the tasked and the scrupulous
I'm back to work after a three-day holiday weekend, and I'm going to try to get through all the days quickly here. I actually considered updating yesterday just to save myself some time today . . . and then just never got around to it.
Let's start!
Friday: Little to report. Shobhit worked that day until 5:30 and was home by 6:00; we did some shopping since that was payday—first Costco and then PCC. Once back home, we watched an episode or two of The Expanse on Amazon Prime Video.
Saturday: This was the day Shobhit had off of work, his first with no work shift or Project Management class since May 2, the end of my Birth Week. We're talking 27 days since he last had a full day off. He wasn't entirely sure how he wanted to spend his day off until Saturday morning itself, when he asked if I wanted to go visit Sachin at his new house on Beacon Hill. I said sure, and eventually the plan was made to go out there at 4:00.
We had delicious strawberry pancakes for brunch that day (which I made). Then we watched all the rest of the episodes of season 3 of The Expanse on Amazon Prime Video. He now wants to wait another month to move on to season 4, because once we start we just can't stop.
We spent several hours with Sachin and his girlfriend, Kim. This house he's in (Kim is still living in her own separate place) is just an investment property he's living in for the time being; it's got five bedrooms and three bathrooms. Over the course of the time we were there, we briefly met three of his four roommates to whom he's subletting the rooms. The only one we didn't meet, apparently, was the gay one. Sachin did give us a tour of the house shortly after we arrived, though several of the rooms we didn't see because they were now private—although when one of the roommates, who is apparently in the largest room of the house in the basement (strangely, not the one with the private bathroom and thus being the primary bedroom), came into the kitchen, Sachin asked if he could show us his bedroom real quick. The guy was clearly uncomfortable with the idea and said it wasn't quite presentable at the moment; Kim had to tell Sachin "he needs privacy, you're in America." Sachin got slightly defensive about that but quickly moved on.
Anyway, there was clearly some cross communication between Shobhit and Sachin when they discussed us coming over for dinner: Shobhit thought Sachin was making us pasta; Sachin thought we were bringing pasta. All we brought, actually, were some chocolate bars and some homemade chocolate covered strawberries which turned out delicious. We have Shobhit to thank for those; he used a couple of my banana nut chocolate bars from PCC to melt down and cover them with.
Not having pasta turned out to be just as well: hey had breads from Costco, and they also made salad, which basically became or dinner. Plus the strawberries, plus some chocolate croissants Kim had gotten from a nearby Safeway. I had been doing really well all week with my weight going slightly down every day since the previous weekend—until Sunday morning. It went up again yesterday morning, but held steady today, so there's that. I have to get back on track, and at least I'm still starting the week a couple of pounds lighter than I did the previous week.
The visit with Sachin and Kim was fairly pleasant, even though of course Sachin and Shobhit absolutely dominated the conversation—Kim tends to be very quiet, even more than I am or have tended to be for a long time. That doesn't mean she never contributed to the conversation, though; she absolutely did, just very selectively. She otherwise seems very stoic and rarely shows much of a range of emotion on her face. I find it interesting how those two wound up dating, apparently having met at a real estate seminar at the beginning of last year.
I guess they are also exercising a lot, taking rather long walks every day. They asked if we wanted to take a walk with them, and I was all about it. They actually cut their walk a fair amount short for us; they usually walk with the intent of meeting their daily goal of 10,000 steps. I could be slightly off on this, but my best guess is that our walk round-trip was about two and a half miles. I quite enjoyed it, though, and by going on it for the first time I discovered Chief Sealth Trail, which largely follows a
Sunday: Having postponed it on both Friday and Saturday due to spending time with Shobhit doing other things, I finally saw and reviewed another movie: Cruella. This, in fact, was my third time seeing a movie in an actual movie theater—and, as of this one, I finally reactivated my AMC Stubbs A-List membership, which means I can see up to three movies a week for the monthly price of about $25. It'll probably be a while before they're playing enough movies of interest for me to go multiple times in one week, but the thing is, that subscription pays for itself after seeing only two movies within a month, so it's still absolutely worth it.
I went to the 11:30 a.m. showing at Pacific Place, and once again, there were very few others in the theater—maybe five. The key difference here as compared to the Regal Cinemas movies I went to see was, when I went in and took a quick glance around, not one of them was wearing face masks. For all I know, they didn't wear them for the duration of the movie. I took mine off long enough to eat the lunch I had brought, but still wore it the rest of the time.
I was on the phone with Gabriel for a while that day as well, later in the afternoon while he was literally kayaking off the coast of Federal Way in his neighborhood, and we talked a little about when he might relax a little about his uber-preventative measures he still takes, including spraying things with disinfectant that might have been touched by other people. Never mind the fact that the general consensus for several months now has been that transmission from surfaces is very low risk; his position is that he won't relax his precautions until risks overall are much lower than they are now. There was a time when he basically said he would relax more once Tess has been fully vaccinated (she is currently between shots), but now he seems to have updated that to include getting a booster shot for the COVID variants, which I presume won't happen until the fall.
He cited how many of the New York Yankees tested positive even after having been fully vaccinated—something I had not heard about, but wondered how freaked out I should be about it myself, after he brought it up, saying "half the team" had tested positive, and "some of them got really sick." I looked it up after the conversation, and I feel like there are some pertinent details that helped me relax a little about the story: a) the vaccine they had all received was the Johnson & Johnson one with one shot instead of two, which we have long known to be pretty effective, yet far less effective than the two shots for Pfizer (which I got) or Moderna; and b) the most recent stories I can find about it mention only one of them actually getting sick, the rest of them being asymptomatic even though they did test positive.
