A Fantastic Weekend
I'm just coming off a pretty eventful weekend, although that does not quite include Friday, the evening of which I was going to go see a movie, but then decided to postpone it until Saturday morning to take advantage of AMC Theatres' pre-noon showing price breaks -- after taxes, tickets for shows before noon come to $6.92. Instead, I just stayed home with Shobhit that evening, watching TV with him in the living room some of the time, watching my own stuff in the bedroom some of the time, and also drinking some of the time. We almost did our grocery shopping that evening too but since we both had drinks we decided to put it off until Sunday, since there was no pressing need to get anything immediately.
We had two major social activities on Saturday, the second of which I already wrote about yesterday morning -- a mid-weekend regular blog post, holy shit! But it made sense for me to write a standalone entry about the Trikone-NW 20th Year Celebration, what with its links to the photo set on Twitter, and it saves me the time of writing about it in today's entry in the middle of everything else. I was slightly pressed for time even yesterday and did not write quite as much about it as I suppose I could have, but I would have had even less time for it today.
Before that, though, Danielle came up from Renton -- without the girls; Patrick had them this weekend -- and hung out with us for a while, beginning with joining us for the movie. I sent her several texts from relatively early in the morning, though. For instance, I texted her this at 8 a.m.:
Wake up!
I had planned to have some fun with this, and keep texting her Wake up! every ten minutes until she responded, but she totally ruined it by actually being on the ball! Four minutes later she replied,
I'm wakey wakey Let's shakey shakey
So I replied, You should leave at 9:45!
I had told her the previous evening the movie was at 11:30 so she should arrive NO LATER than 11:00. She wrote back, You act like I have a chronic being late problem, then the moji that's winking with its tongue hanging out. So at that point I immediately wrote back, btw I take it back the movie is at 11 you should arrive at 10:30, assuming she would see right through that as a ploy just to make sure she arrived on time. I only learned much later yesterday that she thought I was serious, but whatever! Either way it worked.
After I texted her yesterday morning that she should arrive by 9:45, she replied, I like how you figure out my itinerary. It's like you think I push time...or something
Ten minutes later I replied, Time to go in half an hour!
Danielle, 9:31 am: You're killing me smalls
Me, 9:50 am: Time to go! Chop chop!
Literally a minute later she texted me a photo of herself in a coat and ready to go, which was actually a rather good shot (fuzzy hood over her head, bringing to mind Paul Simon's self-titled 1972 debut solo album) so I saved it for use later. She continued to text me updates until she was at my garage -- at 10:29 am! Holy shit, she was precisely on time! She actually credited all my texting as motivation.
This gave us plenty of time for her to come up to the condo briefly, after she parked in our parking spot (I took Shobhit's car to park on the street since we have a Zone 4 parking permit just for occasions such as this) and then walk downtown to Pacific Place. All this time Danielle still thought the movie was actually at 11:00. Nope! It was at 11:30 and we got to the theatre 15 minutes early. She wasn't sure she'd ever been that early to a movie in her life. She also smuggled in a bag of potato chips, a packet of Red Vine licorice, and even an AMC Theatres plastic soda cup she uses to refill sodas from the soda dispenser on the downlow. Don't tell anyone.
I suppose you want to know what movie we saw? It was Game Night, which we all quite enjoyed. More than worth going to for less than seven bucks a ticket, and actually funnier and more entertaining than a movie like that would typically be.
We walked back home and Shobhit made us all dosas for lunch to have with leftover sambar he had made for dinner on Thursday. We brought out the griddle again to fry up new dosas using the mix he has. I tried to have a light portion since I knew there would be an unlimited amount of food at the Trikone event later that evening, and I was right. Shobhit and I both, predictably, gained weight over the weekend. I breached 150 lbs again yesterday. But! I'm back below 150 again this morning, hooray! (I weighed in this morning at 149.9 lbs.)
Anyway, just having Danielle up to help us finish up these leftovers was my initial idea. I texted her several days ago about it, noting that I had hung out with Gabriel the previous two weekends in a row and should hang out with her this weekend since they have shared custody. She had written back, 2 weekends in a row...I'm finding him in contempt of our custody plan!!!
She left after another hour or so, which gave me just enough time to write my review for Game Night before we needed to leave for the Trikone-NW 20th Year Celebration event.
