— छह हज़ार अठासी —
Usually I wait to update on the weekend until my Monday Daily Lunch Update (DLU), but I should note here that
I already posted yesterday about Friday and Saturday. This covered the replacement of my iPhone battery taking all of Saturday evening to get done; breakfast and then the Seattle Architecture Tour with Alexia on Saturday morning; and hanging out with Danielle Saturday afternoon and evening, when I got bit by her 90-lb foster dog. (My post does not cover all of this chronologically; I started with the dog bite.)
So now all I have to catch you up on is yesterday/Sunday, in which plenty also happened!
I had a double feature with Alexia yesterday, which means she came into Seattle to hang out two days in a row over the weekend. And this was an unusual type of double feature: we watched the original, 1998
Practical Magic in my condo first, and then we went to see
Practical Magic 2 at the AMC Pacific Place right after.
Shobhit watched the first movie with us, but did not go to the second with us. This sort of splits them up, in a way, in terms of the next Social Review. I mean, only in how the time gets recorded in it; they both get one Social Review point for the day.
I scheduled this all rather unusually early with Alexia, when I thought the Emmy Awards were going to be last night. Turns out they shifted the awards to Monday this year in order to get out of the way of football, but whatever. Alexia gets up early anyway, so getting to my place for the first movie at 10:00 in the morning worked just fine for her. It just meant my time was a little limited before she got there, though I did manage to write about half of yesterday's post within that time.
This must have been the third or maybe more realistically fourth time I've seen the original
Practical Magic, which kind of grows on me more each time I see it. I still think it's fine at best; I just love the actors in it, which was the biggest thing that made me interested in the sequel. And Alexia thought the idea of making a double feature out of it sounded fun, so that's what we did.
I had the Braeburn Condos theater reserved for this since August 18. I made the reservation long after the theater has been closed for projector repairs, but at that time the projected reopening was September. Well, I checked the website yesterday morning and the projected reopening is now October. Will this never end? Sheesh! So, in the condo it was again. (As of this morning, Action Movie Night is back on for Wednesday this week—it'll be the first to happen since June 24. It'll have to involve the backup projector Andy says he will bring, though, so that should be interesting. The door to the theater does not currently work with the building key so this projector will have to be set up in the kitchen.)
It worked out fine to watch in the condo anyway, and when Alexia and I had something like forty minutes to kill once the movie ended, she helped us a little with our
Sunflowers Vincent Van Gogh puzzle, which is so slow going it may be the most challenging puzzle I have ever put together. (We did try to help Alexia with one at her place once that I would actually call more challenging, but we gave up trying on that one.)
And then Alexia and I walked downtown together to see
Practical Magic 2, which we both agreed was enjoyable but nothing special—just like the first one. I always thought the first one was fine and not great, which had the result of this being the rare "lega-sequel" that actually stands up to and matches its predecessor. (I also mentioned this in my review.) After the movie we just walked back to my place together.
— छह हज़ार अठासी —
— छह हज़ार अठासी —
And there, we had a quasi-spontaneous visit with Ivan. He had left one of his backpacks and tote bags at our place before a trip to Las Vegas in July, and it was still at our place; he was coming to pick them up, finally. He texted me during the first movie to ask if he could come pick them up later in the day, and I told him when I'd be back from the second movie.
I had told him I expected to be back by 3:30, but it turned out to be more like 3:45. Ivan apparently tried to buzz Shobhit from the intercom while he was still out on a walk getting steps in but Shobhit didn't figure out how to answer. I was surprised Ivan didn't just text me first, which is what he'd usually do. When he finally texted me,
Outside now, Alexia and I were only two blocks away, but then Shobhit did let him in, having just got home, before we arrived. And Alexia was going to walk just back to her car, but when I said, "You don't want to come up and say hi?" she said she would indeed like to do that.
So, there was a short period in which all four of us were visiting in our living room. It was not long before Ivan revealed that he's moved into a house only a couple of blocks away from us. I was like,
What? Of course we then had tons of questions, all of which Ivan refused to answer, because he loves to be cagey about exactly where he's living and always has been, as though it's an untenably personal thing to ask. I don't get it, but I thought later that one theory could be that he just somehow gets an added sense of security if people don't know where his housing is exactly located. He wouldn't even tell us how
long he's been living so close to us, but I later got the intel from my own text history from him: he did text me on August 12 that
I finally found a long-term housing situation, but it's not ready until next month. So at most he had been living over there near us for just unfer two weeks.
