— पांच हजार तीन सौ छब्बीस —
I had a relatively busy weekend, even though a lot of it wound up having to be rescheduled, and Saturday in particular was, in the end, the only day with socializing—when as originally scheduled I was going to be hanging out with different people three days in a row—and also by far the most packed day.
Initially I was supposed to have December Virtual Happy Hour with Laney on Friday. She texted me earlier that day to ask if we could reschedule for Sunday, which was when I had both an afternoon movie and a movie night at home with Alexia in the evening. I told Laney I would see if Alexia could switch to Friday, which I really assumed she would; but, when I texted Alexia with that proposition she wrote back with,
Hi! It's been A Day. So I actually want to go for a walk in spite of the rain. I think I need to pass. [I'm] tired again. Like super tired so going to walk to QFC for salad. Simply because I need a destination and some distance. Then cook dinner. Then crash. And I totally got that, but also: so much for that idea. I rescheduled with Laney for tonight instead of Monday so that Alexia and I could keep our originally scheduled movie for Sunday night—which she later had to cancel because now she was feeling unwell, with a headache and sore throat. Yes, stay home. Get rest. Everyone and their mother is getting sick these days, with
influenza and
RSV in addition to
covid, although the first two evidently have higher current rates of transmission. I'm seeing an uptick in people masking in public indoor spaces, especially on public transit. I know it doesn't make me invulnerable, especially with so many people around me
not masking, but at least I've been masking all along in those spaces.
Oops, I'm digressing again. I was telling you about Wednesday.
So, with no social activity now planned for Friday, I suggested to Shobhit we go out and do some shopping that evening—I got paid that day. I preferred this over trying to get it done Saturday morning, on a day when I had a lot of stuff planned otherwise already. Now my Friday evening was wide open. At my suggestion, after I got home briefly to feed the cats, I bussed back downtown while he drove directly south through downtown from his work in Interbay so he wouldn't have to drive all the way up to our building on Capitol Hill; I waited for him in the rain on Pine and 2nd Avenue, which didn't take too long. It was raining unusually hard, though, pretty nasty weather for a night out grocery shopping. As long as we were inside, either a building or a car, though, we were fine.
First to Costco, then to PCC. I spent a lot of money. Hopefully won't have to spend more on groceries until the next paycheck. We're stocked up on cat food until then, at least. I had thought I might get paper sacks that have holiday designs on them to use as a cheap alternative for gift wrap. But, because we always bring our own tote bags, I completely spaced it. Dammit!
Then back home, put away groceries, eat dinner, catch up on some of the week's TV:
Wecome to Chippendales and
Fleischman Is in Trouble. We tried to start on the new third season of
His Dark Materials and Shobhit was falling asleep so we put that on hold until later.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ छब्बीस —
Saturday was the long day, mostly spent with Tracy, and her sister Cindy who she also brought along. Tracy and I also had a movie planned in the late afternoon, which Cindy was not going to join us for. I invited Shobhit along for the downtown holiday festivities we were to attend, but he declined. It's just as well, as he would have gotten bored and want to move along sooner than we necessarily would have.
This day was how I finally filled out my
Seattle Holiday Lights and Delights 2022 photo album. The first 11 shots are from when Danielle and I were there on the day of the Lighting of the Tree Ceremony, the day after Thanksgiving. The next four shots are from a week later, December 2, just some better, less-crowded shots of the nighttime light displays taken along my walk home from work that day. And then, this past Saturday, the next 20 shots, taken in the daytime at both Occidental Square and Westlake Park, at "
Saturday Family Fun" afternoon events happening at both parks between noon and 3 the first three Saturdays of December. This was the middle of those three Saturdays.
I was struck by how "happening" the event was at Occidental Square in Pioneer Square, where Tracy, Cindy and I all met up—they drove; I took Light Rail. We met at 1:00, and there was a lot of people there, with
booths and
free ice skating (which I would have loved to do but learned when they arrived that neither Tracy nor Cindy were at all into that idea) and, most important of all, free cookies and
hot chocolate, much like they offer at Holiday in the Park every year at Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill.
