— छह हज़ार चौरासी —
My Labor Day Weekend was actually pretty uneventful, until Monday—with the exception of these things:
* Friday: I rode my bike home from work, then Shobhit walked with me directly to the Walgreens six blocks away on Broadway, where I got my first shingles vaccine shot. This vaccine is a series of two, and I was a little nervous about it, but always knew that whatever the effects of the shot would be beyond minor compared to ever getting shingles. Grandma Minor had it once, and she was walking around with her arm in a sling and no shirt over the affected portions of her skin, in agonizing pain if any part of it was touched. No, thank you.
Shobhit always worries about how I'm going to react to a shot, even though I get them regularly and am always fine. They still freak me out a little and I take care not to ever look at the syringe, which might indeed make me faint. And then I'm always anxious about how much the injection of the substance itself, beyond just the insertion of the needle, might hurt. Shobhit asked if I wanted him to come back with me and I said I was fine. Honestly he would have distracted me more than I needed had he been in the room.
I did hyperventilate a little, as always, when it came in. And it did hurt a fair bit, but was over in like half a second. The lady, who had a thick accent that I think maybe was Hispanic, was kind of funny about it. First she told me I looked too young to need a shingles vaccine, which I always love to hear. And then when it was over, she said, "Good boy!" But fairly quickly, after a very slight moment of hesitation, she said, "Or, good girl!" As I often do in these situations, I opted not to clarify either way and just let her gender me however she wanted.
My arm pretty quickly felt like someone had punched it really hard, and it was sore for pretty much the entire weekend. It feels fine as I type this today, but today is maybe the first day it got completely to fine. More to the point, I had kept my calendar clear both Friday evening and and all day Saturday just in case I had any reaction to this vaccine. And I did, but very minor, as is basically always the case with vaccine shots: I felt not quite sick bit a little off until later in the day on Saturday. I would up taking a pretty solid nap Saturday afternoon, and felt a lot better after I woke up from that. I felt relatively close to normal by Sunday, though.
It was on Saturday that I went ahead made appointments, at the same Walgreens, for the
four more vaccine shots I'm going to need between now and January: I'll get my annual covid booster on Sunday September 20th; my annual flu shot on Sunday October 11 (both covid and flu are about a week later than I got them last year); my pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine on Sunday November 15; and my second and final shingles shot on Friday, January 15. Just like this last weekend, especially for that shingles shot I have again marked my calendar to keep free Friday evening and all day Saturday. The other shots are all scheduled mid-morning on Sundays and we'll just see how I'm feeling the rest of the day on those days. Also with the shingles vaccine, it's recommended you get the shot two to six months after the first; Shobhit apparently got his after only two months, but I have all these other ones to get too, and really don't want to double-up on any of them in one sitting, even though Walgreens encourages it (probably just for the convenience and to get more people to get needed vaccines). I already have three more scheduled between September and November, and I have so much holiday planning going on that I can't really block off a Friday evening and a Saturday. So, I decided to wait on the second shingles shot until after the holidays are over, in January, which is still within the 2-6 month window: it'll be four months after my first shot.
Five shots in as many months. Bleh.
* Saturday: other than making all my other vaccine appointments, I spent most of the day just sort of hanging out at home. This made it easier to wear shorts all weekend, something I already missed being able to do after the weather necessitated pants again last week, even though Saturday in particular was not super warm. It got warm enough, though. I'm back in pants today for work but am also back in my Hush Puppies sandals, which I really love; the forecast high of 73° is borderline for shorts weather in my opinion, especially biking to work this morning at 52°; but, it's plenty warm still for sandals. If I were at home I'd still be wearing shorts. This is a bit of a turn from how my attitude has been most of my life, as I always wanted to get the summer heat over with and move into the coziness of fall and winter. Maybe I'd feel better about it again if I lost a few pounds and fit more comfortably in my jeans—or, maybe, if I found pants that fit the way my favorite shorts do, with elastic waistbands and drawstrings. I've just become very enamored with how comfortable they are.
Anyway! A while after my nap on Saturday, Shobhit asked if I wanted to go for a walk, and I was more game than usual, as I just wanted to get out of the house. We wound up down at Pike Place and then Victor Steinbrueck Park, where I got a couple lovely photos of the sunset.
When we got back, Shobhit had already watched 15 minuts of Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film
2001: A Space Odyssey, which he found on HBO Max and this was how I discovered it seems he hasn't seen
any Kubrick film—I thought I was long since done showing him major specimens of American film history. I guess not. It was a fascinating watch in 2026, how much of it looks artificial now but was amazing special effects for the time. This movie is nearly 60 years old now; when it was half that age it still retained a lot of its sense of wonder, but three decades of CGI in other movies have kind of ruined it. It's still a very fascinating, and certainly narratively baffling, watch. I still don't have a clue what the fuck that ending is all about. That said, I am now eager for Shobhit to see
The Shining, which is unfortunately not streaming anywhere; and
Eyes Wide Shut, which I think I'll add for a re-watch during my "Christmas movie" watches this year—I last did this in 2020.
— छह हज़ार चौरासी —
— छह हज़ार चौरासी —
* Sunday: I took myself to a movie on Sunday, and this one was at SIFF Cinema at the Uptown. A while before it, Shobhit suggested walking to the Capitol Hill Farmers Market, and so we did that; we then walked a while longer, until I was trying to decide whether to go home first and ride my bike to the movie as originally planned, or just go direct from our walk. I had a lot of time to kill, but when Shobhit suggested he just walk with me to the theater, which would take us close to an hour, that was perfect, and so that's what we did. We walked down the overpass across the freeway that takes you down by REI, and then walked up to Seattle Center mostly along Thomas Street straight through downtown.