Yesterday was less eventful, but no less significant: after writing the blog entry about Saturday night and then getting ready for the day much later than usual, Shobhit accompanied me to go have lunch with Shauna at the Veggie Grill at University Village.
Remember Shauna? If you're at all new to this blog since I migrated from LiveJournal to Squarespace, perhaps you don't. I worked with her at PCC between 2002 and 2008; it hit me over lunch yesterday that she left ten years ago this year. Jared, who eventually replaced her, even underwent a joint meeting with Kibby and me as part of his interview process -- he has since gotten married and his wife gave birth to a baby literally just last week. Times, they certainly do change.
And then of course, for several years while Shobhit lived in West Hollywoood from 2011 to 2016, Shauna picked me up to go grocery shopping at PCC nearly every payday weekend. I got a ride and she got to use my employee discount, so it worked out well. It was less convenient once she bought the house in Lynnwood with her sister in 2015, after which the shopping after work on Fridays had to give way to shopping on Saturdays most days. And near the end there were several exceptions for varying reasons, leaving me to have to take a Zipcar, but that was all right. Still, I saw her on average every two weeks, which was a lot.
But then Shobhit moved back in December 2016, bringing his car with him, and the rides were no longer necessary. I saw Shauna far less often after that. I last saw her when we all went to Wolf Haven for my Birth Week last year -- that was late April -- and I actually emailed her last July that it had been three months since I last saw her and we needed to get together for Happy Hour or something. I had kept her reply in my inbox at home all this time, just as a reminder to hit her up again sometime soon about getting together. July, of course, was itself seven months ago.
As of now, we were coming up on nearly a year since we last hung out -- easily the longest break we've had since we first met, back in 2002. Well, she suddenly texted me several days ago asking if I'd like to get together this weekend -- yes, of course! -- and we settled on lunch on Sunday. She wanted to go to Veggie Grill and the location at University Village was closest to her. Basically we met in the middle.
And she filled me in on a whole lot going on in her life over the past ten months. Apparently Sterling, her youngest son, just recently moved to L.A. He's getting a job as a bartender, I guess. I suppose that would explain why I hadn't seen him busing tables at the restaurant at the Edgewater Hotel in a while. And then there was this whole involved story about two different incidents of bathroom water damage to a large area of the floor in her house, resulting in months of dealing with insurance and even a couple of weeks with her and her sister living in a hotel during which they also had to board her cats. It all only got finally finished being taken care of something like a week and a half ago, and it all started sometime in the middle of last year.
So, we had lots to talk about, including Kim, the former employee who was a good friend of Shauna's who just recently passed away at the age of 52. I mentioned how working at the same place for 16 years means you start knowing people who die for various reasons -- obviously an inevitability the more time goes by, but it doesn't make it any less weird to experience. At least I haven't been particularly close with any of the people who passed away -- at least not yet. Gary, the former Director of IT, was someone I was very fond of, at least. And these deaths have tended to feel fairly sudden, so that makes it a bit more of a shock. Shauna was especially fond of Gary and she got the news from me, slightly devastating her that day.
It was really nice to see Shauna, in any case, and it hardly felt at all like it had been so long since we last hung out -- we just picked up where we left off, which was nice. We had been in touch occasionally via Facebook and text anyway, so it's not like we were totally blacked out of each other's lives. When we said goodbye we promised to commit to getting together more often from now on -- and for sure we'll get together during my Birth Week, as always.
After that, Shobhit and I went to PCC to do our grocery shopping. Not a whole lot to get there this week, so it barely cost me more than fifty bucks.
We came home, put away the groceries, and within minutes I was out the door again, this time to walk to The Egyptian theatre to see A Fantastic Woman, which is the favorite to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It's a Chilean film about a trans woman, starring an actual trans woman, and it is indeed excellent, if slightly heavy and sad.
I walked back home and spent the requisite hour or so writing the review. Then came back out to the living room to watch some TV for the rest of the evening: this week's episode of Here and Now on HBO Go (which, this week on its third episode, is still far from perfect but far improved over episodes 1 and 2 so now I'm a little more hopeful for the season overall), a few episodes of Roseanne on Amazon Prime, and this week's episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO Go.
[posted 12:17 pm]