memorial movies and lasting lunches
I haven't posted anything but my daily digests of tweets since Friday! Did you miss me?
The office was closed yesterday for Memorial Day, and even with a three day weekend, I more than once considered posting a regular update, but still just never got around to it. I hesitate to say I was "too busy." I can't even managed to pick up and read my fucking library book. Well, that's not exactly true -- I read it for a bit in line for the SIFF movies I saw on both Saturday and Sunday, as I always get in line an hour early. And then I spent half or more of my time waiting looking at my phone.
Anyway, by some people's standards, my weekend was pretty eventful. By my standards, it was actually pretty low key. I've actually posted a movie review the past four days in a row -- with a fifth and sixth yet to come today and tomorrow -- but, that's only because Friday was the rare occasion when I posted the review the day after the movie I saw. I did see a movie the past three days in a row, but did not actually go out on Friday evening. I did originally have a movie planned with Laney that evening but she had to visit a friend who was ill and so rescheduled our movie to yesterday.
I can't much remember what Shobhit and I did on Friday evening now, actually. He didn't work that day. I didn't see a movie. I did go over to Pacific Supply and get a generic rotating window-opener handle, since the one on our bedroom door came off a few weeks ago due to getting stripped and I had been using a wrench to open and shut it. This handle doesn't match the color of the window frame at all, but it did work, which was nice.
Oh! Right -- we watched the second of my Netflix DVD movies I'd had at home for ages (like, months): the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man. I wound up feeling about the same as I did when I first saw it in 2009 -- I gave it a solid B -- but both Shobhit and I were pretty rapt by it as it went on anyway. It still ends very a very strange abruptness. Michael Stuhlbarg is excellent in it, and he was really unrecognizable at the time. Now he's pretty well known as the wonderful dad in Call Me By Your Name.
Anyway, I was back to movie-going on Saturday, when I took myself to see the SIFF screening of Love, Gilda, the documentary about Gilda Radner, at the Egyptian. It was decent; another solid B. I wouldn't tell anyone to rush out to the theatre to see that one, as it'll work perfectly well on some streaming service sometime in the relatively near future.
Shobhit worked a swing shift that day, so, after coming home from the movie and writing the review, I spent a couple hours that evening going back to Steamworks. I've been going there about every two weeks lately. I had a good time. Came back and hung out at home until bedtime.
Shobhit and I decided to go out for brunch on Sunday. We'd had our blackberry-preserves pancakes for a brunch at home on Saturday already. I had a Chinook Book 2-for-1 entrée coupon for brunch at Poquitos, so we went there when they opened at 11 a.m., after doing a bit of shopping at Bartell Drugs and Mud Bay. To be perfectly honest, the food there isn't spectacular, but it's very reasonably priced -- both the entrees we got were ten bucks, and we didn't get any drinks, so before tip the brunch for both of us was only ten bucks. That's a great deal, totally worth it, even if for food that's just okay. I can't imagine going out of my way to eat there for brunch without such a coupon. To be fair, we go there occasionally for their cheap Happy Hour small plates and those can actually be pretty good. I suppose you can't really expect a Mexican restaurant to be the greatest for breakfast foods. They have other regular stuff on their menu that's good.
Sunday was another SIFF movie, although this one was at the SIFF Cinema at the Uptown, so I went ahead and rode my bike there and back. This movie was Won't You Be My Neighbor?, about the ideas Fred Rogers put into Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and that movie was wonderful -- it made me cry several times. A-.
A few hours after I got back and wrote that movie review, the one show we watch that had a new episode this week was Westworld, and we watched that. I continue to love that show, and I actually think this season is better than the first.
Monday was the most social day of the weekend, what with starting by going with Laney to a movie that was not part of SIFF -- Disobedience, which was very good (B+). Well, I guess I could clarify, it actually was part of SIFF; it had to screenings in the festival the previous weekend. But we were not watching it as part of the festival. As happens with a few of the festival movies every year, there are screenings in the festival and then only a week or two later, before the festival is even done, the movie gets its regular release. Laney and I saw it at Pacific Place at 11:10 am so she could get her before-noon discount, which is much deeper than her senior discount.
We both liked the movie a lot and had much to discuss about it, which we did for a few minutes just standing outside the theatre. I would have been open to getting lunch afterward but when I asked Laney what her plans were for the rest of the day she didn't sound like she's be much up for going out to something else. We just took Light Rail back up to Capitol Hill.
Shobhit suggested we use another one of our "Free Sack Lunch" coupons at Grand Central Bakery instead. We split one, instead of using both of the last two such coupons we still had -- I rather like Shobhit's suggestion of waiting to use the last one until we're heading out to Wallace, Idaho a week from Saturday.
When we went to use this coupon, the casher excused herself to go "check on something," then came back trying to charge us for the sandwich, but just not the cookie and chips that go with a sack lunch. How do only a cookie and chips qualify on their own as a "free sack lunch?" I immediately said, "I've used these three times before and it always included a sandwich." To the cashier's credit, although she said she had just double checked with her boss (who was apparently either a moron or just cheap, maybe both), she immediately rung us up only charging for the bread loaves Shobhit also wanted to buy.
The sandwich was delicious. And I suggested to Shobhit that we use the Grand Central Bakery in Pioneer Square before heading east on June 9, since they haven't seen us there yet and won't likely resist. We've been to this location on Eastlake at least three times now. Maybe they're tiring of us coming in for our free shit, who knows?
We at there instead of taking it to go, just so Shobhit would get his second Social Review point for the weekend. Before we sat down, I had a plate with the ginger molasses cookie (which was excellent) in one hand, and when the lady handed me one of the bread loaves, I hit the plate in a way that it knocked off the cookie. I actually caught the cookie with my right hand, but only after a stunningly long amount of time struggling to grab it securely, as it kept bouncing off my fingers. This went on for several seconds -- long enough for the guy behind us in line to say "Good job!" and for the cashier to say, "We just witnessed that!" So, that was fun.
Shobhit took a last-minute shift at work last night, working from 4:45 to 9:45, so I cooked the dinner we had planned on making together: a somewhat makeshift version of lasagna. We had stopped at QFC on our way home just to get the lasagna noodles. Lasagna should have ricotta cheese in it, but Shobhit suggested using parmesan -- which was the one key ingredient I completely forgot. Damn it! It did still have cheese in it - a pretty small layer of shredded cheddar and mozzarella between each layer of noodles.
The whole thing was quite the commitment; I must have spent two hours preparing that. I sort of combined two different recipes, and actually did take the recommendation on the noodle box of boiling them before layering them in the casserole dish. And, as I did this, I chopped up an eggplant and roasted it in the oven for twenty minutes, the last five of which I added on the rest of what I had chopped: onion, bell pepper, celery, and one Field Roast veggie dog. So all of that also got roasted with the eggplant (the eggplant still taking up by far the most volume) before I added a jar of pasta sauce and layered it all in the casserole dish for baking for another half hour or so.
I do think having added parmesan as originally intended would have made it better, but it still turned out well -- if a little noodle-heavy, as I used up all the noodles just so I wouldn't have to toss any. And it certainly filled the casserole dish to the brim, allowing for enough volume to cover dinner for us both last night and tonight, and four total packed lunches -- two lunches each covered for us for this week. This being a four-day week, that's half the week, and I already have lunch with Karen scheduled on Friday.
I keep forgetting it's Tuesday, actually. Naturally it feels like it's Monday.
[posted 12:20 pm]