virtual hangouts
I think I'm going to go ahead and give Sachin and his new girlfriend Kimberly a Social Review point for last night, as we spent roughly an hour chatting and catching up on Skype. Regardless of how this might have struck him were it with other people, Shobhit will be thrilled: he was very much a part of this and therefore it means he gets a Social Review point too. And although he's not quite as passionate about it as he once was, he still loves to get those points wherever he can.
Shobhit and Sachin are having some issues with each other lately, and the last time they got on Skype, Sachin got so irritated with Shobhit, he ended the call abruptly. He even tried to pull me into the conversation then, and told me "the next time" we all got together again, they would make sure Kimberly and I were part of the conversation, as an attempted means of, I guess, sort of mediating their passions by virtue of our very presence. Somehow.
So shortly after the Vice Presidential Debate last night, in which Kamala Harris was occasionally hilarious but regularly very much a politician who also dodged many questions in her own way but Pence was frankly pathological evil incarnate, Sachin texted Shobhit over Skype, suggesting a "group chat." I was actually headed to the bedroom to watch an episode of TV since Shobhit wanted to dedicate the whole evening to political television and I can only take so much, but I relented and sat down to join the conversation, meeting Kimberly for the first time. Apparently they met at a real estate event late last summer and have been dating since February, so since right before the pandemic lockdowns started.
They both own their own homes and, I'm told, spend pretty much all their time only with each other. Sachin has been itching for the four of us to get together and I have been resistant, as Sachin clearly wants to meet either at our place or theirs, and I don't know that I'm quite ready for that. Remember what I wrote a few days ago about the myth of a "covid bubble"? All getting together inside either of our places does is increase the risk for all of us, and Sachin doesn't seem all that open to meeting outside anywhere—and now time has passed enough that the weather is starting to turn. So, who knows.
As for our little "virtual hangout" last night, Sachin did this very odd thing where he truly micromanaged the entire hour, acting like it was a perfectly logical, reasonable and normal thing for him to do, even though he's literally never once done anything like that before. At least not involving me. He would go on this preamble in which he spent way too much time explaining that for the next fifteen minutes, Kimberly and I would talk, and Sachin and Shobhit, both of whom Sachin quite openly characterized as people who tend to dominate conversations, would sit it out.
I really have to give Shobhit some credit here. Although he did jump in briefly here and there when some sort of clarification was needed and he could offer it better than I could, for the most part he actually held to Sachin's arbitrary rules. You know who really didn't? Sachin. He would jump back in and chatter away when I supposedly "allotted time" was all but half over, or less. Shobhit kept saying quietly, "He's drunk." This was an issue during his last Skype session with Sachin as well: he seems to be drinking a lot lately. Like, a bottle of wine. I haven't been around him enough to say with any authority whether it's out of control; it may very well not be. I can say that he was clearly not entirely sober last night; I did see him holding an unopened bottle of wine in his hand, which Shobhit actually somehow convinced him not to open; and his inebriation was quite clearly influencing his behavior.
And I'm not saying his behavior was terrible. It was just . . . kind of odd. The attempt at micromanaging the structure of the conversation was especially strange to me. That said, it was genuinely illuminating and interesting getting to know Kimberly, who is much more like me than she is like Sachin—Sachin even remarked on how both she and I are typically far quieter as people, which was why he was trying to get us to talk. I felt a bit put on the spot, but eventually I thought of prompting questions that got a little bit of good conversation between us, especially when Australia came up as a topic of conversation, including Shobhit's and my trip there earlier this year, and Kimberly apparently having dated an Australian guy for a couple of years and as a result having been there something like three times. She's also pretty clearly better educated than I am, with far more practical experience to give her ready knowledge of environmental issues in particular. Sachin, in addition to saying she and he "are total opposites" just like Shobhit and me, said he's learned a lot from her. I'll honestly be rather interested to see how long this relationship will last. It's an interesting position to be in now, being in as seasoned a relationship as Shobhit's as mine has become (sixteen years!), and talking to close friends in a much newer relationship.
Sachin really wanted me to stay on longer than I did, and he did not think an hour was enough. I was done by that point though, and once I left to retire to the bedroom and Kimberly went back to focus on making zucchini bread from the fresh zucchini they had harvested from the farm of a good friend of hers were they had gone to pet sit their six chickens and a turtle (I had a feeling Gabriel would be delighted to talk to this woman), Sachin and Shobhit got into their own conversation where they went straight back to politics. Based on what I could overhear from the bedroom, I think it was better this time than their last call; Shobhit started by laughing at the fly that landed on Mike Pence's head.
I then proceeded to watch this week's episode of We Are Who We Are on my iPad, getting ready for bed and then getting into bed all the while. This was episode four and the first one I watched without Shobhit, who I already know won't miss it, although I know he'll be bummed to learn this episode had the most male nudity thus far (including full frontal, for at least two different characters). And he missed it! But, these episodes come out on Mondays, I wanted to listen to the Still Watching podcast episode about it, and I was tired of waiting.
And now, only one week after our last one since the previously scheduled one had to be postponed a week due to Karen's busy calendar, I once again just finished having lunch with Karen over FaceTime. That's social activity three days in a row this week, when it wasn't even a weekend! Not bad, although the Happy Hour I had planned for tomorrow evening with Laney was postponed two weeks at her request, because of a 10-day "low grade fever" (which, evidently, her doctor does not think is likely to be COVID) and she's just too tired. This does mean that by October 23 it will be really unlikely we can meet in the park again, and I bet that will have to be back to virtual again too. Well, we'll make due with whatever.
Anyway, lunch-chatting with Karen was pleasant as always. She talked about how Canlis has pivoted once again in their business model, now to "Canlis Community College," which apparently includes a video she and Anita watched last night that was a hilarious video about how to cut your own hair. I do sometimes think about the haircut thing . . . my hair is actually a bit longer than normal already, thanks to Shobhit convincing me to get what had been planned to be my standard late-April / early-May haircut in February instead, ahead of our trip to Australia. That ultimately proved to be the best decision I could make, because by the time April and May rolled around I couldn't go to any hair salons anyway.
I have long assumed I would never grow my hair legit-long again, but now I kind of wonder . . . should I just let it go until Spring, at least? I'm actually thinking about it. My receding hairline makes longer hair look worse on me than it did when I was young, but not by a huge margin just yet. It won't look terrible. I could make it one last hurrah.
[posted 1:09 pm]