were still on it when I got there, slightly delayed myself due to traffic on I-5 (there's a stretch of road work where traffic gets cut down to two lanes). It worked out perfectly for them; had I gotten there at 5:00 as planned I'd have just been sitting around waiting for half an hour. Instead I only waited for maybe ten minutes!
Lady, Lea's dog who is too large for her (or anybody's) own good, shocked me by not flipping out when I just walked in the front door, at Gabriel's direction, because he was going to be down in the basement on the video game. I was super impressed by Lady apparently now being used to me, except it was later clarified to me that she's used to people walking right in, and had they all come to greet me at the door she would have flipped out as usual. Okay, I have a suggestion! How about every time I come over from now on, they just leave the front door unlocked for me and I walk right in? Problem solved, presumably.
Lady sat with me on the couch behind Gabriel, who was standing up playing, what? Fornite, I think? I
took a selfie with Lady and texted it to Lea. Lady kept barking at me when I stopped petting her. High maintenance much? (Gabriel would be the first to tell us all we don't know the half of it.)
I had broached the idea of coming down for a rewatch of
Sideways sometime last fall. This was actually the plan when I came over the evening of New Year's Day, but had to leave after about 15 minutes due to Gabriel's dizziness episode (and for the record: I was just glad he was all right in the end, and later concluded it was diet related). Thus, on Friday this past weekend, I looked at my calendar, saw an opportunity, and we made it work.
Kind of barely, though! It's too bad I could only stay for about three hours, what with it taking about an hour to drive down there, and about 45 minutes to drive back. That's a roughly 42% / 58% ratio of travel vs. actual visitation time. Whatever, I'll take it!
I made chai to bring and share, which is a kind of new M.O. that works on multiple levels for everyone involved. It works for me because I love chai, but also is a way for me to visit without arriving empty handed. Gabriel and Lea also love it; "Matthew is my favorite chai person!" Lea said right before I left, and I poured some of the extra I still had left, in a little thermos for her. Chai also helps stave off hunger, as I wasn't going to be eating dinner until I got back home.
Lea was apparently returning from a baby shower. She got back a few minutes into Gabriel and me starting the movie, and she brought two frosted sugar cookies that she shared. They were so perfectly made they looked like stenciled bathroom tiles, with a honeybee theme. It was also delicious. Yay sugar!
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Gabriel expected Lea would be working on her computer while we watched the movie, but instead she bundled up in a blanket on the other end of the couch from me, and just watched the movie with us, which was really nice. Gabriel was pretty certain he hadn't seen
Sideways since its original theatrical run, and I'm not certain I had either—I just know that I
did see it twice in its original run, first as an advanced screening (complete with wine tasting!) with Shobhit
on November 3, 2004 (oh my god, election day, the same day George H.W. Bush was re-elected, barf!). I later went with Barbara, on New Year's Day, 2005.
And: oops! I was so sure I had seen
Sideways with Gabriel, but clearly I was remembering wrong. (No wonder he couldn't remember seeing it with me.) He had definitely seen it before, though; I guess it's just that neither of us could say exactly when.
I have long associated that movie with Gabriel though, for two reasons: it's about wine drinkers, which Gabriel very much was at the time; and it's also about old friends who met as college roommates—just as Gabriel and I had done. He and I are both very different people from the Paul Giamatti and Thomas Hayden Church characters, but there was still something very familiar about their adversarial vibe cloaking a clear affection for each other. I'm not sure there has ever been another movie that more reminded me of my friendship with Gabriel.
We got the movie started right around 6:00, as I said we'd need to do that if we were to have any hope of getting it finished by the time I needed to leave. I sort of lucked out with the timing of my departure, as the traffic marring the drive down a bit was not there on my way back—neither because of road work nor because of the time of day, now that it was after 8:00. So, the Maps app predicted it would take me 41 minutes to drive back to Seattle and to Total Wine & More to pick up Shobhit, which gave me some wriggle room in leaving. I texted Shobhit at 8:14 that I was headed out, with an ETA of 9:00.
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That brings us to yesterday, when I had my Braeburn Condos Theater Double Feature with Laney. I actually think Shobhit would have enjoyed both of these movies, but he opted instead to take the time I was downstairs to get his steps in. He walked all the way down to the International District to do some produce shopping, and walked back, and did some more walking otherwise. When I got back upstairs last night, he was in the middle of making the very tasy soft-shell tacos we had for dinner. We did have to walk over to Trader Joe's real quick, to get the soft taco shells.
Anyway, Laney and I watched
School of Rock and
Theater Camp, which made a great double feature.
School of Rock, despite how utterly preposterous it is, was so sweet it actually made both Laney and me tear up a bit—something I don't recall happening when I first saw it, in 2003 (when I would have been 27). I remarked on how there probably hasn't been any other role before or since that was more suited to Jack Black.
A very young Sarah Silverman was also in it, as Jack Black's roommate's harpy girlfriend (whose point of view was actually utterly reasonable). I'll just say this about her in that movie: her acting has gotten better since.
I first saw
Theater Camp last summer, and as soon as it was on Hulu I told Laney, more than once, she had to see it. She hadn't gotten around to it and so I suggested we make it one of our double features, and she was the one who suggested
School of Rock to go with it, which I thought was an inspired choice.
Theater Camp didn't make either of us teary—this one is too satirical in tone for that—but she sure did laugh a lot.
I also learned a lesson I really need to take to heart. No more triple shot cocktails! Double shot, sure maybe. But I made myself a Moscow Mule with three shots of vodka in it, and then had real trouble staying awake through the second movie. It was definitely because of the alcohol I had consumed.
When the movie was over, Laney helped me clean up the Community Kitchen outside the theater, which, as I already noted, had been reserved on Saturday. But whatever the hell they did that day, they did not clean up after themselves, which was really fucking annoying. There were crumbs of all sorts all over the floor, bits of food and pieces of drink wrapper on the table. I didn't want anyone to think I had been the one to leave that mess.
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I watched way more than just those two movies yesterday, incidentally. Before I even went downstairs to meet with Laney, after I was done with getting ready, we had just enough time to watch one of Shobhit's SAG Award screeners. We watched
The Holdovers together on his laptop. The one annoying thing about his screeners is that any digital screener has no means of being played on the TV, which is really stupid—I can't even play it from one of my Apple devices and screen share via the Apple TV Box, they have some kind of block on it. So, we're stuck viewing it on a laptop screen. I suppose we could have watched it on my desktop iMac in the bedroom, but we prefer to be able to sit on the couch in the living room.
I still love that movie. I have a feeling Shobhit may even vote for both Paul Giamatti and Da'Vine Joy Randolph, who are both now front runners for their respective categories for the Oscars.
Then, in the evening, after we had our meals ready for dinner, we watched last night's episode of
True Detective: Night Country. There was a scene with a one-eyed polar bear that about made me shit my pants.
Laney had suggested I check out the new Prime Video series version of
Mr. & Mrs. Smith. I had already watched the first episode on Saturday, and rather liked it. I told Shobhit about it, and it sparked some interest. So, I re-watched the first episode so he could watch it, and then we also watched episode 2, which got weird real fast. I'm into it. This show is also clearly going to have a whole lot of guest stars. We've already seen Paul Dano as a neighbor and John Turturro as a billionair target.
In other words, I spent all day yesterday looking at computer screens, movie screens and television screens. It's such a fulfilling life I lead!
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[posted 12:30 pm]
