— पांच हजार आठ सौ चौंसठ —
Ivan visited and stayed with us
over the last weekend in July, and kind of last minute, he wound up staying one more night last night. He had left us on Monday, July 28 for Bellingham, and then further north for a visit to Vancouver, B.C. abd Whistler—he sent me some very pretty photos from both on Facebook Messenger, as he has done pretty consistently ever since I first asked for it when he took a trip to Europe in 2018.
Anyway, he was going to try and find a job in Vancouver, something easier for him than most thanks to his dual citizenship on account of his mother being Canadian. I guess that didn't pan out; he accepted a job instead in New Hampshire. At first he asked if he could stay one night with us on Sunday before flying out of SeaTac on Monday, but then he changed the ask to staying overnight on Monday instead: he took a bus down to Seattle yesterday, and is taking the train the rest of the way to Portland today. He said he found cheaper airfare out of Portland. (Was it cheap enough to offset the cost of a train ticket? I never did ask. I know he likes Portland too though, and his flight out is apparently not until Thursday, so he'll have a couple more last days there before leaving.)
Now, I saw even less of him last night than I would have otherwise, because I had a movie to go to yesterday—my first in 10 days—and I left work at 4:00 to go to the 4:15 showing:
Nobody 2. It was . . . not that great. But whatever, it was a movie to go see.
When I got home, Ivan was there but apparently napping. Shobhit had dinner ready, and wondered whether we should knock on the guest room door to let him know. By the time we were dishing ourselves food, though, Ivan opened his door just as I was passing by. He opened his mouth in a kind of shock-delight expression when he saw me and it really cracked me up.
We all hung out in the living room and ate while Shobhit watched reruns of
Young Sheldon and
The Big Bang Theory, but then I went back to the room to write my review. When I came back to the living room again, Ivan said, "Did you write your movie review?" I said yes and he said, "That's what I thought!"
I tried to find something maybe we all could watch. I found that the 1975 film
Death Race 2000, which I had long known about and was fascinated by its ridiculous premise but had never seen, was streaming on Prime Video. So we all watched that.
It was kind of terrible, honestly. The satire only gets halfway close to hitting, and the effects are literally laughable, especially the matte painting backdrop of a "futuristic" city. Both Ivan and Shobhit spent the first half of the movie looking at their phones, but when I kept laughing at hilarious scenes of race cars hitting people for sport, Shobhit kept asking me to "go back" so he could see it.
Shortly after the movie ended, Ivan asked me what I was going to do all next week when I am on PTO between the last day at the current office and the first day at the new one. I only got as far as Monday (when Laney and I are taking the Fast Ferry to Kingston for Happy Hour with Jessica), and suddenly Shobhit got on a call with his Mom, and proceeded to spend several minutes kind of shouting at her. This killed any conversation between Ivan and me, and he got up and left the room.
I was working on updating my budget, so when Ivan suddenly came up and sat on his kneeds right next to me on the floor, I was startled. He told me he was going for a walk, which meant he wouldn't see me again, so he was saying goodbye. We hugged, and I was a bit struck by how nice he smelled, as he didn't even seem to be wearing cologne (his colognes always smelled really good too though).
It would have been nice to see more of him, but I'm sure grateful for what I got. When he moved out in 2022, he had said "I'll see you in two years"—and then it was three years before he returned for a visit again. Somewhat to my surprise, he suggesed last night that he might come back again next year. But we'll see; you never know with Ivan, who has a long history of changing his mind constantly.
— पांच हजार आठ सौ चौंसठ —
— पांच हजार आठ सौ चौंसठ —
So that was last night; that brings us to today, and right now—I just had my biweekly Zoom lunch with Karen, which had been rescheduled from last Friday (when I was in Saint Paul) to yesterday, and yesterday she asked if we could move it to today, which was fine as I've had so much shit to do after getting back to work again. Returning to work at the new office on September 2 is going to be a trip, but I'll get to that when we come to it.
I did notice that next week would normally be our next lunch, on Friday, but for some reason I didn't have it on my Google Calendar. I asked her about it, and she said she had "tentative in person" on Friday the 29th, which means we clearly had talked about this: I'm taking PTO all next week so I would have suggested maybe we do an in-person lunch.
But! Now I have plans to watch a movie with Alexia at her apartment in Issaquah next week. I asked Karen if by chance she was available on Wednesday, and she is. I did note that I don't really have the budget to go out (I'm already doing that for Happy Hour with Laney and Jessica on Monday), so we settled on my meeting her at her office on Westlake by Lake Union. I haven't been there in ages, so that'll be fun. I'll just bring a packed lunch.
This means I now officially have at least one thing planned every weekday next week.
One other thing I want to mention, which will be fun to share here at work: Karen went to a quilting retreat in Clinton, on Whidbey Island, and a friend of hers who lives on the island was in a really bad accident seven or eight years ago, apparently getting a really bad concussion. She is only just recently starting to drive again, outside of her immediate community. She took her first drive off the island recently since the accident, and Karen asked what prompted her to do that now. It was because she wanted to go shopping at the Edmonds PCC! Ha—I found that delightful. There are no natural foods stores like PCC on Whidbey Island, apparently. Karen said the woman was very excited.
And with that note, I need to get back to work—and resume the catching up that I'll barely finish before taking all next week off and returning to a huge backlog again the following week. Oh well!
— पांच हजार आठ सौ चौंसठ —
[posted 1:06pm]
