colors of the weekend
I guess I'll work backward in telling you about my weekend, since what I did last night was by far the most photogenic thing I did—at Shobhit's suggestion, we drove out to Discovery Park to look at the fall colors. All three of these photos in today's Daily Lunch Update ("DLU") were taken there.
At first this seemed like an unusual suggestion on Shobhit's part. I even told Laney while we were watching our Terminator double feature about it and she called it "romantic." Hmm, I suppose it is!
That said, over the course of the evening I got a couple details that made me realize it wasn't quite as unexpected as it seemed. First, it gave Shobhit a chance to get a Social Review point for the day, which is something that often motivates him to get out with me for one reason or another. Second, he has apparently driven through there more than once recently, just killing time between shifts at Total Wine and at Big 5 Sporting Goods, when he had some extra time but not quite enough for him to justify driving home. The Total Wine he works at is in Interbay; Big 5 is in Northgate. Discovery Park is not that great a detour between the two.
Whatever the motivation, I liked the idea, and suggested we leave virtually as soon as he got home from yesterday's shift at about 5:00. I had looked up when sunset would be and it said 6:12; it was going to take us 24 minutes to drive there, so I figured we should head out quickly. Shobhit said he had been thinking maybe we should go today instead—today is one of his few days off from both jobs—but when I told him, "I'd been looking forward to going tonight," we still went last night after all.
All told, we were gone about two hours. We thus spent maybe an hour in the park itself, and since it was wet and drizzly most of the time, we did not spend a lot of time outside the car. We did park briefly to get out once we reached the West Point Lighthouse, though, and even asked a guy there to take our picture with the lighthouse behind us. Otherwise I took nineteen photos total while we were on this little excursion, most of them quite pretty, even in the drizzly weather (and in my opinion, in many cases, because of it). When we left Discovery Park we did stop briefly again at Commodore Park (where four of those 19 pictures were taken, actually), which is across Shilshole Bay from the Ballard Locks. But once we left there it was quickly getting dark, and it was totally dark within minutes after that.
We came home, made dinner out of a gnocchi packet we bought at Costco on Friday, and watched the 2005 film version of War of the Worlds, which I had checked out of the library. Shobhit guessed (correctly, as usual) that I had given it a solid B, and I still stand by that, largely because of the unnecessarily cheesy happy ending after so much of the film is so tense and dark. But, I keep coming back to it every few years, just because I think so many of the crowd panic scenes are incredibly well orchestrated.
Before Shobhit was done with work, though, Laney came over for a double feature of The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), because we have made plans to see Terminator: Dark Fate when it's released two weekends from now, and that movie reportedly is a direct sequel to Judgment Day and ignores the other three, progressively less good movies that have been released since (I didn't even bother to see Terminator Genisys, which was released only four years ago).
Honestly I can't say I expect Terminator: Dark Fate to be great, but with the return of Linda Hamilton and with James Cameron, though not directing, at least producing, I figure it has potential to be at least a worthy "third" installment of a franchise, if it ignores the last three progressively pointless ones. Laney is interested largely because of Linda Hamilton, a woman made an iconic badass from Judgment Day. And it's now been 28 years since that movie. I figured out Linda Hamilton was born only one year—to the month—before Laney.
So. The two DVDs we watched were from the library, and as such, apparently overused enough that twice over we had to give up after it kept blacking out and glitching on the theatre screen downtown at the Braeburn Condos and take the movies upstairs. We really only tried again with T2 so I could make us some of the free popcorn we can make down there. And that one seemed for a while like it might actually work fine, but in the end, nope. It was also fine to watch them upstairs in the condo with the blinds drawn too, though, and we just too the leftover popcorn back up with us. This really does seem to happen most often with library copies of DVDs, although if my player in the condo can play them fine, maybe the condo association should consider some upgrades.
Either way, it was fun watching the movies with Laney and we had a great time together as usual. We had planned for meeting at 11 a.m. but I told her to feel free to come early; she arrived at around 10:35 although we didn't get the first movie started until past 11 as it was -- always a good reason to get her arriving early. The second movie is particularly long, the "special edition" being 156 minutes, although none of them are boring. We both remarked on how dated the effects of the 1984 film were and what a huge jump forward they were in the sequel seven years later. I read online that in adjusted dollars, Terminator 2 remains the most successful R-rated movie of all time. Turns out that's wrong, though, according to Box Office Mojo; in adjusted dollars it's the 10th-most successful R-rated movie ever. I suppose I need to stop trusting all the "trivia" pages for movies on IMDb.com.
On Saturday, in the evening I had a kind of last-minute visit with Gabriel, much like the last time just hanging out with him at his place for a couple of hours. This time neither Tess or Lea were with him; Lea was once again out of town at a conference.