I was in the line for hot chocolate when the sisters arrived. As it happens, what Shobhit was expecting at Holiday in the Park but did not happen—hot chocolate not being warm enough—was indeed what happened here. The hot chocolate I got was lukewarm at best. I should have gone for the straight up Darigold eggnog option instead, which I had been very tempted by; I still haven't had that yet this year (I have opened the Egg Nog Wine Cocktail from Total Wine, which I did just last week, but that's not the same). I really wanted a hot drink, though. Which I did not really get. I did, however, get a
great shot of two women in a kind of candy costume that I thought was very cute. They are apparently from an "entertainment design" company called
The Great Surprisal and they asked me to tag them on my socials, so I did on Instagram.
Once I had my cookie (which I stashed in my coat pocket and forgot about until we were back down in the Pioneer Square Light Rail Station) and lukewarm chocolate, we actually stood around for a good while gossiping about a former office coworker at PCC. Then we browsed the line of vendor booths, which I didn't even realize were actually two rows. I got, like, three photos out of that, including a fun one of
Bigfoot eating a footlong sub with the title
Bigfoot Longs. There was also
this paper model of the Smith Tower that you can construct, and I really, really wanted one, but even for $10 I could not justify the spending when my budget is so tight until we go to Australia. I could live without it, and anything I can live without, I need not buy.
Tracy and Cindy had parked close by, but with the expectation that the car would stay there for the day, so I led them to Light Rail, where they both bought Orca Cards. We then took the train up to Westlake Park, where a similar afternoon event was supposed to be happen.
Comparatively, though, Westlake Park was a ghost town. We spent just as much time browsing shops at Westlake Center. I still got 7 shots at Westlake, though having taken 13 in Pioneer Square. Among those 7 was the great shot of the three of us in front of the giant teddy bear, the centerpiece of the light display at Westlake Park—much prettier
at night but still fun in the daytime. I was about to take a selfie and a guy passing by with a little girl offered to take the photo for us, and it was very well done.
I really had expected that, after covid precluded it in 2020 and then the Omicron wave precluded it again in 2021, we would finally see the return of the Holiday Carousel at Westlake Park—but it seems to have been permanently replaced by this "Holiday Lights & Delights" program. Why can't we have both, dammit? I loved that carousel! In fact, in the middle of this paragraph, I stopped writing to try and find anything online explaining what the story is, and came up with nothing. Finally I resorted to visiting the Downtown Seattle Association website, finding their email, and sent them an email to ask about it.
Anyway. I now have a
collection of three photo albums for Holiday Lights & Delights, having gone to it the first two years with Alexia. Those years they also had an "augmented reality" element that was absent this year, which I went with Tracy and Cindy instead. (Alternatively, Alexia and I have a plan this year to do some after-Christmas shopping in the Skagit Valley on the 26th, and visit a new holiday light display on the way home. So, we're still doing multiple holiday things together this year.) 36 shots in 2020; 23 in 2021; 35 in 2022.
And then, something I had not planned to return to this year because I have gone too many times and too often it's all the same—but Tracy and Cindy had never seen it and so, we took the Monorail from Westlake Center to Seattle Center, so they could see the annual
Winterfest that happens there, with its centerpiece model Winter Train & Village in the Armory building. As it happened, I found a bunch of details that were either new (
references to the new
Kraken professional hockey team) or I never noticed before, resulting in a surprise
27-shot photo album for that stop on our holiday tour alone. I am now more convinced than ever that I will have a record number of holiday photo albums for Christmas 2022 this year; with that added, I am already at
10 albums, and Christmas hasn't even arrived yet, nor has the PCC Holiday Brunch coming this Friday, or Gingerbread Village, or potentially two different holiday light displays. I may or may not scratch the return to the Teddy Bear Suite at the Fairmont Hotel off my list. Either way, in the end I am liable to have 14 or 15 holiday season photo albums this year.
Tracy was looking for hot apple cider. I looked on Yelp and found nothing. They went over to the bubble tea place and found they were selling it, right there in the Armory food court. Tracy
bought me one while I was in the bathroom, which was nice of her. I had only taken a few photos by that point, thinking that if I did have an unexpected album for this event this year that it would be very small. Then after Cindy headed back to the Monorail to get back to her car, Tracy and I went over to look at the Winter Train & Village model and I found 14 new shots to take in that spot alone.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ छब्बीस —
After that, Tracy and I walked over to SIFF Cinema at the Uptown, which had the most convenient showtime for us for the movie we then finally got to go see, after Tracy had to postpone two weeks in a row due to her own illness (again, not covid, but something else):
Bones and All, which I
did not like quite as much as I wanted to (B-minus; I was hoping at least for B+). Even Tracy seemed unable quite to know how to feel about it as we left. "That was really . . . fucked up," she said. Indeed it was.
