Lunchest Hour
Last night was completely taken up by Shobhit and me going to the Regal Thornton Cinemas in Northgate to see an advanced screening of Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman in maybe his greatest performance. I actually have no idea when the movie is set to open locally -- its published U.S. release date is December 22 -- but I'm always happy to get advanced screenings to Oscar-bait movies before the end of the year, so that I can review them myself within their technical release year. I didn't have much to worry about on that front; it was really good but far from great enough to make it onto my year-end top ten. (If I were to rank performances, Gary Oldman's would make it on that list, however.)
I walked home from work and was home maybe five minutes before leaving again. Ivan was home, having taken a "mental health day" from work, but he must have been napping. I turned on the Christmas lights so they'd be on all evening while we're not home. I don't know how much Ivan enjoys them, or not. I do know Tommy liked them when he lived with me -- he was openly disappointed when I took them down after New Year's.
Complete aside: I realized recently that once Ivan moves out, sometime next year, I will have been living with roommates for eight years. Eight years. That's a long time, actually. Nearly a decade! And a total of eight roommates, come to think of it: Delan from 2010 to 2011; Anthony in 2011; Gil from 2011 to 2012; Fabricio 2012 to 2013; the truly awful Gautam for four and a half months in 2013; Ivan in both 2014 and late 2016-2018; Tommy 2015-16. Wait, that's seven. I was counting Ivan twice, since he's lived with me twice. Only Tommy and Ivan lived with me longer than a year -- Tommy for precisely a year and a half; Ivan for eight months in 2014 and, so far, one full year for the current stint, and 20 months cumulatively. Ivan is the best of the bunch by far, and not just because he's the most attractive -- he's also been the cleanest, the most courteous, the friendliest, the warmest, and most importantly, the most dependable (he's literally the only one who has never been late paying rent). I was very fond of Tommy as well, for the record; and I think my much better experience after the disaster that was Gautam is because he made me learn the lesson that all subsequent roommates must be subject to a credit check. I never did that before him.
In any case, much as I will miss Ivan -- and I will miss him terribly -- it will still be good to get back to the normal that Shobhit and I had prior to March 2010, with it being just the two of us again. The convenience of rent revenue notwithstanding, there are a lot of freedoms will be able to enjoy again without living with someone.
Anyway! I fed the cats and I was on my way again, walking down to Convention Place Station to catch a #41 express to Northgate -- during rush hour those buses come like every six minutes, so it was hardly even necessary to check the schedule or even One Bus Away. A bus came within about three minutes of my arriving at the stop. The one thing that was annoying was how our bus took the express lanes and the regular lanes had faster moving traffic. But, I still made very good time and got to the theatre right around 6:00 -- the time I told Shobhit would be good to get in line. He got in line almost half an hour earlier than that, and there were already plenty of people in line in front of him. This rather surprised me for a theatre so far outside the downtown core of Seattle -- where, typically, a full hour is plenty of time ahead. Whoever coordinated this screening must have just done a better job of getting the word out, which seems to be a pretty key factor in some of these things. Sometimes I'm at advanced screenings and the house isn't even full, which seems like a real failure on the part of the promoters.
Shobhit was easily coerced into joining me only because I stressed the movie was free -- he's certain to get a screener of it for the SAG Awards, so he's not going to want to pay to see it. He'd bought a burrito at Chipotle that we shared as soon as I arrived. After the movie, he declared that John Lithgow's Winston Churchill in The Crown was better than Gary Oldman's here, which is a fair argument -- but, as I said in my review, all you have to do is look up any audio of a Churchill speech to realize Gary Oldman's performance was closer to the real man. He's currently the front runner for Best Actor and right now I actually think he deserves it.
I was too tired to write the review last night, even though we got home by 9:30. By sheer coincidence, Ivan was in the building lobby when we got there, about to go into the gym to work out. He seemed oddly taken aback by seeing us so unexpectedly -- something sort of unusual in his face, like it had made him nervous or something. I could be misreading. That was all I saw of him yesterday, as even though his workout was brief, I was in bed before he was done. I slept like a log all night -- I really appreciate it when that happens, as it's increasingly difficult to get that with any consistency -- so I couldn't even tell you when Shobhit came to bed. I think it's doubly good to have gotten a solid seven hours of sleep since I will surely be up past my bedtime tonight, having to drive down to Tacoma to see a 7:15 screening of Star Wars: The Last Jedi in Tacoma, and it's two hours and 32 minutes long. I'm not even going to be leaving Tacoma to come back until 10:15 at the earliest.
I just got back from lunch with Karen at the Six-Seven Restaurant at the Edgewater Hotel. We split the truffle macaroni and cheese, which is a $20 entrée, even though I'm currently some $230 over budget, which makes Shobhit all twitchy, but he'll live -- especially since a lot of that has to do with extra spending for the visit with Mom and Bill last weekend, and also I've got 197 cashed out vacation hours coming on tomorrow's paycheck. If Shobhit had his way, I would cancel a lunch like the one I had today precisely because of being over budget, but that's never going to happen. Karen and I have lunch the second and fourth Thursdays of every month and that's that! Okay I suppose we could have split a cheaper entrée. But damn it, those truffle macaroni and cheese is so fucking good.
The wait staff does sometimes take a bit long to get our check to us, though. We had to sit in the bar today because the dining room was too full. There was one open booth but it was up a step, and Karen is a wheelchair user, so that wouldn't work.
Anyway, we just spent time catching up and chatting, mostly about travel and about politics and about what Shobhit and I have been up to. Standard stuff, really. As pleasant a lunch as ever with Karen. I was a little worried about Scott making some snide comment about how long I was gone, which happened the last time I didn't get back until around 1:30 when I left for lunch just before noon. I got back today at 1:23 though and when I got back he was distracted. I don’t think he even realizes exactly how long I've been back anyway. And besides, who gives a shit? I'm on salary here.
Still, I guess I should get back to work now.
[posted 1:30 pm]