I had already taken myself to see the new Eddie Murphy Dolemite Is My Name, had returned home and already finished the review, but had also promised Shobhit that I would make burgers for dinner as well as for him to take to work for lunch on Sunday. I was also just starting vacuuming the condo when Gabriel called. This was sometime soon after 6:00 in the evening, I think, so I told him I would finish vacuuming and then needed to make dinner but then I would head down on Light Rail.
I texted Shobhit everything I had gotten done and then let him know I was going to visit Gabriel and would probably be back late. Gabriel actually had initially texted me asking if I was interested in joining him, Lea, Josh and Darren for a play at ACT Theatre that actually did sound like a lot of fun, but a) that was way too short of notice for that level of expense (I even told Gabriel later I would have bene far more likely to join them had I known about it a lot longer ago); and b) I had already also promised Shobhit I would stay home with him Sunday evening. He had requested it since he had late work shifts on both Friday and Saturday evenings, which was perfectly reasonable. And thus, Shobhit did not at all seem to resent me heading out Saturday night.
It was really my own personal preference that I not be out any later than midnight on Saturday, especially relying on Light Rail. So, I just looked up the schedule, and after getting to Gabriel's place right after 7:30—having made impressive time, actually, with all that I needed to get done before leaving—I aimed to be back on the northbound bus that left Columbia City at 11:23. And I was. Shobhit had just gone to bed when I got home.
In any case, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the two and a half hours I spent with Gabriel Saturday night. It was just a pleasant, quiet hang, although he did have a playoff game on TV when I got there. He told me a fair amount about how he had no particular interest in rooting for the New York Yankees (who he apparently hates more than any other team) or the Houston Astros, but he wanted the Rockets to win just so the Yankees would not make it to the World Series. And the game ended with a close score due to the Yankees getting a home run that gave them a little bit of hope before the Astros managed one more home run that won them the game—even I, as someone who doesn't give a shit about sports, could see how that would be exciting to people. And then, with the Yankees eliminated from World Series contention, Gabriel said he'll be rooting for the Washington Nationals in the World Series.
Except he called them "the Nats." He cracked up when I said, "The what? G-N-A-T?" I kind of thought, that can't possibly be right. It sure would be funny if there were a Major League baseball team called The Gnats, though. Let's make that happen.
Anyway the game ended maybe halfway through my time there, and then Gabriel played clips from RuPaul's Drag Race, which he and Tess are both obsessed with. I think Gabriel really wants me to get obsessed with it too, but I can't see it happening. I totally appreciate RuPaul and what she has done for many years to make drag mainstream, but it's still a reality show and I have little interest. I have limited time for what great scripted TV there is out there to watch as it is. I get my "great drag" fix every year locally with Dina Martina's Christmas show.
I suppose the only thing left to tell you about my weekend is Friday night, which was spent mostly grocery shopping. And I did make one whopper of a mistake that evening: Shobhit got off work at 6:30, and he asked me to meet him there so we could go straight to the stores and have enough time to shop before Costco closed at 8:30.
The thing is, I spent the entire day thinking he was working at day at Total Wine & More in Interbay, and that's where I went to meet him. I even deliberately got there a few minutes early so I could go across the parking lot to Michaels and get some supplies for my Halloween costume. But, guess what? Shobhit was actually working at Big 5 Sporting Goods in the U District! SHIT. I realized that only after I walked into Total Wine looking for him. I looked up the trip planner on my phone and getting to the U District from Interbay on transit at 6:30 on a Friday night was going to take more than an hour. Fuck.
But! We wound up improvising quite successfully, in the end. Shobhit told me later he actually was really made about this at first, "but then I got over it," and by the time I actually saw him at Costco, he was in an almost shockingly good mood. I really have to give him credit for that, considering how often he flies off the handle for no good reason. This was an instance where he had good reason to be annoyed with me—it being an honest mistake notwithstanding—and he actually successfully let it go. Progress! I was pretty proud of him for that.
He tried at first to call me and say "Abort the plan!" but I told him I looked up the Maps app and it would take him only half an hour to get to the 4th Avenue Costco south of downtown from the U District, and he would even beat me taking buses, which would take me about 40 minutes. Costco was to be open until 8:30 so that gave us far more than enough time. And in the end he agreed, even though he originally envisioned going north directly from the U District to the Costco in Shoreline, because the gas there was cheaper. But guess what? The gas at the 4th Avenue Costco was all of four cents more per gallon. I even asked him how many gallons he got, and thus by going there instead he paid a whopping forty cents more in cash. Big deal!
He even bought us a pizza to eat for dinner, knowing I would get too hungry otherwise, which was very sweet of him. And once we were done at Costco, we drove to do a bit of shopping at the PCC in Columbia City since now that was the best PCC to go to. That location is all of a block and a half away from where Gabriel now lives, incidentally.
[posted 12:29 pm]