Apollo '19
Not much to tell you about today, except that right after work yesterday, just as I did the day before, I walked up Denny Way to Fairview, caught the #64 bus, and then went to a movie at the AMC 10 in the U District -- this time to see the spectacular documentary Apollo 11. You should see it! Even though the one Oscar that First Man won, which was for Visual Effects, was well deserved, this movie is still notably better.
And I had no difficulties in getting there this time. First off, the showing was at 5:30 rather than 5:15, so I could leave at the normal time of 4:30 without skipping out early. I actually intended to catch the 5:09 bus at Fairview, but wound up easily getting on the 4:54 bus since it was several minutes late. And this time, I made truly, truly sure the cord had been pulled, and the bus actually stopped at the NE 45th St stop. Several other people got off the bus there this time as well.
Here's a characteristically odd thing I am doing. I started a "note" in the Notes app on my phone, on which I am gathering data on each of the 10 theatres at that AMC -- specifically, on which side the aisle is on, and how many rows are in the theatre. At first I thought I would just note the side the aisle is on, because with just a few exceptions where there is an aisle on both sides of the theatre, most of the screening rooms have an aisle on only one side, with the other end of each row right up to the wall on the other side. I like to book a seat closer to the aisle if I can, and the aisle is not always on the same side. I realized only this week that I need to note how many rows there are too, because when I reserve these seats on the AMC app, they show a seat layout from which to choose, but they do not indicate the auditorium number until after the ticket has been purchased.
And now, between Tuesday and yesterday, I have noted the theatre I went into, as well as a couple of others with their doors open as I walked by: I have the information on half the auditoriums so far. I was pleased to discover the back-row ticket I purchased in Auditorium 3 last night was actually slightly offset from the rest of the rows, against the back wall and directly to the right of the entry door (even with a small wall between), which amounted to a nice secluded spot from which to sit and watch the movie.
And then, as before, I bused back home and wrote my review. No cooking this time, as I had leftover quiche muffins to eat for dinner.
Let's see, what else? Oh -- I went on this week's "loop walk" through Myrtle Edwards Park with Alicia yesterday, which, as it happens, is also the last one we'll ever do!
She actually told me a couple of weeks ago on one of our walks that she's leaving PCC. She's worked in the office in pretty widely varying capacities nearly as long as I have, but now that her husband got a job, she's decided to pursue her dream of opening her own flower farm. I was one of the first people she told, and she asked me to keep it quiet, and lo and behold, I did! I literally did not tell a soul until I knew she had already spread the news around herself -- and I even made sure it was okay to mention it in yesterday's photo I posted, of her touching the tree in Myrtle Edwards Park that she would always stop to touch on our walks.
I had told her we had to do at least one final walk this week, so we agreed on 2:45 pm yesterday. I told her to "Stay there!" when she touched the tree, as I knew I needed a photo of that. And then? I wasn't table to post that fucking photo to Facebook until 7 pm, right after the movie ended, because of yesterday's massive, hours-long Facebook outage -- apparently its longest ever. This also had affected Instagram, since Facebook has long also owned that app, although somehow I finally got the photo to post there a few hours earlier. Twitter, of course, is totally independent of all Facebook networks, so I was able to tweet it as soon as about a quarter after 4 pm. She's not on Twitter though so I couldn’t tag her there; annoyingly, with a check-in at Myrtle Edwards Park, I later had to post on Instagram and Facebook as though I were on that walk with her in the evening, when really it was the afternoon. Ugh, all these trying problems I have in my life!
I thought about Gabriel yesterday, as he abandoned Facebook some time ago. He would have been one of the few people who truly could not have cared less about the outage. I kind of envied that, and sometimes do consider how it might be to leave that platform, which is objectively the worst in terms of their moral inventory (granted, Twitter isn't better by all that wide a margin). I stay there only because it's where I have the most people I want to remain connected to online, mostly genuine friends and family members. We'll just see how it all shakes out in the coming years, I guess.
[posted 12:33 pm]