Well, today's post isn't exactly a Daily Lunch Update (DLU)—I'm posting this in the morning, and also it's Saturday—but it's basically filling in for one, as I haven't posted in two days (and the last one was posted in the morning, so really I've skipped two), and I won't be back to work for another three. The week I took off work this past week for the transition between the old and new offices is slightly extended by virtue of Monday being Labor Day, and I really don't want to have too much to catch up on when I get back to work on Tuesday. God knows I'll have a bonkers amount of work to catch up on.
Speaking of which, this is also not just a rare, but unprecedented scenario in which I am off work for a week but am both at home and have my work laptop with me—we all had to bring our laptops home after work on Friday August 22. I have long prided myself on never bringing work home with me, but, mostly because of the amount of emails I know I'll be coming back to, I will admit to being tempted, very briefly, on Wednesday to open my laptop and start cleaning out some of the email backlog. Ultimately, thankfully, I didn't: I did not want to
set a precedent. And doing any work would defeat the purpose of burning through PTO hours, would it not?
So, I went on about my business spending my "staycation" week just chilling or doing whatever. My
post on Thursday morning covered Shobhit's and my lunch with Karen on Wednesday, plus some final thoughts on the day with Dad and Sherri on Tuesday.
The most notable thing that happened on Thursday was a pretty standard thing, something that would have happened whether I were working or not: I went to see a movie with Laney,
Caught Stealing, which we both enjoyed quite a lot. The showtime was at 4:00, which on regular work days is kind of pushing it in terms of late-afternoon showtimes, but will be a lot easier after starting at the new office location, which is all of four blocks from the new office. Trailers last a solid half hour these days so I could leave the office
at 4:00 for a 4:00 showing and walk there in plenty of time before the movie even begins. A 4:30 showing now would be perfect, as I have long left work at 4:30; and 5:00 is quite workable as well. 5:30 now means having to wait around a bit but I guess I'll live.
Anyway, for this movie, which was at 4:00, I was coming from home, and I met up with Laney on Broadway at 3:30. At first Shobhit was going to just walk down with us so he could get a Social Review point, but by the time it was time to leave, Shobhit had done his work Zoom meeting and taken off his clothes and didn't feel like getting dressed again.
Yesterday was a bit more eventful, as Shobhit and I both drove to Alexia's to watch a movie in the afternoon. Alexia had suggested this when we had come to make her and her cousin and neighbor dinner on Sunday the 17th, and she informed us she was taking an additional two weeks off work for her hip replacement surgery recovery rather than the two she naively thought she could only do. I mentioned I was also on PTO the second of those weeks, so she suggested I come back during one of those weekdays to watch a movie. A brilliant idea!
Shobhit had nothing else to do so he came too, and he drove. Although I have to say his aggressive driving has kicked into a higher gear lately, and every single time I get in the car with him now he actually honks at at least two or three other cars. It's never necessary, and it's driving me insane. I haven't said anything in the moment because I know it'll just make him madder, which is not an ideal scenario to say the least. He did comment that he's been "more irritable lately," although I have really only noticed it while he's been driving. But I don't know how much more we can keep driving together if he keeps that shit up. It feels like 25% of what comes out of his mouth while he's behind the wheel is "Come on!" as he yells at other drivers—mostly people who are committing the crime of driving the speed limit.
That aside, it was still a lovely time with the three of us in Issaquah yesterday. I had broached the idea of ordering pizza, and Alexia immediately suggested she order from Flying Pie Pizzeria as soon as they opened at 11 a.m., and we could go pick it up, as Alexia is still not allowed to drive herself, until at least her final doctor appointment on September 17. She said it was her treat, but we still saw the receipt when we picked it up, and had a bit of sticker shock when we saw that this one large pizza cost $53. Jesus Christ! When we mentioned this later, she said, "Pizza is expensive now. Even Pagliacci Pizza is expensive." I suppose she's right: we got the "Presto" pizza from Flying Pie, which is 18" and has a listed price of $41. A large pizza at Pagliacci is 17" and a similar pesto pizza has a listed price of $36.99, which with tax and a 20% tip would come to about $49. At least that's still under $50, albeit barely. It's 8% less than Flying Pie Pizzeria. Also, being pickup and not delivery and not involving service,
Alexia placed the order as soon as I texted her we were on our way, which was at 11:00 right when the pizza place opened. She had said the pizza would be ready by 11:20, but even though we got there closer to 11:30, they told us it would be ready at 11:40. We walked around the little strip mall there to kill time, and went into the Dollar Tree store, which was like finding treasure. We got paper plates, paper cups (both which which we needed), glass cleaner, garlic powder, and a pair of gardening gloves for Shobhit, all for barely more than $10. I commented on the irony of a store with such great selection at such low prices being downtown in a city as wealthy as Issaquah rather than anywhere in Seattle where there are communities that have far greater need for it, and Shobhit was pretty matter-of-fact about how much more theft they would be dealing with in those areas, which prevents companies from opening stores there. Such is the eternal scourge of capitalism at work.
