— चार हजार नौ सौ इक्कीस —

Yesterday I had my eighth Movie Draft with Gabriel and Lea. And: this is for you, Gabriel! Who says he doesn’t actually care but he brought it up so it naturally affects how I write about it later! It's the butterfly effect, and if we wind up in a nuclear holocaust by the end of the year as a result of this you'll only have yourself to blame! I think I might be digressing a little here.

Movie Draft #1, on 10/4/2020: 1999 (winner: Lea)
Movie Draft #2, on 10/18/2020: 1984 (winner: Lea)
Movie Draft #3, on 11/8/2020: 2007 (winner: Matthew)
Movie Draft #4, on 11/22/2020: 2000 (winner: Lea)
Movie Draft #5, on 12/13/2020: 2014 (winner: Lea)
Movie Draft #6, on 1/10/2021: 1970s (winner: Lea)
Movie Draft #7, on 1/30/2021: 2020 (winner: Gabriel)
Movie Draft #8, on 2/14/2021: 1993 (winner: Gabriel)

As you can see, historically speaking, Lea has been wiping the floor with us on these. I mean, damn. I can't stop making my lists conform to what I believe are the best choices within each genre, though (Animated/Foreign; Blockbuster; Comedy/Horror; Documentary; Drama; Sequel/Remake; Wild Card). Strategically it's better to try pandering to the tastes of the voters—and each of us is only sending to one person to make a vote, ranking each of the three lists sent anonymously. I think we all had different people we send to in the beginning; for the first half or so of them, I was sending to Evan. Then I switched to Barbara, who thankfully reliably responds almost immediately each time. I can't remember now who Lea is sending hers to. Her friend Julie?

Anyway, at the start Gabriel was sending to his brother Garret. Now he sends to Mandy, who is more enthusiastic about this whole thing than Gabriel, Lea and I combined, which is odd since Mandy has never actually participated beyond voting. It would be fun for her to participate in the draft itself, but then Gabriel wouldn't be able to send to her to vote. And even just as a voter, she really gets into it. She even got pulled into a conference FaceTime near the end of our time online yesterday, so I suppose that means I should throw her a Social Review point for that. I only realized that just now.

In any case, this was the one time I spent not directly with Shobhit yesterday, as Gabriel, Lea and I all got on FaceTime at 2 p.m. or so, since they wound up not having the time for it on Saturday evening. I did ask if this was still okay for them even though it was Valentine's Day, and Gabriel said "That's why I said midday." After Mandy joined the conversation, I think it might have been close to 4:30. But outside that two and a half hours or so, the day was spent entirely with Shobhit, at home, never going anywhere even though we had intended to for quite some time. But, Shobhit basically getting his own "snow day" off work on Saturday in turn affected our Sunday, as on Saturday we came home with so many treats to consume on Sunday without having to go anywhere to get anything.

— चार हजार नौ सौ इक्कीस —

— चार हजार नौ सौ इक्कीस —

Speaking of snow days, it should be noted that I already posted about all the snow we got between Thursday and yesterday, which I wrote up last night and posted here. I did not figure this part out until this morning, though, a bit of snow statistics from my 23 years living in Seattle, which I already posted to Facebook and Twitter:

So we had more snow on Saturday than we've gotten in a single day since 1969 (8.9"), but the following are the three biggest successive-snow-event totals in the 23 years I have lived in Seattle:

1. February 8-11, 2019: 17.5" (and that's not counting the 2.7" Feb 3-4, so we totaled 20.2" that month)
2. December 13-25, 2008: 13.9" total
3. February 11-14, 2021: 12.4"

— चार हजार नौ सौ इक्कीस —

And then! Even outside of the long walk through the snow with Shobhit (which I also wrote about yesterday), I had my virtual Happy Hour with Tracy from work, on Saturday at 3 p.m. More accurately, 3:10, because I texted her at 2:10 with See you in fifty minutes! and never heard a response. I actually tried calling her at 3:00 as scheduled, and there was no answer. So then I texted her at 3:10, when I was already halfway through my hot chocolate spiked with peanut butter whiskey (a genius idea), Did something come up?

And that was when she woke up from her nap. She still did the Happy Hour, and she told me she had woken up and startled her older sister, who lives with her, by screaming "FUCK!" She then texted me that I would be amazed by the craziness of her hair, which is very curly and unruly, but she still looked fine.

And we proceeded to shoot the shit for three hours. Much like the Happy Hour I'd had with Laney last Tuesday, she clearly could have gone even longer, but I was not hungry and wanted to eat, especially before possibly getting online with Gabriel and Lea at 7:00. Which never happened anyway as that got bumped to Sunday but whatever.

I still had three separate socializing events over the weekend: walk and takeout lunch with Shobhit on Saturday; Virtual Happy Hour with Tracy on Saturday; 1993 Movie Draft with Gabriel and Lea, and later Mandy, on Sunday. Sachin predictably backed out of brunch plans Sunday morning, as he lives in Renton these days and did not want to drive through the snow. And so, we saved our brunch money.

Shobhit and I do still have our combined two $25 gift cards to See's Candy to use, which Shobhit bought for Christmas stocking stuffers and said we could wait to redeem them until Valentine's Day. And we would have on Saturday if I'd had the cards with me, but I did not realize I'd be going downtown until the last minute and I did not think to bring them. We still went and got our sample confections. Shobhit told them we'd be back the next day, but as I said, yesterday we never went out. We'll get back there to pick up our fifty bucks worth of chocolate confections soon enough, though.

— चार हजार नौ सौ इक्कीस —

[posted 12:31 pm]