She had earlier made a passing suggestion that we get dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant after the movie, and I half expected to do just that. Except, I discovered when I bought my ticket that my SIFF membership had expired for the year last month, which I did not realize, and that meant an unexpected $60 expense to renew it. I had already put $30 tentatively in my budget for this possible dinner, so that covered half of that, at least. And it wasn't even the money at first that made me pass on dinner—it was the fact that, with my membership renewal, I got a free medium popcorn, which the two of us couldn't even eat all of. (Tracy also bought Twizzlers, and gave me like three of them.) This was just too much food and that was why I passed on dinner, realizing later that the expense of the membership renewal was really the reason to pass.
But whatever. Tracy decided that meant she could just get her own dinner at Dick's across the street. So, we hugged and parted ways there, and I took the Monorail back to Westlake Center, and from there walked over to Cost Plus World Market, because with Shobhit's membership he got a one-day deal for free gift wrap with any purchase. I ran out of gift wrap last year and needed some for the calendars, so with the email code Shobhit forwarded me, I went over there to get that.
I took some time figuring out what the hell to buy for my purchase. After several minutes wandering around, I suddenly remembered I needed to buy a gift for the White Elephant gift exchange at work on Friday. Perfect! What do get, then? They had made a maximum limit of $25. I wound up buying two bags of Kit Kats from Japan, one a matcha flavor and the other one strawberry. They were expensive for what they were: $8 each, but that was why I bought two: I didn't want to spend only $8 for something with a $25 maximum. With tax the two together came to just over $17; I decided that was good enough. I feel confident multiple people will want these and they will get solen/traded probably more than once.
I later had to send Alexia a photo of them, because she and I have looked for exotic Kit Kats at H Mart Asian grocery stores multiple times, and lately they haven't really had them. Funny that in the end I should finally find them at World Market.
So anyway, I felt pretty productive after that: another task taken care of. I was actually hemming and hawing in my mind whether to get the Kit Kats or something else, but then Shobhit texted me that the #11 was leaving in 9 minutes. That forced my decision and I just got the Kit Kats, made my purchase as quickly as I could, then hustled the several blocks to the bus stop—literally running half the time. I barely made it on time for the bus, feeling like I was going to die.
Shobhit had spent the day watching the four episodes of
Wednesday on Netflix that I had already watched. He wasn't as impressed, felt it ripped off Harry Potter too much. I loved it, but we watched the rest of it over the rest of the weekend, and even I say the back half is not nearly as good. I still enjoy it, but I'm listening to a recap podcast where, after also liking the first four episodes, are really kind of shitting on the back half. They have a lot of fair points.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ छब्बीस —
Yesterday I went to see another movie, this one on my own:
White Noise, which is not playing at AMC Theaters so I had to pay for a ticket at Regal. The showtimes weren't as good for me at the downtown Meridian, so I took Light Rail to Northgate to see it. I don't know why I had it on my calendar at 12:15; I kind of rushed to get out there on time, only to discover the showtime wasn't until 12:40. I'm very good at killing time though so it wasn’t a huge deal.
And then I really enjoyed the movie, even though I can't call it a great movie because I couldn't fully make sense of it. But I'm kind of eager to watch it again, just because it was so much fun to watch the first time. I had a curious weekend of horror genre mashup movies:
Bones and All is horror-romance, which was a big part of what did not work for me;
White Noise is more like "horror dramedy," which very much
did work for me. Easily the most high-budget, elaborately staged movie Noah Baumbach has ever done. His style is very much part of it, but it also has a very deliberately kind of throwback feel to it that I really dug.
I came back home, wrote the review. My evening was freed again since Alexia canceled. Danielle had texted me during the movie asking if I wanted to get lunch because she was in Seattle. That ship sailed. I have too many friends who live by spontaneity. Being spontaneous only works when you happen to catch me on a day I have not already planned something, which is rare. I texted her back but she was clearly headed back home; I never heard from her again yesterday.
