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Yesterday right after work I took myself to the 5:00 showing of the movie
Drop at AMC Pacific Place. Laney is out of town this week, but she'd never have accompanied me to this one anyway—she's really afraid of heights, and the trailer alone freaked her out. The trailer, of course, was what made me maybe interested: it's set on a rooftop restaurant in a Chicago high-rise.
Really, though, I was convinced to go by surprisingly good reviews aggregated at MetaCritic. A few weeks ago, the score was 72. The movie I actually saw did not really match that. I saw yesterday that the MetaScore had since changed, down to 66. Even that's slightly generous, but whatever. It's not like I regret going; it wasn't
that bad. It worked well enough for a B-minus. I was just bored by the shifting of the setting to the protagonists' house for the climax.
I walked there from work, and walked the rest of the way home after. I spent the requisite hour or so writing the review, while also eating a really delicious soupy potato and paneer dish with rice and naan that Shobhit had prepared for dinner. Then we watched an episode of
Black Mirror on Netflix before I went to bed.
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Today was my first day back on the bike. I considered riding it to work yesterday, but the temperature in the morning was 42° and I didn't want to be that cold. This morning it was 47° and that was tolerable. The high yesterday was 65°, otherwise perfect cycling weather—the forecast today is 62°. The challenge today will be my first ride up all the hills to get home on Capitol Hill, something that always exhausts me the first time I do it every year.
I did take an unusual route to work this morning. I rode first to the Central Library, where I returned both
The Left Hand of Darkness, a book I loved and which I finished yesterday; and my DVD copy of
Black Widow that I had watched with Laney the previous weekend. Then, I rode down to the waterfront, which was my intent all along: I wanted to ride on the new bike path along the waterfront. Only about half of it is done, I had to cross to the other side of the street, and ride on the street, the rest of the way. It's still a much more scenic route than the standard route up 4th Avenue downtown. It's nicer when walking and I can go down via the Overlook Walk, which I can't do on my bike. I still like going along the waterfront though.
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I just had my Zoom lunch with Karen, rescheduled because she had something else going on on Friday. We talked a lot about books. She just finished a memoir by Ron and Clint Howard that she found really fascinating. So then I told her about
The Left Hand of Darkness, which I just finished yesterday and loved. She had actually heard of the author, Ursula K. Le Guin, but was unfamiliar with the novel. But after I described the premise, to my surprise, she found it compelling enough to write down the title.
The next time we see each other will be for my Birth Week activity with her, the kickoff on Friday evening next week, April 25. I wanted to ask her what time we should get the timed-entry tickets to the Space Needle, and she reminded me that we had talked about going during sunset. I looked up what time sunset is supposed to be that day: 8:14 p.m., so we settled on 8:00. I suggested I could possibly save a few dollars by booking the tickets myself over at the Space Needle at one of the kiosks there, and she just jumped right on her computer and booked them for both of us.
I was like, "I wasn't expecting you to buy them!" I literally budgeted for it, after all. But she said, "I know but it's your birthday!" I know there are some people (one person in particular) who think I plan things for my Birth Week with the expectation that friends or family will spring for things, which I suppose is inevitable with some (but certainly not all) people but is never an outright expectation. The flip side is, if someone does spring for dinner or an outing or whatever, I am also perfectly comfortable accepting someone's generosity. I did note, however, that I have literally never once bought Karen anything for
her birthday, so maybe I should come up with something I can do for her birthday, which is October 26. Just four days before Shobhit's! Maybe we can suggest a joint birthday dinner or something. I do want to give back to her in some way.
Anyway I need to post this and get back to work.
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[posted 1:09pm]
