I should have stuck with my plans
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Shobhit was gone most of the evening last night, working an evening shift. My plan was to come home, have some dinner, and then take myself to a movie downtown.
The movie showing wasn't until 7:35 and I'm unusually into the book I'm reading right now, Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night -- it actually occurred to me last night that this is the third book I have read about David Letterman, although it's the first straightforward biography. The other two were both about late night wars he was in, or at least related to: The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night, which was about the infamous battle between those two for the role of hosting The Tonight Show, originally published in 1994 but which I read in 2011, when Letterman was still four years from retirement. The other was The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy, which was both published and read by me in 2011 -- I read the 1994 book first just as background as I knew I would find it interesting. (I gave the 1994 book a B and the 2011 book a B+). Anyway, The War for Late Night focused on the 2010 Leno vs. Conan O'Brien debacle rather than on Letterman, but had a lot about Letterman in it for obviously relevant reasons, including both his own history with Jay Leno and how openly amused he was by the Conan O'Brien thing, which he was happy both not to be a part of and to make fun of or revel in.
In any case, this Letterman biography is one of those rare books I'm getting through at a steady pace because I find myself wanting to pick it up at the expense of doing other things, as opposed to the usual scenario of being distracted from reading by other things. And I was spending my ninety minutes I expected to be at home before the movie, in the living room, reading the book.
Ivan has only worked one night this week, though -- Wednesday -- as his previously standard weeknight swing shifts schedule has been altered by his switching to being "on call," in an effort at transitioning as he looks for a new job, as he is very unhappy with this one. (I think he becomes unhappy with pretty much any job after a year or two, to be honest. He's indicated he's never kept one for longer, and nursing work is in such high demand he can easily find it at new places.) So he was actually at home and in his room when I got home from work, and after a while he came out and greeted me and chatted for a bit. And he said, "Maybe we could watch a movie tonight."
I said I was planning to go see a movie, and when he asked which one and I told him, he was clearly not interested. But I was not married to going to it and I said so; if he tried hard enough he could convince me to stay home and watch a movie with him. He told me which two movies from Netflix he had, and either one of them I could have gone for -- and probably should have. I said, "We could watch Brazil, which we talked about." He said okay. And after he made himself some dinner and it was nearly 8:00, I suggested we watch the movie.
He was not into it. I think maybe it was too busy and frantic and complicated for him, which he rarely gets into. I probably should have known. He sat on the love seat but within minutes was absorbed not in the movie but, typical, his phone. I had not watched it in a long time and actually found myself thinking about how well constructed the script really is. Also, Brazil -- which came out in 1985, the year Ivan was born -- is easily one of the most cynical movies ever made, which is one of the many things I love about it. It takes some real paying attention to it to get that, though, which Ivan was not doing.
It's also long: 142 minutes. Ivan lasted about 80 of those. The movie was about half over and he actually finally put his phone down and looked at the screen for maybe five minutes. And then he got up and said, "I have to go work out." As Ivan went to put on his shoes, I said, "I guess you weren't into it." He said, "No. Sorry." I said it was all right; we should have watched one of his movies.
It did make me feel like my evening was a bit of a bust -- I would have been much more satisfied in the end with actually going to the movie downtown that I wanted to see. I can't blame Ivan for that any more than I can blame myself, though. And that was also kind of just an attitude problem on my part, because there were still other benefits to my not going to the movie: I saved the ticket money; I spent quite a lot of time reading a book I'm really enjoying; I took a brief walk to go pick up the cats' medicine in the lock box outside the vet clinic just a little less than three quarters of a mile away.
I took the book with me on that walk, and saw Ivan in the gym downstairs through the window as I passed and we smiled at each other. It was dusk and that made reading a slight challenge as I walked, particularly on the way back, but I made it work. Once I got back, I got ready for bed except for the undressing, and then went back to read for a few minutes in the living room, until Shobhit got home from work.
I knew Shobhit would be happy that I was not in bed yet when he got home, so I waited for him. Sometimes a small gesture goes a long way. He had also asked me to make a simple dinner for him of an egg and black beans with a couple of tortillas, and I didn't push back on that like I usually might, because I wasn't doing anything more important and it was an easy thing to do. Another small gesture that goes a long way. It wouldn't hurt me to keep these sorts of things in mind.
I might watch the final hour of Brazil tomorrow morning while everyone else is still sleeping. Or I suppose while Ivan is sleeping and Shobhit is at work; he has a morning shift. I do want to finish it, but didn't feel like finishing it by myself last night. Once Ivan made it clear he lost interest, I was more interested in the book. And that's saying a lot, given how much I love Brazil. I wish all books were like this, beckoning me to pick it up and keep reading. For me it's fairly rare that that happens.
I'm finally keeping to my word about my plans to move away from LiveJournal, by the way. I still don't know when I will do it formally, at which point I'll probably just leave a final post here with a link to that blog. My trial account on Squarespace ends on July 16, so I'm guessing it will happen sometime later this month. I have posted the last three DLUs I posted here over there, and am only just starting to get the hang of the slightly different ways I have to do things to get the relatively same effect. I may have to start living without the daily Twitter digests; I'm not sure. I'm not as concerned about that anymore since I can search for things fairly easily on Twitter anyway -- although I do like being able to include the Twitter digests in certain tagged entries, like when I go on trips or for Pride or holidays, stuff like that. Still, if I have to do that, it's a pretty small price to pay for finally getting out of the increasing frustrations of this blog service I have been using for fifteen years.
The greatest benefit to my moving from LiveJournal to my own domain (via Squarespace) will actually be to the readers: no more stupid fucking ads. I had been completely ignorant of that for far too long, and I have Gabriel to thank for bringing that to my attention. Then he can go to that other site to see what I've been saying about him (and I've written far less about him at all than usual since the beginning of this year, a conscious choice I made months ago -- not just because I've literally seen him in person only three times since New Year's, but because I knew it would be better for all of us under current circumstances).
I know he worries about my "friends-only" entries, though, even though none of those are ever about him. I just went through my archives and I have posted one such entry so far in 2017, and I didn't even email that one to anyone like I have a few people in the past (it related to another friend, or someone I used to be friends with I guess, something that's now kind of ancient history and had no relevance to anyone I typically emailed friends-only entries to anyway). I have since kind of decided to do away with friends-only entries altogether -- which I suppose works perfectly since I won't have a "friends list" on the new site anyway -- because, really, I should learn to express how I feel about things, or even people, in a way that is diplomatic enough to be public without running the risk of damaging relationships -- or, as I have started this year in a way I never really did before, just not express certain feelings about certain things at all. I still share more than plenty about my own life as it is, as you can plainly see. Maybe I still skate on thin ice. The goal here, really, is to make the ice a little thicker.
Ivan was up earlier this morning than I've ever seen him up without having anything scheduled -- I saw him when I went to take my cereal bowl back to the dishwasher, and said, "What are you doing up?" It was before even 6 a.m. and it weirded me out; I even told him so. He said he just couldn't sleep. He was then chattier than usual, when I needed to go get ready, but I still talked for a minute or two. And out of nowhere he even asked me how Gabriel is doing. "Same as usual, I presume," was all I could say. I do think about him a lot.
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