Shobhit and I finished
Wednesday yesterday. We also watched my library DVD copy of one of the many Coen Brothers movies I love,
Inside Llewyn Davis, and I ironed three shirts while we watched that. Then, the fantastic and impressively tied up finale of season two of
The White Lotus. Endless theories of who was the body in the water shown at the beginning of episode 1: no one predicted who it actually was. Mike White really is a gifted writer.
Gabriel and I have been discussing our own versions of the "10 best movies of all time," in the wake of the recent revelation of the wave-making 2022 Sight and Sound list. I sent him my longstanding list at first, which I knew he would scoff at; it doesn't include anything more recent than 2003. So, I sent him an updated list of what I consider "best" as opposed to what are merely my favorites. This is a working list, but drawing from genre favorites and favorite directors and an attempt to represent every decade at least since the fifties, this is what I came up with:
10.
Apocalypse Now (1979)
9.
Amélie (2001)
8.
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
7.
Fargo (1996)
6.
Moonlight (2016)
5.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
4.
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
3.
Blade Runner (1982)
2.
Jaws (1975)
1.
Psycho (1960)
He had already sent me a list of his own, some of which genuinely surprised me, but it turns out he had done his own version of my longstanding list of just personal favorites, so now he wants to refine his and send again at some point. In any case, finished up the above list while we were watching
Wednesday; I texted it to him while I was ironing and watching
Inside Llewyn Davis; he tried to call me back but I had too much going on and said I would call him later, which I tried to do after we finished
The White Lotus.
He didn't answer at first. Then, Shobhit got an email from our building managers that he still owed money for our p-patch plots even though we already paid for them. He needed my help finding the documented proof, which he treated like some kind of fucking emergency, and he quickly jumped to yelling at me for truly no good reason whatsoever, which made me also fly off the handle which sure as shit didn't help things (seriously, I was screaming so furiously I was spitting), and then we were in the middle of this big, unbelievably stupid fight when Gabriel tried to call me back again.
About ten minutes later, I finally called Gabriel back. I suspect Shobhit thought I might vent about him with Gabriel, and under normal circumstances I might have, but I truly wanted just to get into this discussion about movies. And although the fight was over, I had Gabriel on speakerphone and Shobhit sat on the bed with me as thought he might participate, which at that moment I had no patience for; Shobhit would have no constructive or insightful contribution to this. So, admittedly a little rudely, I just said, "Why do you need to be here?" And Shobhit went to the living room to watch TV and Gabriel then had a comfortable conversation for the next hour, which was honestly calming and nice. I was glad to have that conversation as the last thing before bed.
Sometimes I think Shobhit has some kind of relationship death wish. Like, he's so afraid we won't actually work out in the end, that he figures he might as well sabotage things to hasten the inevitable. I don't think of anything as inevitable in our relationship—our ever breaking up is not inevitable; our staying together forever is also not inevitable—but when he starts insisting that he's too old to change his behaviors, which is transparently untrue, I start to wonder what the fuck I'm doing here. He doesn't want to give himself any credit because he doesn’t want to make the effort to work on us the way we both should be. I largely don't work on it hard enough either; I just feel like I work harder than he does. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I can do to strengthen our relationship, whereas it feels like he spends more time just having a defeatist attitude, about life in general. I do understand that an inability to get back into a career with a livable wage is dispiriting. A lot of that he winds up taking out on me, which I don't know if I can live with for the rest of my life.
That said, I still have vast room to grow when it comes to my own behaviors, my complicity in the cycle of hostility that we can often have. I don't think it's fair to make any rash, life-breaking decisions before doing more work on my own shit first. I just wish he thought more about working on
his own shit, but, his shit isn't really my responsibility. I'm still perfectly happy with him the vast majority of the time. Just not when he turns into this Hyde monster version of himself. (To be fair, I did the exact same thing in response.) There are far more productive ways to deal with that than I usually manage. I've seen it done. Danielle, of all people, has done it. Being an effective parent makes you more adept at it, apparently, when a grown-ass adult is acting like a child. I don't have any children which seems to make me more inclined to
respond like a child.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ छब्बीस —
[posted 12:26 pm]
