lunch with claudia
Boy, do I feel better today! I was so tired all day yesterday, which for a moment I thought was kind of weird as I have been up past midnight and had to get up early for work and still felt fine all day before. But, I think the key difference this time really was that stupid fire alarm on Monday night, yanking me out of a peaceful sleep only about an hour after I went to bed, coupled with the stress of gathering up the cats and getting them into the carrier and downstairs and outside. That whole process and experience just fucked me up for the next day.
So, after helping Shobhit make a huge batch of sambar for lunch, the only bit of TV I watched was one episode of Cheers on Netflix. I had spent a little time reading my Atlas of Cities book from the library, and I would have spent even more time on that, but I literally started to nod off. I was actually in bed well before 9:00 -- rare but not unheard of, although when that has happened in the past it has tended to be in fall and winter months when it's dark much earlier. Last night was only three days before the summer solstice; Seattle is the northernmost major city in the contiguous 48 states, and thus gets the longest summer days anywhere in the country outside of Alaska. The sun was barely starting to go down when I got into bed last night. It still wasn't quite dark when I actually fell asleep, and I slept soundly thereafter for a solid seven hours -- in recent years the absolute ideal for me: not too little and not too much; when I sleep for eight hours I tend to feel a little overtired throughout the day. For some reason I tend to be most effectively alert when working on seven hours of sleep, especially when uninterrupted. And that's what I got last night.
I have the time this week to see more movies than I am bothering to. I was explaining to Shobhit this last night as well: there just isn't anything interesting enough playing, that I haven't already seen, even at an AMC theatre where I have a monthly subscription and so it won't cost me anything extra, to warrant even going out of my way. Not until I see Toy Story 4 tomorrow, anyway.
Well, I don't usually do this just for someone sitting with me at lunch at work, but I'm going to give Claudia a Social Review point for lunch today, because not only did we sit for nearly an hour together out on the patio, but we actually sought out a more secluded spot so it would be just the two of us. We might as well say we went out to lunch together, even though I actually ate leftover sambar and rice (which was delicious, by the way -- the kind of thing where the food is better the second day) and we never actually left the building.
But! At first she wanted to tell me about what she had initially started texting me about on Facebook Messenger: she had said "Happy Juneteenth," and the response she got, which was maybe well intended but certainly misguided, was "I don't know if happy is a qualifier."
Huh? My guess is this person had no idea that to take that literally would basically mean they supported slavery, but perhaps in their mind they didn't think "happy" should be used in reference to something as depressing as slavery. Except this is about fucking emancipation. What the hell else is there to be more happy about? Claudia had added in the text exchange, "It's about fake woke-ism," which she elaborated on when she came out to have the conversation in more detail in person: she's encountered a lot of, I guess you could say, liberal platitudes lately.
She also told me about another person recently coming up to her and saying, "Tell me how you pronounce your name again?" -- clearly confusing her for the other black girl in the office, who was just recently hired, and who looks literally nothing like Claudia. They have entirely different skin tones, for one thing. Maybe the only thing they genuinely have in common is they're both pretty short. Anyway, fully acknowledging how often white people make stupid mistakes like that, it's still disappointing.
EDIT: Even though I never mentioned the person by name (and neither did Claudia), just to be fair, Claudia later messaged me to "disregard" the accusation of "fake woke-ism." I guess she rethought that idea, at least as it pertained to the intentions of whoever it was.
Anyway, Claudia's and my conversation evolved to pretty wildly different topics from there, up to and including a friend staying at her house as a guest right now who she thinks is really hot, and what a challenge it can be to have someone staying with you who you find really hot (don't I know it). She showed me several Instagram pictures of this guy, and if fascinated me how I could find him really hot or really not, depending on the photo. In the ones where he had much more of a beard, I found him far less hot.
Anyway we talked about a whole host of other things too, including being extroverted introverts and how we handle social situations. It was a very lively and lovely forty minutes or so. So, on the next Social Review (to be posted Friday), I'm counting it!
[posted 1:08 pm]