grumpy double feature
I've got a lot to get done today so it's probably for the best that I already posted about going to the Tulip Festival on Saturday. (Shobhit and I went on Saturday and I posted about it on Saturday. I even captioned all the photos on Saturday! I had a very productive and fun day on Saturday. Even though the weather was blustery and wet and cold.)
So what else is there to tell you about, then? Well, it's been rather a while since I last took myself to a movie, although I had initially been thinking I would go to one on Saturday -- but, I went to the Tulip Festival instead. This has been halfway by design, as Shobhit just got a second job and as of this week will be spending a lot of evenings working now -- which means I will see a lot less of him. So, although there were some movies I might have otherwise gone to see last week, I made a conscious decision not to so that I could maximize the time we had together before his evening shifts started. And they start tonight -- in fact, tomorrow evening is the only weeknight this week he is not working. I guess he finishes training today, but he still doesn't get off work until 8:30. He works afternoon-evening shifts on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, so I think I'll see movies on Wednesday and Thursday and perhaps go to Steamworks on Friday.
I'm actually trying to cram in as many movies as I can both this week and next in between weekends, as I have no other time to see movies this month: this coming weekend we're going to the San Juan Islands on Saturday and then to Olympia for Easter on Sunday; the following weekend starts my Birth Week. If I find any time to see any movie during my Birth Week it'll just be a happy accident.
I did watch a couple of movies yesterday -- it was just at home, with Laney and Shobhit. Laney actually made a mistake and thought it was happening Saturday: Shobhit and I were in Mount Vernon for the Tulip Festival and Laney texted me, I'm here. Oops! I had to remind her that it was actually the next day. Luckily she said she would have been taking a walk anyway so it was all good.
She returned again at 11 am yesterday, and at first we tried watching the movies in the Braeburn Condos theatre. That fucking ancient theatre system is a challenge nearly every time I use it. I actually got it to work surprisingly quickly last time Laney came over for a double feature, but it took a while to get the picture to work this time; it would never go to the DVD menu and just started the movie automatically; and then, when I paused it to use the bathroom, after a while it went to black as though doing a screen saver, and after that I could not get the picture back again.
The movies Grumpy Old Men (1993) and Grumpier Old Men (1995) were hardly mandatory for big screen viewing, though, so we were all three of us content with just taking the movies upstairs to watch on our TV in the condo. I looked up info on the movies as I always do, and was reminded that the first one was a bit of a surprise, sleeper hit; the second one, quite clearly, was pleasant but really little more than something riding completely on the coattails of an earlier success. Grumpier Old Men is nowhere near as funny, and far more contrived. Apparently even the first one got pretty mixed reviews by critics, but it's easier to see why audiences enjoyed it. The second one sags under the pressure of writers straining to find ways to get all of the principal players taking part in the same story again: Kevin Pollak as Walter Matthau's son; Darryl Hannah as Jack Lemmon's daughter; Ann-Margaret as Jack Lemmon's now-wife (and she got woefully underused in the sequel, while Sophia Loren takes much more of the limelight as Walter Matthau's love interest).
Shobhit actually fell asleep during the second movie, but not because he was bored by it -- he was just tired. And I kept saying his name to wake him up as he was snoring over on the love seat. He actually went into the bedroom to take a nap, and told me not to return the DVDs to the library because he wanted to finish the movie later -- which he actually did, much later last night.
After Laney left, I actually went to the bedroom to take a nap too. Shobhit and I both felt a little wonky after the oil-heavy dinner on Saturday that we had, from parathas he had made with a certain type of flour that apparently sucks up more oil than regular flour does. It gave us both weirdly persistent heartburn; I woke up in the middle of the night Saturday night super warm and had to open the window a little, even though it's been pretty chilly outside lately.
This stuff kind of lingered through yesterday but thankfully I feel a lot better today. After Shobhit and I woke up from our nap yesterday, we went to MacPherson's and then to Trader Joe's to do the produce shopping we never got to last weekend. Then we came back and made a magi (Indian noodle) dinner heavy with a whole lot of the vegetables we had just bought. We ate while watching the premiere of the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones -- I was actually pleased to see it kind of taking its time, instead of jumping right into the season-long series finale this is going to be. The rest of this show is probably going to have more than its fair share of insane moments, and I actually like that this episode eased us back into its narratives instead of bashing us over the head with it.
And then we watched Veep (hilarious) and Barry (great) and I made us chai and after that it was time for me to get ready for bed, while Shobhit finished Grumpier Old Men.
[posted 12:15 pm]