hangouts with the besties
I had a relatively eventful weekend, in retrospect. In one case it even involved in-person socializing! I'll get to that momentarily.
In the midst of it all, as I already noted last week would be the case, I had one movie to watch and then review each day. On Friday evening I watched Mangrove (very recommended: A-) on Amazon Prime; on Saturday Shobhit actually joined me to watch The Personal History of David Copperfield (not especially recommended: B-) rented on Vudu; and yesterday I watched Run (trashy fun, recommended: B+) on Hulu.
Beyond that, I think I'll work backwards, and cover Sunday first. I spent a bit more than ninety minutes last night on FaceTime with Gabriel and Lea, between roughly 5 p.m. and maybe 6:30 or so—we hung up shortly after Shobhit got home from work, and shortly after Gabriel noted he heard Lea's stomach growl at least twice so they needed to make dinner.
In the meantime, we did our biweekly Movie Draft, this time doing Gabriel's choice: the year 2000. He really waffled about sticking to that choice until nearly the last minute, as he nearly changed his mind when we were on FaceTime briefly prior, I think maybe on Saturday—but, in the end, we still stuck with 2000.
I made a stupid mistake this time around, and I really should have known better; I had gone Thirteen for my "Drama" pick, but had I really thought about it I would have actually remembered that movie starring Holly Hunter came out a few years later—specifically, 2003. So that caused a bit of a hiccup later in the evening, with my largely non-reaction annoying Gabriel for some reason. He wanted something more contrite out of me, I suppose, but whatever: it's just a game. And it's not like I did it on purpose. It was an honest mistake.
I never thought I would win this round anyway, and Evan came back with her rankings late last night, ranking mine second even after I sent the clarification about Thirteen (which was indeed a movie in 2000 as well, but apparently it's some kind of quasi-documentary, so not even in the right category). She ranked Lea's list first and Gabriel's last, still putting mine second—which gives me two points anyway.
I got Lea's brother Ben's rankings literally as I was writing the above paragraph: Lea's first, then Gabriel's and then mine. So until Gabriel's brother comes back with his rankings, Lea's in first place and right now Gabriel and I are tied for second.
I had chosen the last year we did and Gabriel chose 2000, so we agreed Lea should chose the year for our next one. She chose 2014, apparently just because that's the year she moved to Seattle—from Vancouver, B.C., I just learned! She was there for five years as a grad student.
Anyway, once we were done with our 2000 Movie Draft, we spent a bit of time just visiting, talking some about COVID-19 and some about politics, really the go-to topics in 2020. We touched on other stuff too, none of which is interesting enough to get into here, except to say that I love that Gabriel came up with this idea to begin with. He's been pretty consistent with keeping it up, and it's resulted in our spending time together, if only virtually, more frequently than we tended to before social distancing even took hold. He's going to get an unusually high number of points on the next Social Review—not that I necessarily should have even mentioned that. He thinks the Social Review is so dumb he might read this and go out of his way to get together less often for only that reason. Actually under the circumstances he probably won't, but if not for COVID he might have.
I guess they'll have a four-person family Thanksgiving, within their "bubble" hat includes Tess, of course, and Stephanie, who apparently will come over to their house and will also be making some food. I bet their dinner is going to be delicious, actually. It's going to be just Shobhit and me this year, but I'm still kind of looking forward to our mutual day off on Thursday. I finally found a channel we can use to watch Planes Traines and Automobiles, arguably the best Thanksgiving movie out there and which I haven't seen in a while.
I've also created a list, ranked in priority, of Christmas content to watch between Thanksgiving and Christmas: two holiday specials and some fourteen movies, which are a fair mix of newer titles and classics. I'm doing whatever I can to make the holiday season enjoyable in spite of how shitty everything is otherwise. And truth be told, my own life isn't especially shitty at all; at worst there are just things I prefer weren't the case: no work holiday events at the office, no staying overnight at Dad and Sherri's on Christmas Eve. But, we're all still in touch. We're healthy. We have next year to look forward to, with things at least tentatively looking up for now. In the spirit of this week in particular, I must say I still have plenty to be thankful for.
As for Saturday, Shobhit was scheduled to work but he called in sick just for, as Danielle later labeled it, "a mental health day." So, we wound up both having that day off together as well. He had suggested we go somewhere, just to do something and get him a Social Review point, that day. At first I was thinking of just a pleasure drive over to Kerry Park on Lower Queen Anne and back.
But, then Danielle called me on FaceTime, just to say hi. And when Shobhit saw me talking to her on my iPad in the bedroom, he asked what she was doing that day: nothing in particular, it turns out. She's had a lot of drama in her life recently, as usual associated with Morgan, and she's actually been on leave from her work for two weeks—and has decided to take this week off as well, for Thanksgiving. Shobhit suggested we get pizza from Pizza Pulcinella and take it over to Seward Park to eat outside together, socially distanced.
This was actually a surprisingly workable idea for mid-November, what with the weather actually being dry on Saturday—and, the 54°F that it wound up being for much of our time at the park, was a whopping six degrees warmer than the forecast had said when we first discussed the plan earlier in the day. Shobhit and I had actually bundled up for this, me wearing layers and bringing a winter cap and gloves just in case it was really cold. And once we got there, we both wound up taking our coats off! I still had my hoodie on.
Anyway, Danielle had an eye doctor appointment at 1:00 and Morgan had one at 2:00, so at first we were going to meet there at 3:00. But, then Morgan decided she didn't want to join, and Danielle convinced Patrick to take Morgan to her appointment, so Danielle was able to join us an hour earlier than originally thought.
It still gets dark quite early these days, which actually means another hour was quite a valuable addition. It was closer to 2:30 by the time Danielle caught up with us, where we already had our blanket tote spread out and had the pizzas we covered and picked up ready. Danielle brought her own blanket and spread hers out several feet away.
It actually felt a little close to me, but I didn't balk; and yesterday when Danielle asked me to send her the photo I took using my phone's timer, I told her I had opted not to post it to social media just because I felt it looked like we were a little too close. Danielle noted, however, that we were at least six feet apart, pointing out that we were each more than our combined arms' lengths away. She then told me that the width of our arms from fingertips to fingertips is the same as our height, which I found hard to believe. So then we got back on FaceTime briefly yesterday so I could lay on my back in my living room, stretch out my hands and set down pens to mark and then measure the distance . . . which was a couple inches longer than my height! Holy shit.
So, we were almost certainly far away enough from each other, especially outside. But, whenever I meet with Laney, who is in the higher-risk category, we always insist on 10 feet. Which was why this felt slightly too close, even though it was almost certainly fine. But, whatever, you can see the photo here.
In any case, it was a nice ninety minutes or so that we all hung out at the park, warmer than expected for most of the time, very good pizza, and particularly great to see Danielle in person for the first time since the Fourth of July. There's no telling when we'll see her again in person after this, but I do hope it's not fully another four months.
[posted 1:04 pm]