Shobhit thought he could get into the Armory at Seattle Center to use the bathroom, but even that was closed for Bumbershoot. We walked around Seattle Center and thought maybe he could use the bathroom at the KEXP building—but, that was also closed for Bumbershoot. I haven't gone to Bumbershoot in many years now and am consdidering doing it again some year soon. There was a period there where the festival almost died, some other organizers revived it, and tickets were so much more expensive it was bonkers. I just looked it up though and a one-day ticket can go for as low as $70; considering I spent like $60, I think, at least once, that's almost reasonable. It depends on whether they still showcase comedians, which was all I ever used to go to it to see. (I discovered Rory Scovel at a Bumbershoot festival one year.)
I just looked it up, and I last went in 2013 and in 2014. In 2013 I went for one day and it cost $57.50. In 2014 I paid $117 for two days, so close to the same per day. It would have been the next year they went far too high for me to consider worth it. I should make a note to at least look into it next year.
Anyway, the movie I saw was
The Marching Band, a French film that had huge success in its native country in 2024 and which I really enjoyed a great deal. It was totally worth paying $12 to see, because it was only playing at SIFF Cinema and not at any AMC where I could use my monthly membership.
I would have caught the #8 bus home from there, but it wasn't coming for another 23 minutes when the movie let out. And normally I can walk right through Seattle Center to the Monorail in cases like this, but Bumbershoot had it closed off. I still just walked around and caught the Monorail. And instead of transferring to Light Rail at Westlake Center, I saw that a #10 bus was coming soon enough, and it arrived right as I got to the bus stop over on 6th and Pike. I rode the rest of the way home and spent some time writing my movie review.
Shobhit also has an e-book checked out the library that he's been reading on his laptop, and that's been giving us some time away from screens otherwise. (I know, reading an e-book is still a screen.) I've been appreciating this as it is giving me more time to read my own e-book library copy of
Madonna: A Rebel Life, a very thick biography that is therefore much easier just to read on my phone, and which I have been reading since we went to Amsterdam.
— छह हज़ार चौरासी —
So that all brings me to yesterday, the most eventful day of the weekend: Alexia came over and hung out for several hours. The first couple of hours were just with me, as Shobhit had a Labor Day event to go to with his fellow SAG-AFTRA labor union local board members. He made a bunch of food for Alexia's visit, though, and I helped him with a lot of preparation Saturday evening after I was done writing my movie review. The only thing he didn't have made by the time he left yesterday morning was deep fried kachoris (or puris; he couldn't seem to decide which they were—once made, though, they were fucking delicious), which I helped him fry after he got back home at around 1:45.
I had told Alexia we'd have food, though, and I reheated most of it in time for her arrival. She said she was starving and so I also ate a bit with her, just so she wouldn't be eating alone. And then we started on the
Sunflowers puzzle I bought at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which of course we were barely able to get started, as it's very difficult with so much of it basically the same shades of yellow, orange and green. We still don't even have all the edges done.
When Shobhit got home, we made the puris/kachoris, and sat down to eat—we all ate at the coffee table, since we had the puzzle on the dining table, and the pots and pans of food were taking up half the table as well, to be dished from buffet style. Shobhit made an eggplant and potato dish; a black beans dish with more of the beans we got from Alexia herself when a friend passed away some months ago; an okra dish I didn't touch because okra is fucking disgusting; plus chopped salt and pepper cucumbers and a yogurt thing with shredded cucumber in it. I don't care for plain yogurt so I didn't eat that either; much like sour cream in Mexican food, which to me is similar, I prefer to eat my dishes without it.
Then, once I was through most of my second plate of food (and Alexia's third; she actually had seconds before Shobhit even got home), I finally set about what was the primary aim for the day: taking Alexia through
a slide show of photos from the trip to Europe, all but one of which had
not already been used in the five different email travelogues I sent out. This would not have been quite as fantastic for her as it was when I showed her a slide show of photos from Yellowstone in 2018, as those would almost all have been nature shots and these were almost all in cities. But, she was still pretty engaged and seemed to like a lot of the centuries-old architecture and few examples of cool public art and such.
I think Alexia was at our place for a good six hours or so yesterday. Maybe the last hour or so was when I asked if she'd like a tour of the rooftop decks in the condo complex, as they are all finished now and much improved from when she lived there, particularly with wood floors. They're all really quite nice, and there were three in the west building and two in our east building to show her. When we went onto the first terrace on the 7th floor of our building, we were surprised to see Tony and Sarah up there, with a couple friends of theirs. Tony and Sarah are our direct neighbors to the west on the fourth floor; Alexia used to be our direct neighbor to the east. I'm pretty sure Alexia and Tony hadn't seen each other since Alexia moved, so they spent a little bit of time catching up.
The terraces all have new furniture as well, and it's also very nice. We then went back downstairs, Alexia packed some leftovers to take home, and she was on her way. I'll be hanging out with her again this coming weekend, both Saturday (breakfast in Pioneer Square + Architecture Tour) and Sunday (double feature of the original
Practical Magic at home and then
Practical Magic 2 in the theater).
— छह हज़ार चौरासी —
Not long after Alexia left, Shobhit and I took another walk last night. We did the standard route of going up 15th to Louisa Boren Lookout, through Volunteer Park, and back along Broadway. I suggested we go in and look at Bruce Lee's grave when we passed Lakeview Cemetery, and so we also did that; the last photo I took of those grave stones was taken in 2014. I'm not often eager to go on these walks but yesterday I was into the idea of walking off at least some of all that food.
— छह हज़ार चौरासी —
[posted 12:39pm]