Anyway, the pizza was ready when we got out of Dollar Tree, and we drove to Alexia's, where we watched the
ninth and final film in Alexia's and my Batman Movie Marathon:
The Batman. I had seen this twice in the theater, and I thought I had watched it at home once, but I can find no record of that, so maybe not. This was therefore at the very least the third time I had seen it. Alexia was pretty impressed with it, and she even said how great the freeway chase sequence was as soon as it ended.
It's too bad she doesn't have an HBO Max account (she rented the movie from Prime Video, about four bucks), because the miniseries
The Penguin, also starring Colin Farrell as that character, turned out to be surprisingly excellent, even though Batman never makes an appearance in it. It really gave The Penguin greater depth, both as a character and as a villain, and also enhances his character on rewatch of the movie.
Alexia didn't eat a whole lot of the pizza. Shobhit had six slices of it and I had five, leaving both our weights up this morning, even though I had no dinner last night, I was so full from the pizza. Plus, Alexia also had vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup to serve us, which she dished up right around the beginning of the movie's third hour.
It was probably around 3:30 when we left to come back home. We knew Alexia would be tired—she mentioned she still gets fatigued every day, and informed us yesterday that now she's extending her leave from work until at least that September 17 doctor appointment. She's far further along in her recovery now than she was two weekends ago, when she was still using a walker, but she still can't drive, although at the time she thought she could start working from home the day after Labor Day. But she noted that if she can tell she'd only be able to work three hours a day before getting exhausted, that would render her of little use at work until she could recover further. Which makes total sense.
So, it was sometime around 4:00 when we got back home. We watched this week's episode of
Peacemaker on HBO Max; much later in the evening we watched this week's episodes of
Foundation and
Platonic (the latter was a particularly good one) on Apple TV; and then we finally checked out the first episode of
Your Friends and Neighbors starring Jon Hamm, which was . . . not bad.
In between, I spent some time at my desk here in the bedroom, actually filling up my calendar in late November and in December with holiday events and activities I know I'll want to do this year. I exchanged some texts with Tracy late last night and established that I will take the day off on September 19 so I can take the Sounder Train to go hang out with her in Puyallup, and we came up with a couple of things to do. She also said she'd go to "Holiday Magic at The Fair" with me, which I already have on my calendar December 14.
Between a ton of movies opening in December and already on my calendar; the regular Happy Hours with Laney; two different planned movie watches with Laney of the previous two
Avatar movies before the third one comes out; and the December 22-23 trip with Shobhit and Alexia to Victoria, I already had a ton of shit on my calendar in November and December—including several annual holiday events I already know the dates for: Seattle Festival of Trees; the Great Figgy Pudding Caroling Competition; Holiday in the Park at Volunteer Park; the Gingerbread Village at the Sheraton Hotel. Even though it's not quite yet even the end of August, there was only a couple of weekend days in which to pencil in things like Holiday Magic at the Fair, or tentatively the Polar Express train ride at Mt. Rainier, which I have dreamed of doing for ages, have never done, and can probably convince Alexia to do with me. I even still want to do the Issaquah Reindeer Festival, which ideally I would do before Christmas, but I had no choice to pencil that one in for the weekend after.
I'm already well on the way to having at least 15 separate photo albums for my Christmas collection of albums on Flickr this year. Last year I tied with my record and got to 20. Fifteen will still qualify as pulling back a bit.
[posted 9:04am]
