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I keep trying to find fun movies to watch with Shobhit on HBO Max . . . and then finding one to watch that was already available on HBO Go. Wednesday night, it was The Nice Guys. Yesterday it was a much older movie, one I could hardly believe Shobhit had still not seen, and which I knew would be kind of up his alley: the 1986 movie musical version of Little Shop of Horrors.

So, that's what we watched after he got home from work, and we drank the chai I had just finished making, and he ate his tacos. I already ate my tacos before he got home.

I guess the new HBO Max app has some six hundred movies on offer, as compared to a rotating roster of about 130 movies on HBO Go. So far, turns out the 130 movies were sufficient. I've tried finding lists online of the best movies on HBO Max, and irritatingly they tend to include movies that were already available on HBO Go. I want to know what good movies are new options, goddammit!

This ranked list is helpful, I suppose . . . and, aha! Network is available, and that one's not on the HBO Go app. Has Shobhit ever seen that one? I can't remember. It's certainly worth watching, though, and arguably no movie in history has more accurately predicted the future of media culture. Except . . . fuck! It's not actually there on HBO Max. I guess I shouldn't have just taken this list's word for it. This list is useless!

Hmm. Well, it does have Saving Private Ryan, which was not on HBO Go, and I've been thinking about re-watching that for several years. So I've added that one to my list.

We didn't watch any Designing Women last night. Shobhit went to his news programs and I retired to the bedroom, where I updated my Fiona Apple, Lady Gaga and Kesha playlists. A very helpful tool: how recently I had actually updated my iPod Classic, which still has all the playlists from before the hard drive transfer intact. It was easy to refer to those to remind myself which tracks went where. I still need to figure out whether I can use the iPod to transfer the disappeared ripped music files back to my hard drive. I took literally hundreds of my CDs to the used CD store a while back because I thought the music was all safe having been ripped in iTunes. So far I have only noticed disappeared tracks from CDs checked out of the library, but how the hell would iTunes know the difference? I worry about my inventory of files ripped from my own purchased CDs. On the upside, I do have Time Machine turned on now, which should make it easy to retrieve anything that disappears in the meantime.

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— चार हजार सात सौ तिरासी —

Okay, so . . . what else? I have very little that's interesting to say today, clearly. Seriously, why are you even reading this? You have better things to do!

Oh! I take it back. I nearly forgot! I received yet more gifts in the mail, both yesterday and today. Yesterday I received a book written by former PCC Nutritionist Marilyn Walls, who had emailed me about two and a half weeks ago to see if I would be interested. It's about dealing with the death of her own mother, who had died of Alzheimer's disease. It's called Mother's Secret: A Nutritionist's View of Family and Alzheimer's Disease. I read a few pages of it before falling asleep last night, which I suppose technically means I am now reading two books at once. I hate doing that!

Anyway it was very kind of her, and I was kind of moved by her note she wrote in the front of the book, which read, in part, To Matthew, Because losing your mother can be complicated. Then she added, amusingly: Peace, from one of your fan club.

The other delivery came today: from Uncle David and Mary Ann, after a bit of a debacle when they attempted to order me a plant from "The Flower Lady" but their credit card reader kept rejecting the account, even though they had no issue at the place they ordered something to be sent to Christopher. Mary Ann even sent me their information (in bits in pieces in both email and over Facebook Messenger) to try placing the order locally over the phone. Still didn't work, and while I certainly appreciated the thought, I suggested we just let it go. I guess they couldn't, though, and as of today—a little over three weeks after Mom's death—I received a beautiful basket of plants, complete with a couple plastic butterflies which Mom loved.

This had come from a place called Seattle Flowers, at which clearly there had been no issues with the transaction. The delivery guy buzzed me and said he wasn't allowed to come inside the building, so I put on my face mask and went downstairs to get it. He even offered to take the half-box it was sitting in so I did not have to dispose of it myself, which was very nice. Anyway, I love it, and the timing was perfect since I finally had to throw out the wilted tiger lilies just yesterday.

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[posted 12:37 pm]