social capital
Shobhit gets two Social Review points for the weekend! He's very pleased.
First is from Friday, which was a warm day—as were all three days of the weekend—and, although he did not get off work until 6 p.m., he wanted to go to Howell Park Beach.
This is generally a nude beach, largely gay, which Shobhit pretty regularly goes to on his own on days he has off but I do not. I was just happy to go someplace near a large body of water; I had no intention of disrobing myself, although I did change into shorts and put on sunscreen.
The sunscreen ultimately proved to be completely pointless. Something both Shobhit and I probably should have though of but it did not occur to us until we got there around 7 p.m.: Howell Park is on the shores of Lake Washington, on the east side of the city. At that time of day, even in mid-spring when the days are getting much longer, the sun is well on the other side of the city. Seattle is made up of hills, and really at that time of day, the only place where the sun might still be hitting any shores of Lake Washington would be over on the eastside. Any lakeside spot within Seattle would now be in shadow.
It would have been fine if we were still in direct sunlight, but, being in shadow, it did not take long for us to start getting chilly. We were both in shorts and neither of us brought jackets. We did bring two blanket totes, because we though Sachin and his girlfriend Kimberly might join us. They never did show up there, but since we had the spare blanket tote, Shobhit unwrapped it and set it over his lap while he scrolled his phone for a bit.
There were no other sunbathers there either—thus, no nudity. In fact, when we first arrived, the secluded park (only accessed through a short trail that goes through a thicket of bushes and trees) was empty, except for a man and two little girls. The man still had a face mask on; Shobhit and I had both removed ours as soon as we had gotten in the car when we left home.
In the middle of our visit there, which could not have been much longer than, maybe, forty-five minutes, one other man came, a Black guy who just sat in the grass—the grass was much greener than I am used to seeing there, as I typically find myself later in summer—and did some of his own silent reading. Those were the only other people we saw at all while we were there. I bet anything there had been plenty of other people, many of them probably nude, earlier in the day when the sunshine was actually hitting the park.
I did bring sandwiches to eat for dinner once we got there, and they were delicious, I must say. So, we did get a picnic dinner out of it, and I do love me a picnic. Shobhit had brought a gin and tonic but I just had a Zevia soda. That alone made it worth going, I thought, even if we were only there for a short while. Even without it being especially warm, it wasn't cold exactly either, and it was quite pleasant just to be outdoors and by the water, listening to it splash against the small shore there.
But, then we did still meet up with Sachin and Kimberly—at home. Shobhit wanted some French fries so he ordered ahead at a place on Madison for us to stop at briefly on our way back. And, Sachin and Kimberley were attempting to buzz my phone from the outside intercom (my phone did not ring, a persistent thing that's very irritating) the very moment we got out of the car and were in the lobby.
Okay, so let's talk vaccinations, briefly. Shobhit and I are both well past fully vaccinated. Kimberly has not been, and apparently does not want to be. I have not been privy to whatever reason she has for resisting it, nor was it ever brought up. Sachin had been waiting a while, but finally got his first dose. Shobhit says he doesn't know whether he's influenced him at all, but he has had several conversations with him encouraging him to get vaccinated, and it's good to see that he, at least, has gone ahead with it. It was very recent, though—if I recall correctly, I think he had just gotten his first shot that day. Maybe the day before?
Shobhit would not have asked them to come by if I had asked him not to, but I decided this time I was okay with it, given not just the current guidelines (which by some measures are now too lax, but who knows) but even where they were before the recent change: it was still just one other household, after all, and both of us in my household are fully vaccinated. Thus, this marked only the second time since the start of the pandemic that we've had a friend over, visiting inside the condo, the first having been when Danielle came over for lunch in early February. And when Danielle had visited, she was fully vaccinated but Shobhit and I were not, and we all wore masks even inside except while eating.
We didn't do that with Sachin and Kimberly, who, to their credit, kept their masks on for several moments after coming inside, and did not remove them until I told them they were welcome to. They had gotten takeout from Chipotle and they sat on the floor in our living room, using what space they could on our very cluttered coffee table as a table.
Even our regular dining table is seriously covered with Shobhit's paperwork and crap right now; I stopped staying on top of that a while back, and Shobhit's cluttering completely over took it, probably in large part to his using it as a work station when on his Project Management virtual chat classes. Sachin and Kimberly coming over was something I did not know was happening until we were already at Howell Beach, so I had no time to do any tidying at all. I hadn't even vacuumed in a while.
I chose not to be embarrassed about it. I mean, over my Birth Week I was inside both my cousin Jennifer's house and my friend Lynn's house, and in both cases the houses were pretty cluttered. Did I give a shit in the slightest? Nope. Sachin and Kimberly clearly didn't give a shit either, so it struck me as logical not to worry about it. Now, the next time Gabriel is over, for example, I know he won't be at all comfortable being in the midst of any kind of clutter, and I'll want to have tidied up. Not that I'll have any need to worry about that for a long time to come—I really don't think he'll be comfortable visiting inside another person's home for many more months at minimum, and the same applies to whenever I'll finally get to see the inside of their house, which they moved into last June (and I have now been to twice, but have still not gone inside; it's a minor miracle I managed to spend an evening there without needing to pee).
