maybe next time
Shobhit worked a full shift yesterday before then attending a Braeburn Condos board meeting at 6:30, during which time I had taken myself to see The Sisters Brothers at the Regal Meridian 16 downtown, which I quite liked. I walked home afterward and most of the rest of my evening was taken up by writing the review, which wound up a bit longer than I expected. (I think I maybe slightly overdid it waxing poetic about the history of Westerns, but, whatever.)
Side note about Regal: I really go out of my way to see movies at AMC theatres now, since I signed up for their "AMC Stubbs A-List" membership. Every once in a while, however, a movie I really want to see does not play there -- even though these days nearly every major movie plays at both the Meridian and Pacific Place downtown. Well, I guess The Sisters Brothers isn't quite "major" enough, and it's playing only at the Meridian.
So this leaves two options: use MoviePass at the Meridian, which is increasingly unusable even as they keep trying to tell me I've retained the benefits of my account before all their bullshit went down over the winter, or use the discounted Regal tickets I still have in my wallet, purchased at Costco several months ago. I wound up using the latter option, much to my surprise for once not even being charged the $1.53 upcharge they always used to include. So, with that ticket, I had to pay nothing extra last night. They used to tell me it was a surcharge for the use of their theatre's reserved seating, which every single screening room they have no has.
For a while I thought I might be able to use MoviePass, when I checked showtime availability earlier in the afternoon -- at that time, it was indeed showing 6:15 as an available time. I still can't check in until half an hour or less before showtime, though, and by the time it was 5:45, the app was showing not a single movie available for ticketing through it, for the entire rest of the evening. I'm pretty sure this is due to their new system where if a lot of tickets are selling through conventional means, availability through MoviePass closes out. That's actually a fairly sensible system, except that it's not what I was sold on when I purchased the pass; in the beginning there were no such restrictions at all; and it's certainly not in line with emails I've gotten from them in the wake of last summer's controversies, telling me I would be re-given the same benefits I had as an annual membership holder. Okay, the biggest deal they made was that my account was simply being kept active at all because I had indeed purchased an annual membership, even though everyone else was being charged monthly membership fees. Oh, and other people have a limit of three movies per month (! -- the AMC account allows three movies per week) and I don't. Not that it fucking matters when the movies are no longer available to reserve once the evening comes and I'm within that half an hour window.
What's as clear as ever is how worth the expense it was to sign up for the AMC membership, and MoviePass, regardless of what they have done to "try" restoring customer trust, is outright bullshit through and through. As I said many times, though, I knew from moment one that it was too good to be true, and the investment was paying for itself after a single month and I had unfettered use for another four months or so after that. I'm just not getting what they promised for the full year they initially promised it for. But I'll go where the greatest savings are available, and right now that's with AMC Stubbs.
I actually got a pleasant surprise by the weather today, after a wet past couple of days. Yesterday felt like more of a throwback, misty the entire day without any real rainfall, but still making everything wet -- it’s the kind of "rainy" weather Seattle used to get way more often. I used to tell people "Seattle doesn't get real rain," but hard rainfall is increasingly common nowadays.
But not today! It's pretty cloudy, but it's still warm-ish -- high around 60, and mid-fifties this morning as opposed to the mid- to early-forties morning temperatures I was dealing with last week. This is still perfectly acceptable cycling weather, and the long-range forecast shows highs in the low- to mid-sixties with partly sunny skies the entire rest of the week. I think I'll probably be taking my bike to work the entire rest of this week. So that's nice.
I just had to wait an unusually long time in line to use one of our two microwaves to reheat my lunch -- and then when I sat at the table in the middle of the room, I ate there alone until I was finished. I should have sat on one of the tall chairs by the windows, more directly overlooking Myrtle Edwards Park and the Puget Sound beyond. Maybe next time.
[posted 12:21 pm]