I have some time today to post about what's gone on this weekend thus far, mostly because Shobhit got a call early this afternoon asking if he was interested in an evening shift at work, and since it was to end at 8:15 and thus still leave us plenty of time for our New Year's Eve plans anyway, with my encouragement, he took it. I'm writing this at 4:21 pm and his shift started at 3:15. He left home at 2:45, shortly after which I took a roughly one-hour walk to Target and back. I had nothing better to do. And now I'm writing a journal post.

But I should back up, I suppose. Friday.

There were very few people at work on Friday, and most people went home early just as I had already planned to leave. In fact I left at 12:30 instead of at noon because Danielle was running behind -- Morgan apparently got a bloody nose, something she gets fairly commonly, I guess. I texted Danielle back, Well tell her to stop, but that didn't seem to make any difference.

Scott actually stayed home from work that day because he was feeling unwell, and he said he didn't want to infect everyone. I bet more than one person read that and thought they wished I had done the same one day a week or two ago when I came to work coughing all day. I wasn't too terrible about it, I swear.

Justine, the Center Store Director who was one of the few other people in Merchandising who came to work that day, was encouraging us all to go home not long after noon as it was. This is actually pretty rare ever since Tracy the ex-CEO left -- he used to close the office early quite reliably for holidays, but Cate never does. The only reason the office closed up a bit early the Friday before Christmas was because the office cleaners came in early, around 3:00 in the afternoon.

I finally left around 12:30, and it was still close to 1:00 by the time Danielle, Morgan and Ryley had finally parked and found their way to me. I passed the time by watching that day's Winterfest performance on the main stage in the Seattle Center Armory, called "Acrobatalist Ninja Theatre," and spent some of the many text exchanges with Morgan (probably at Danielle's behest because she was driving) telling her about how some of them were hot and shirtless. I figured she's thirteen now, that's not too inappropriate, right? She seemed to think it was pretty hilarious, anyway. Most of them were fully clothed for most of the show, anyway. I texted her a couple of pictures, lamenting that the guy had put his shirt back on.

I was getting too hungry, though, so I texted her that I couldn't wait anymore and I was going over to the Blue Water Taco Grill to get my vegtarian nachos. They offer Field Roast veggie meat grounds as one of te "meat" options. They also really dump the clearly artiificial cheese topping all over the rather voluminous plate of nachos, making it obviously quite bad for you, vegetarian or not, and I was suffering a pretty massive carb crash within a couple of hours.

In the meantime, they all finally arrived when I was maybe halfway through their plate, and they went to another joint in the food court to get their lunch -- they all got burgers, and in the end I picked up my plate and went to join them where they were.

After that, we all headed over to MoPop (The Museum of Pop Culture, formerly known as the Experience Music Project, or the EMP Museum), which Danielle was going to both for the Muppets exhibit that was extended through this month and because she got a realy great deal for generally admission, two adults and two children for forty bucks.

This meant I owed Danielle ten bucks for my ticket, plus another five for the upcharge toget into the Muppets exhibit. I don't know why I didn't thnk of this before, but it occurred to me much later in the day that I could have saved myself that five bucks by just waiting around the rest of the museum while they all went through the Muppets exhibit on their own. I had already seen it with Gina, Beth and Gaia back in September, after all, and there actually wasn't any particular need for me to see it again. But, see it again I did.

I got all of five new photos in the Muppets exhibit itself, but addded a total of sixteen shots to the MoPop Flickr photo set I created back in September.

After going through the Muppets exhibit, they were all about the "Sound Lab," and I kind of wasn't; they had a bit more time until their parking time was up and I wanted to have a bit of time for dinner at home before leaving again, so I left around 4:00 and once I got over to Denny was barely able to catch a #8 bus up the hill and get home before 5:00. Shobhit had dinner ready and made for me.

And then I met with Laney at the Capitol Hill Light Rail station so we could go downtown together and see Molly's Game, the new Aaron Sorkin movie starring Jessica Chastain about the woman targeted by the FBI after running a high stakes poker game. Laney and I had been talking about going to see it or a while. In the end, we both agreed that it was good, but not great, and then we took Light Rail back up the hill and went our separate ways.

I really wanted Shobhit to join us for that, as even now I think he would have enjoyed it, but he passed. No Social Review point for him on Friday!

He gets one for Saturday -- yesterday -- though, and really because I made an executive decision to break one of my own rules. That rule being that neither my roommate nor my husband get Social Review points for doing anything at home without any other guests preset because just hanging out at home doesn't really qualify as "socializing."

But! Watching Shobhit's SAG Awards screener for I, Tonya qualifies as an exception -- for two reasons. First, until this presented itself as a possibility, Ivan and I already planned to go see that movie together when it opened locally next weekend. Now we had an opportuning to watch it in advance at home, but I wasn't going to give up on that point for Ivan that he would have gotten otherwise. Second, we literally coordinated plans for this ahead of time, something we rarely do. But Ivan had plans to go stay the night with Drew in Port Orchard last night, and he wound up messaging me that he'd actually get up an hour earlier than usual to watch the movie with Shobhi and me at 10:00 yesterday morning.

I messaged him It's ten o'clock! yesterday when it was actually 10:05, and he responded, Why do you torment me like this. Uh, okay. He was up and ready within about half an hour, though, and finally he and I were watching this movie he's been so excited about -- he's a longtime and huge fan of Tonya Harding, even used to figure skate when he was young, apparently -- that he was first telling me about its upcoming release literally two years ago.