Anyway. Kimberly is incredibly quiet. She's remarkably patient with Sachin, who has a rather loud, boisterous personality like Shobhit, both of whose personalities are exacerbated by being around each other. Shobhit did have some leftover paneer dish and rice he offered them, and Kimberly accepted a small portion, which she quite sincerely complimented (it was uniquely tasty, I must say). I was nowhere near as talkative as Shobhit and Sachin, but still far more than Kimberly, who seems to be kind of just along for the ride with Sachin. They did not live together, though, which made sense to me. Sachin has moved out of the condo he had bought in Kent and is now renting it out to three renters; he bought another, new place on Beacon Hill and has for all of two weeks now been living with four roomates who are all subletting from him there. One of these days, we'll go visit and check it out.
At Shobhit's suggestion, we also gave them a tour of much of the condo building. We did all wear masks for that, as long as we were indoors anyway. Sachin insisted he had never seen any of our rooftop decks, which I found hard to believe. But, I went searching in my photos from the several times I have given people tours over the course of the 13.5 years we've lived here, and I could find no photographic evidence of it. Maybe he never had any interest before? He probably wouldn't have even now, except Shobhit wanted to show Kimberly, who showed slight interest, and so he tagged along. We went up to the two rooftop decks in the Braeburn East, the 7-store building we live in, first.
There were already people out on both decks. The first, larger one, on the southwest corner of the building, had four or five people out hanging out by the tall chairs and skinny tables. They all went inside shortly after we came out, even though we were only there for a few minutes. Then to the smaller deck on the northwest corner, three other residents were out there socializing and drinking wine. Shobhit was carrying his own glass of wine as we went around the building, and he moved his hand too quickly at one point and sloshed a bunch of wine all over the down vest he was wearing.
I told those ladies we would only be out for a minute, but they were very welcoming and said it was fine. Then Shobhit wanted to show them the p-patch plot he's got going, which is behind the Braeburn West building. Since we were over there anyway, I then led them up to the largest of the three rooftop decks that building has. That building is shorter, at five floors, but much wider, and thus has a lot more units. I discovered that the area of the deck on the west side of the building actually has a far better view of the entire skyline—it's far enough further north that the other six-story building on 14th, which now cuts into the view from our condo, is to the left of the skyline from that vantage point.
I had thought I would be watching and reviewing a movie Friday evening right after work, but Shobhit's suggestion of going to Howell Beach changed that; I just shifted all the movies on my calendar forward.
I did, however, watch and review one movie each on both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was the HBO Max movie Those Who Wish Me Dead, which was not great but was good: solid B. This movie was simultaneously released in theaters and in retrospect I think I would have enjoyed that one more on the big screen, actually. Oh well.
Sunday was a movie I think far too few people are even aware of, which I thought was very good, bordering on excellent (A-), a Netflix release of a Mexican film called Dance of the 41. It's about a seminal moment in Mexican queer history which happened in 1901, and it has a very good chance of winding up on my year-end top ten. I no longer have much faith in "Netflix originals" that are produced initially with a Netflix release in mind, at least not that they will be "great cinema." But, when they acquire the rights to great foreign productions that they then slap the "Netflix original" label to—sometimes those are where you can find real gems.
Shobhit had work shifts on both Saturday and Sunday as well; I spent some of my other free alone time burning through more of season two of Star Trek Discovery, on DVD checked out the library. When Shobhit got home from work at around 9:00 Saturday evening, I finally started my DVD copy of Cold Mountain, also from the library, which I had put on hold after I decided I wanted to watch five movies about the Civil War after the docuseries we watched about Lincoln on CNN. This is the third one; I have two more on my list, and at least those are readily available streaming. When I had first looked for Cold Mountain, it was not on HBO Max, and I discovered in the middle of watching the DVD that it is now—luckily, because the DVD, clearly having made rounds at the library for some 17 years or so probably, began to skip. So I switched to streaming and then it was fine.
I had nearly forgotten how good a movie Cold Mountain actually is. I wasn't as fond of the viewing experience in 2003 because I watched the movie right after finishing the novel, and the movie was so close to the book I felt like I was just watching a rerun. This viewing was much better as now I can hardly remember the book.
As for yesterday, Shobhit was home by about 6:30. First we watched last week's episode of POSE, which we had to give up on last week because the Xfinity On Demand recording was corrupted somehow and blacked out halfway through, so I set it to record a repeat airing. That's what we watched the rest of, before Shobhit then watched the series finale of Mom which I had zero interest in so I went to the bedroom to scroll through TikTok.
And then, Shobhit and I took a little walk to Salt & Straw to get some ice cream. This was his idea; I certainly didn't need it after all I had already grazed on yesterday but whatever. He again wanted a Social Review point, and this was an easy way to net one. In the end I was really glad we went, because I hadn't gone there in ages and holy shit is their ice cream delicious.
I was okay with just letting Shobhit decide on a flavor we could share, so long as he didn't get anything with coconut or coffee. And then, he wanted a coffee flavor. Yuck. So, we got two scoops. I would have chosen the "gooey chocolate brownie" flavor, but just as we were waiting in line, they put up a little sign saying that was now available in pints only. Dammit! Shobhit wanted the salted chocolate chip cookie dough flavor anyway, which sounded fine by me. He ordered a double scoop waffle cone, but then asked that the cookie dough scoop be put in a separate cup. Shobhit had a few bites of it but I otherwise ate it all myself, as we walked back home.
Oh my god. It was so fucking good!
[posted 12:31 pm]