— चार हजार सात सौ उनतालीस —

Let's see, what can I tell you today? Not much! I had no walk to go on last night; I made burgers for dinner and made Shobhit's with two shiitake mushroom patties on a bagel waiting for him when he got home from work, right around 8:00. I had also made chai, which he requested I do the night before and which I hadn't made in a while.

We then sat down to watch A Few Good Men, which I had not only never seen, but which I never had any interest in way back when it was first released in 1992 . . . until I learned only recently, it was Aaron Sorkin's first movie script. Whaaat! So, suddenly I was very interested. Unfortunately there's about 11 minutes I still haven't seen, because I could only find it to watch at no extra cost on demand from an AMC Channel airing that was "edited for content," and it also featured ridiculous overdubs of dialogue to cut out obvious F-bombs. I really tried to find other alternatives, and even would have rented it online if I could have paid only $4 for it, but it was not available to rent anywhere and the only way to get it online—it is not on any one of the streaming platforms—was to buy a digital copy outright, for $14. That's insane, so I just sucked it up and watched the edited version. I think I still got the general gist.

Some observations. It was pretty engaging and generally holds up fairy well in terms of overall storytelling, and the performances are great. Some dated flaws clearly more glaring now than they would have been 25 years ago: the condescending way the script treats Demi Moore's character as a woman, even on top of the way the script goes out of its way to illustrate how the men in the story underestimate her. Strangely though, the one thing I truly hated was its synth-heavy film score, which I found as obtrusive as it was dated, and in the final scene, overtly cliché in its outright corniness.

Other than that though it was pretty great!

— चार हजार सात सौ उनतालीस —

— चार हजार सात सौ उनतालीस —

I've got an eventful evening ahead of me tonight, but a not-so-eventful weekend to look forward to. Today is my nephew Tristen's 20th (!) birthday, and as promised Beth is setting up a Zoom Meetup for that, at 5:00. Laney and I are still having our May Happy Hour via Skype that was originally supposed to happen last Friday but got postponed by her work, only now it'll be at 6:00 instead of 5:30 to make room for the Zoom call.

Other than that, though, the only thing I know I'll do this weekend is go to the office tomorrow to swap out receiver paperwork. Oh! That's right, and maybe share Australia photos with Alexia via Zoom on Sunday evening.

I did come up with a solution to the bummer of having to put off an anniversary trip to Portland with Shobhit for the second year in a row, though. Washington State has reopened campgrounds, and with a desire to manage a getaway of some kind, I actually started to consider camping, something I have actively refused to do since 1996. But! I'm so glad I brought this up with Karen over FaceTime lunch yesterday, as she recommended a place she said her family goes to every year: renting a yurt, at Kayak Point! It's not even that far north of Seattle, I've never been there, it's way better than having to put up a tent, and it's on the Puget Sound shoreline. I brought it up this morning to Shobhit and to my delight and surprise, not only was he kind of into the idea, he even said we might as well make it 2 nights if we do go! So now I'm getting the feeling we might manage not to cancel that amount of travel that I had already intended this year . . . it'll just be to a different place.

We may have to do it only close to rather than on our actual anniversary date, as Shobhit may need to work that day, but I can absolutely live with that. Our best bet is weekday stays anyway as all the Friday and Saturday nights are booked for every yurt already.

However and whenever we managed to do it, it's nice to finally have something to get even a little excited about again.

— चार हजार सात सौ उनतालीस —

[posted 12:23 pm]