banana nut
Not a lot to report about my weekend; social interaction was relatively limited—although, come to think of it, I did have a couple phone and FaceTime conversations (both relatively brief) with Gabriel and one FaceTime conversation with Danielle. The only true "socializing" thing that happened was my walk to Volunteer Park and back with Alexia, who, because of her exasperation with destructive protests, seems to be even more sympathetic to the cops than ever. She even gave a minor indication that she thought the video of a cop rolling his bike over a protester's head was fake—I wish now I'd had the wherewithal to note to her that it definitely happened: the cop was placed on leave over the incident.
It's so frustrating that I have to reiterate so often how I'm not thrilled about protest violence, or even vandalism. But so few people seem to truly get it through their heads that this all traces back to police brutality to begin with—police shooting unarmed civilians with no true accountability. Instead of people spending so much time talking about how "the cause" would be better served by protests remaining peaceful (which, sure, is maybe true; although peaceful protest hasn't exactly gotten us very far on these issues so far), they should be talking about how none of this shit would be happening at all if we weren't supporting police departments that defend and protect murderous cops from the start.
Anyway. That was just a brief moment on the walk. The weather was very pleasant yesterday, and we even went so far as Lake View Cemetery, which Alexia had never gone into. We found Bruce Lee's and Brandon Lee's graves, and had to wait a few minutes for others to finish their own visits. I remain amazed by how often those graves get visited, and they still had fresh flowers set on it—like, four or five paper-wrapped bouquets—along with coins and candy. I did turn to Alexia and say, "I really want that Tootsie Pop." She kind of giggled but also said, "You're bad! That's so disrespectful." Hey, I didn't actually take the candy. Mostly because people were around.
There were plenty of other things I could have done to be productive yesterday—I really do need to start working on the 2021 calendars; with the U.S. Post Office all fucked up this year, and the chance I may not even be able to visit Olympia for Christmas (I'm still holding out hope there, maybe naively), I'm going to want to get them out in the mail earlier than in the past. But, I spent a whole lot of the afternoon, actually, cooking: Shobhit had gotten a bunch of bananas the last time we went to Costco, but they were getting ripe and there were eight left; Shobhit suggested I make banana bread out of them, to take with me to Leavenworth tomorrow.
And I did—banana muffins, to be specific. I lowered the sugar and the oil slightly from the recipe, in addition to using several more bananas than it called for. My hope was to make them "banana-forward" (to coin a phrase Alexia had used) the way Shobhit's had been when he made them a few months ago. And it worked! They're pretty damned tasty. I otherwise doubled the recipe, and filled the muffin tin to each little compartment's surface. Doing it this way made for a dozen and a half of them, four of which have already been eaten by Shobhit and me. I paired the rest and put them into Ziploc bags, in the interest of being more sanitary for sharing them with family tomorrow.
I'm rather looking forward to this day trip tomorrow—I really wish I could have also booked a room for two nights, but I just did not think that would be responsible. I'm holding out hope that whatever the family decides to do next year, by then it will be safer to participate completely. The flip side is that, if this does indeed turn into an annual tradition, I don't want to have missed out completely on its first year, either. I actually think I've found a relatively workable compromise, something that still comes with risk but a calculated one. I don't think what I'm doing here is any more dangerous than when Shobhit and I traveled to the coast in June or to Idaho in early August.
Brandi, the mask-skeptic (who still wears them in public places because it's the rule, and I'll give her credit for that), posted to the Facebook Event page a while ago about bringing cleaning supplies and making sure everyone has separate bathrooms between separate immediate families, in the huge house they're all staying at. She even acknowledged how contagious COVID is and was like "I'm not about to catch it!" The ridiculous thing is that she's clearly far more concerned about surfaces than she is about breathing the same air as everyone else in that house for literally two days straight, and it absolutely should be the other way around.
As long as none of them is infected, they should still be fine. As I already said before, in all probability, they will be. But, if even one person is infected and they hang out for a good 48 hours without masks on in the same house with 17 other people . . . more than one other person is all but guaranteed to catch it. So the real question is how careful all of these people are when around other people outside this quasi-"pod" of people who already spent a fair amount of time with each other.
I will probably go inside this house, but only to, say, look around, or use the bathroom, and only briefly, and with a mask on. Certainly not if a huge number of them are all congregated in there at the same time. I wonder if they all have private entrances? it will be interesting just to see the layout of the house. I found the address on Google Maps satellite view yesterday, and it looks like there is easy walk from behind the house right down to the Wenatchee River, with plenty of rocky shore to walk along. That looks fun.
I do wish Shobhit were coming with me. I think there actually is somewhat of a chance he would, if he had tomorrow off of work, even though he remains against me going, basically for all the same reasons I just laid out. But, his shift tomorrow is at Total Wine, and unlike at Big 5, he can't call in sick at that job and still get paid. So, he'll be working.
In any case, there won't be a standard DLU tomorrow. This will be why.
Anyway! I had to get receiving paperwork to the office on Saturday rather than Sunday this weekend, due to the system switchover AP is dealing with. I walked to the Central Library first to return a John Grisham novel for Shobhit, and then over to Target, where I finally got myself a new belt, and a new wall clock since our old one died a week or so ago. Now I had too much to carry, though, so I caught a Rapid Ride D bus the rest of the way—and once again, I had to move to a seat further up the bus because this bitch sat right behind me with no mask on. Get the fuck away from me, lady.
I caught a #8 bus back after I only needed to be inside the office for about 11 minutes. Otherwise I spent a lot of the weekend watching season 3 of Dear White People, which I am now finished with. I like that show a lot and highly recommend it. I actually think it's above-average quality for a Netflix original series, of which there are now way too many to count or pay attention to.
As for Friday, that evening I finally got access to a SIFF advance screening, my second virtual one. And it became instantly my second-favorite movie of the year (so far), Kajillionaire. I loved it so much, I was super bummed I could not recommend it to anyone local just yet, as our theaters remain closed and this movie won't be available VOD until October 16. I actually created an iOS reminder to email Gabriel that day, because he absolutely needs to see this movie, which, as I already told him over the phone yesterday, I think is director Miranda July's crowning achievement. I mean, it’s only the third feature film she's directed since 2005, but still. I think it's by far her best.
[posted 12:27 pm]