He did exactly this same kind of thing back in the spring when he accepted the job in Edmonds, and did not make that clear to me until he'd been there at least a month. And he was moving back to this area from Pennsylvania! (Assuming he'd been back with his parents at that time, which was likely; he otherwise recently had job gigs in New England.) Shobhit totally assumed, foolishly, that Ivan might want to rent out our guest room again. I got the sense that Ivan actually did look for housing in Edmonds but just never found anything that worked for him; as he has done most of the time when bouncing around his jobs all over the country, he was merely staying at AirBnBs. This meant that any time he stayed somewhere else, he ended the AirBnB he was at and brought all his stuff (never more than a few bags) with him. And this was why he asked in July to drop off the backpack and tote bag, which had winter stuff he didn't need, so he wouldn't have to pack it all the way to his trip in Las Vegas.
By the time we returned from Europe in mid-August, I actually texted him to ask when he'd come and get his bags. Jennifer and her family were coming to vsit, which meant I had to move his bags into the guest room closet to get it out of their way. This was slightly annoying; I don't like it when Ivan leans toward treating our condo as his storage facility. And this was when he texted back that he found a long-term living situation. I had no idea until he revealed it yesterday, though, that he was not only right there on Capitol Hill, but a couple of blocks away! This shit drives me crazy, but I also have to acknowledge it's just the way he is.
I'm dying to know how much he's paying rent over there—he told us he has one roommate but he's in a three-bedroom house. That can't possibly be cheap. And this would indicate that Ivan did reveal a few details as we peppered him with questions, perhaps more than he even wanted, and then he kind of shut down. "Too many questions," Shobhit said, and Ivan actually said, with a somewhat uncomfortable chuckle, "Too many personal questions." He even did reveal that he's staying with a coworker as a roommate, and I actually think Shobhit is right that this is a bit of a recipe for disaster. With no particularly good reason, Shobhit then asked if he and this guy—who Ivan did reveal is a gay man—are romantically involved, and Ivan said no, but he did also say "It's complicated." Alexia kind of assumed that has to mean they are involved, but that's not necessarily true. It could be a scenario where Ivan thinks the guy has a thing for him, or conversely Ivan may have a bit of a thing for him, but perhaps in either case it's unreciprocated (a running theme in Ivan's life). This could easily still qualify as "complicated," although it only occurred to me this morning that this could easily be why he went for the option of moving in with this guy in a place on Capitol Hill, though it still means commuting via Light Rail all the way up to Downtown Lynnwood Station and then taking an Uber to work from there.
This, again, is what Shobhit assumed he would do if maybe he would sublet our guest room again. Ivan has done this three times before though, and I don't think he's eager to make it a fourth—something I totally get and do not take personally. Shobhit would certainly have asked for a higher rent than before, as he always does, although frankly Ivan has got to be paying more for presumably half of a three-bedroom house than he ever would for our guest room, unless the other guy is covering more through independent wealth or something. Who knows? Ivan clearly has non-financial reasons for taking up residence there, and Shobhit and I both commented on how Ivan never stays high on any job situation for more than about a year, or a year and a half at most.
So, we'll see how long this lasts—but, Ivan noted that we'll see each other more often now, which is an indicator of how much I know he does like to spend time with me, his caginess about his exact living location notwithstanding. We can eat out together occasionally, and of course see movies. After Alexia left, Shobhit brought up my plan to return to the Queen Mary Tea Room at Christmastime, and how Shobhit doesn't really want to do it again. Ivan expressed interest, so now the plan is for Alexia and Ivan and I to go together; I'll make reservations for us rather than with Shobhit included, as soon as the target date of December 18 becomes available, probably next weekend (they can only book as many as three months in advance). I'm really looking forward to that. My guess is that Alexia will come and pick us both up and drive us up there; either that or I can just drive Ivan and we can meet here. If Ivan is only two blocks away (something I am also dying to confirm, as Ivan likes to throw out vague numbers without being stictly accurate, but of course he would not reveal specifics, not even the first two digits of his address), that'll make it very easy.
When Ivan left, he actually gave me a big, genuine hug. His engagement even with hugs kind of ebbs and flows; there have been periods where he did them the sort of distant, back-pat kind, but the past few times I've seen him they've been tighter, more affectionate hugs. I prefer the latter; if you're going to give a fake-hug then why do one at all? Anyway, Ivan is the eternal enigma, something I think he really loves being, but over time he's leaned a bit more toward genuine expressions of affection than he ever would have in the past. I was genuinely surprised, for example, when he took the initiative himself last April to suggest he participate in one of my Birth Week activities. And presumably he'll be around again for my Birth Week next year, so I'll invite him along to something then too—granted, always with something I already have planned with someone else, as you just never know with Ivan. I'm leaning toward suggesting he come along on the drive I do with Alexia, which is likely to be to Point Robertson Island on Murray Island, technically a peninsula off of Vashon Island.
I then spent the rest of the evening writing my movie review and then finishing up yesterday's blog post, all of which took a while; then I had some leftovers for dinner and Shobhit and I watched this week's excellent episode of
Lanterns on HBO Max.
— छह हज़ार अठासी —
[posted 12:34pm]
