the week begins
Whoops! I was so focused on updating you about my weekend yesterday, I totally spaced mentioning that I had my FaceTime lunch with Karen yesterday.
As seems to be the case pretty much every year, our regularly scheduled fourth-Thursday lunch this month landed on Thanksgiving, and so we rescheduled. I couldn't do today or tomorrow because I am working at the Central District store noon to four, annoyingly forcing me to eat these days' lunches before noon. So, that left only Monday or Friday for rescheduling, and when I emailed Karen to ask if she was available either day, she happily chose noon.
She and I talked a lot about the movie I reviewed on Sunday, Run, as both Karen and her now-grown daughter Anita are wheelchair users, and the protagonist of the film is too, as is the actor who portrays her. Karen told me Anita read my review "eagerly," as she has particularly high interest in the movie, but just the very nature of it being a thriller makes Karen herself less likely to watch it.
I did ask Karen if there were any disability organizations akin to GLAAD, which serve as sort of media watchdogs but for portrays of disabled people in movies and television. She couldn't come up with a direct analog, certainly not with the same national stature as GLAAD, but she did tell me about her subscription to New Mobility, a magazine focused on wheelchair users. And by all accounts, its relatively small amount of coverage of this film has indeed been positive. So that makes me feel better, and like I can still like the movie as much as I did without fearing that I missed something due to my biases as an able bodied person. I still would absolutely recommend the film.
We spoke of other things too, of course, and it was nice to catch up with her as always. She was delighted by my pumpkin pie slice earrings, which I'll be wearing all week. I suspect it might be a nice conversation starter while working at the stores today and tomorrow.
As for last night . . . I went ahead and watched The LEGO Star Wars Christmas Special on Disney+. I got a few good laughs out of it, but not enough to make its 42-minute run time especially recommended. In short: meh. I suspected there was no reason for me to wait and watch that one while Shobhit was home and I was right.
Once he did get home, from his later work shift, I thought I was going to watch an episode or two of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but then Hulu reminded me there was an unwatched episode of Fargo and so we watched that. I found this episode to be a bit of a comedown from last week's wonderfully Wizard of Oz themed episode, but there's still next week's finale to pick it up a bit. Also I can't decide what I feel about this strange ghost character who keeps appearing, and how it's woven into the narrative and especially its impact on the killer nurse character (a character I find delicious), it's not really the greatest.
Before Shobhit got home, I thought I was nearly done with the calendars . . . and then I was unfortunately reminded that, with the Costco calendar templates, I have to hand-enter all the holidays. Goddammit. So, I spent some time working on that. On the upside, it allowed me to make the fun choice of putting only Australian holidays on the version of the calendar being made for Uncle David and Mary Ann.
[posted 4:27 pm because even though I had this totally ready to post I then spaced it and went to work at the store, duh]