And by the way, with pretty strong reviews thus far -- and some pointed criticisms -- I expected to enjoy I, Tonya, and it still significantly exceeded my expectations. I gave it an A-, I liked it so much, and even pondered whether I should have included it in my top ten of the year, but ultimately decided against it; this movie was great but not quite great enough to unseat any of those I chose for the ten best of the year. It was very close, though.

Ivan seemed to agree with all my positive assessments of the movie, although he was oddly not as enthusiastic after the fact as he always was about his anticipation. I guess that's just how anticipation works sometimes, though.

Shobhit took another evening shift at the last minute yesterday as well, which was a no-brainer for him since I was set to spend several hours with Evan and Elden without him anyway. I very nearly wound up getting last-minute pho with Ivan, who had himself decided at the last minute not to go to Port Orchard after all -- he said he was wiped out from his work week and just wasn't up for it, and Drew had plans to come spend New Year's Eve in Seattle with him today anyway -- which I was willing to do even though it was really cutting what time I had close, and I still needed to finish the review I was writing. And then, within minutes, Ivan reversed even on the dinner idea: Actually Matthew, I am very sorry, but I just consulted my calendar and I am actually not available to go outt for pho this evening. What, the evening you literally freed up by bailing on your boyfriend? Jesus Christ. I guess now he didn't feel like walking out in the light rain and preferred just to stay in and read all evening. The thing is, this actually made things easier for me, and I was still too full from a rather heavy lunch of rice and a bean soup dish with homemade parathas Shobhit had made. It also made it far easier for me to finish my review with the time I had left myself anyway, and I told him so. We'll get pho another time.

Fifth annual @DinaMartina Christmas show with Evan! (Second year including Elden.) If you’ve never seen Dina Martina live you need to get your shit together!

A post shared by Matthew McQuilkin (@fruitcakeenterprises) on Dec 30, 2017 at 7:48pm PST

So, soon enough, I was off to Re-bar, where I got in line an hour before the doors opened, which was itself an hour before the show started, to see the Dina Martina Christmas show with Evan for the fifth year in a row -- and including Elden for the second year. They finally arrived to claim the second-row seats I had been saving for them at around maybe 7:30. I had been only fourth in line, though, which I felt made the wait worth it. Shobhit asked why I had to go get in line early rather than them, and I was like, I'm the one who cares about getting there early, not them -- and besides, they were driving up from Renton, and I was already here in Seattle. This isn't rocket science.

The show was hilarious as always, with me occasionally wiping away tears from laughing so hard. Dina Martina is the best -- a pointedly unsophisticated, uber-campy drag queek of the ilk that doesn't exist much anymore. She's been doing these shows for many, many years -- two or three decades, even -- and I commented on how impressive it is that she remains as good as she ever was. Compare that to, say, Ham for the Holidays -- those shows are still fun, but they were way better ten or fifteen years ago. Longtime performers usually and naturally slip into a bit of mediocrity over the years, but, so far, not Dina Martina.

Shobhit, for his part, would fee he wasn't missing out. I dragged him to one of her shows when she happened to have traveled to perform in Los Angeles during one of my visits there a couple of years ago, and he wasn't overly impressed. I think at least partially due to his wildly different cultural background, this specific brand of irreverent humor just doesn't exactly speak to him. It probably never will. And that's fine, I guess.

Ivan messaged me two different pictures of Shant snuggled up beneath his fleece blanket and between his legs on the love seat at home.

Shobhit was driving home at precisely the right time and was actually able to pick me up soon after I got out of the show, and drive me home. We stopped by Hot Mama's Pizza and got two slices of pesto pizza, which I devoured in the car. By that time, I wasn't starving, but I was much more open to eating than I actually had been for pho' so soon after that heavy lunch, around 4:30. Now it was close to 10 pm.

Shobhit decided to put on his screener copy of Get Out at about 10:30, and I said I would watch as much as I could (I saw that one twice in the theatre earlier this year anyway). Both Ivan and I wound up heading to bed in the middle of it.

As for this morning, Shobhit, Ivan and I all wound up watching another of Shobhit's SAG Awards screeners -- this one for Cal Me By Your Name, which neither Shobhit nor Ivan had seen. Shobhit was pretty engaged by it, although he had some criticisims -- I really have none; I feel it's the best movie of the year -- Ivan, for his part, spent most of the time looking at his phone. So, he wasn't super into it. I don't really get why, but whatever.

Neither of them get Social Review points for that one, though. There was never any other pre-existing plan to see it in a theatre that this replaced, like I, Tonya had; neither was there any coordinated planning ahead of time for it. So this gets back to it not qualifying because it's not "socializing" in the strictest sense as I usually define it.

We didn't start that until about 11:30 this morning, though, after Shobhit and I made French toast out of the fruitcake-like bread Sott gave me that he'd gotten as a holiday gift from a broker -- I did the same thing with the similar bread he re-gifted to me last year. Anyway, the movie is two hours and 12 minutes long, and had to be paused at one point for the phone call offering Shobhit today's evening shift, so that took us up to about 1:45.

Shobhit was out the door headed to work roughly an hour later, and I soon after took that walk down to Target. I walked back, chatted a little with Ivan (who is meeting Drew for a party with Drew's work friends at 6:00 and I likely won't see them for the rest of the evening), and then set out to write this blog post. I'm actually writing it using Shobhit's laptop, which is slightly more challenging with its keyboard and touch pad than my iMac in the bedroom, but I felt like writing in the living room surrounded by the Christmas lights that will only be up for another couple of days. Anyway, if you notice more typos than usual in this post, the use of this laptop would be why.

So there you have it; you're caught up on my weekend, for now.

[posted 5:28 pm]