solo movie / lunch with elin
Shobhit usually jumps at the chance to get a Social Review point, but yesterday he wasn't feeling great so he opted not to join me for Victoria & Abdul, which I instead saw by myself at 4:45 at Pacific Place. I left work 15 minutes early so I'd get there on time, as I was walking -- I didn't ride my bike, then or today, because of rain in the forecast in the afternoon.
It didn't rain yesterday after all though. I want a fucking refund! Okay, actually it sprinkled slightly as I walked home after the movie; it was already getting dark at 6:50 when I left the Pacific Place building. I only had my umbrella open for less than five minutes, though, before I collapsed it again. By the time I was walking up Capitol Hill, even the sprinkling had let up. So much for "rain." Maybe today will be different.
Shobhit and I had eggplant squash with rotis for dinner, the rotis from a frozen package but the eggplant dish made by him. He waited to eat until I got home, and we did the New York Times crossword. And then I wrote my movie review. That pretty much sums up the evening. Nothing else happened, nothing else to comment on.
Except maybe this: the massive relationship clashing between us from a couple of weeks ago has predictably ebbed. The flow will return again one day, to be sure, but not likely before he leaves for India on Monday next week. We've been living pretty harmoniously for a couple of weeks now. I feel like we're both being much more careful, just generally speaking, with how we're treating and reacting to each other. The trick is in maintaining that, of course. I still think his trip to India will be a good break for us.
. . . And now, the reason I'm posting this so much later than usual (it's 1:51 as I type): I just got back from lunch with Elin at Boat Street Kitchen, right across the street -- well, on the other side of the block. It finally happened! We've been talking about having lunch for ages. I'm not sure we have in about a year. In fact, Elin mentioned that Café Artemis, which we had lunch at with Mimi in August last year but they said at the time they were closing in a month, had re-opened. I'll have to go back there again one of these days -- maybe with Karen. But I still wanted to do Boat Street Kitchen today as planned.
Anyway, that was the last time I had lunch with her -- fourteen months ago. I see her fleetingly every once in a while when she's in the office for Board meetings but she's usually too busy to spend much time chatting with me, if at all.
It was great food; we both had the eggplant sandwich they had on their otherwise fairly limited menu but it was super tasty. And it was as wonderfully lively conversation as ever, the kind where when you have a friendship with someone you can pick up right where you left off no matter how long it's been. It was like slipping into something comfortable and familiar. I really do have a deep amount of affection for her and I always will.
She talked about how much it sucks getting older. And all sorts of stuff about what it's been like this past year and a half on the Board, halfway through her term, and she doesn't know yet if she'll want to run for re-election. I told her about how more than one person has told me they felt like PCC has "lost its soul," and she said, "It just makes me want to strangle people when they say that!" Indeed. As I put it to her, this "soul" they think PCC is losing may not be something viable going into the future. And my love of PCC has yet to wane even a little -- if anything, after the move to this spectacular location and space, it's intensified.
I also updated her a bit on my family -- how things are going between my brother and me, and the like. We walked back to our building using the crosswalk over Elliott Avenue, and now it's time for me to get back to work.
[posted 1:59 pm]