To me, these are relevant details. Gabriel's plainly stated concern on the phone, which I do understand, is that he's eager to avoid even asymptomatic infection given the possible long term health risks of infection even in such cases. I do get that, and I won't say that he's being unreasonable in that position.
There's something I keep thinking about in regards to the very first phone conversation he and I had about this pandemic, on the day—March 13, 2020—when local school districts announced shutdowns for the first time, and I had also first been sent home from the office ten days before the rest of them (because of a persistent cough from a common cold). We talked about how long society will be able to deal with being told to stay at home, and he pointed out himself that time will tell, but there will come a breaking point when people won't be able to take it anymore.
Setting aside how quickly conservatives turned something as simple as mask-wearing into some ridiculous "civil rights" issue, my argument as of right now would be that the threshold is different for all of us, regardless of political affiliation or propensity to listen to scientists. And to a degree, I have reached mine. I fully understand the risks involved in the decisions I have made—for instance, to see movies in a movie theater again—and have chosen to make choices on probability, as opposed to the existence of any risk at all. I would not be seeing movies in theaters or visiting friends indoors even now if I were not yet vaccinated. And we know there remain certain risks even for people who are vaccinated—but, will the risk ever be zero again? Something tells me it won't be, and I just don't want to stay holed up inside my condo alone for another four months.
Besides, daily positive cases are going down dramatically after all, both nationally and (admittedly to a bit lesser degree) regionally in my local area. If they were skyrocketing again, I would alter my decision making again. Right now, broadly speaking, and I going with the local health departments' directives, and all of my behaviors still fall within those purviews. I know that last month's national announcement that "anyone vaccinated can go masksless nearly anywhere" was not purely based on science and was far more based on economic and political considerations, but from my own perspective, I combine that knowledge with other considerations.
When it comes to the movie-going, for example, I probably wouldn't be as comfortable with it if the theaters were packed, but they aren't; not only are they at limited capacity, but none of the showings I've been to have been anywhere near even 25% capacity. That makes little difference to unvaccinated people in an enclosed space without masks in an infected person happens to be present, but again, I am vaccinated; I wear my mask the majority of the time anyway; and under those circumstances, the probability of my contracting COVID is low. My approach, right now, is to allow myself into spaces where the probability is low, but I won't be obsessive about the probability being zero.
Monday: I reviewed another movie, although this one I watched at home on Hulu while Shobhit was at work: Plan B, a very fun comedy about teen girls embarking on a road trip in South Dakota in search of the "morning after" pill. It's funny and very sweet; highly recommended—much more so than Cruella, in fact,
Gabriel called me again and talked for a little while just as I was starting to write that review. We finally finalized plans to shift gears for our virtual hangouts—Movie Drafts are on hold indefinitely, and last night we started on the "Fast and Furious" franchise. At first we weren't quite sure how we would do this, and for a while I thought I was going to have to rent the 2001 initial film The Fast and the Furious from Amazon Prime, which I knew has a "watch party" option. Then I discovered the movie is available at no extra cost on HBO Max, and although there's no built-in watch party feature on that app, I also discovered the "Netflix Party" extension on Chrome has recently changed to "TeleParty" and works on more streamers than just Netflix now—including HBO Max. Perfect!
So, that's how we did it—although none of us actually utilized the chat window, which Gabriel said he's "terrible at." We still used the extension so that our playback would be synced and either of us could paus or restart the movie at will, without ever having to countdown to sync play on either end. We just also go on FaceTime so we could talk during the movie too, although because Lea's phone would pick up the movie sound on their end before picking up their voices when they said something, their talking often cut in and out. A couple of times we just paused the movie altogether so I could hear what the hell they were saying.
So, there were some minor bumps, but for the most part we had it figured out. And I rather enjoyed the movie—probably more than when I saw it the first time, with him and Kornelija during my Birth Week in 2015. I had remembered wrong that the double feature that evening was the first two in the franchise; it had actually been The Fast and the Furious and then what he said then was his favorite, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which is actually the third, and a standalone installment including all new actors. Just for funsies, let's review what I wrote about the experience in 2015:
Normally I would insist on watching them all in order of release, but Tokyo Drift is a standalone film and Gabriel's favorite, so we watched that one second. Even though it's the third in the series. I had fun watching them, although it was mostly just because I was watching with him -- and I'm happy to wait to see the rest of them until I can watch those with him too. As I explained as he drove me to the bus stop later, I don't feel like I missed anything by not seeing those in the theatre. They were fun, but those movies are dumb.
By and large I stand by all that, although I now do think it would be fun to see them in a theater. I think that now, even more than in 2015, I am inclined to judge a movie on its own terms, and last night's movie was surprisingly enjoyable by that measure. Its casual diversity—the most diverse franchise we've got, Gabriel likes to point out—is notable, particularly for twenty years ago; apparently the sort of "separate but equal" makeup of racing teams or gangs of the first film is increasingly mixed in later installments. Even though I know the later films get insanely ridiculous, I look forward to seeing that progression. The only thing I don't look forward to is the inevitable CGI; the practical stunts of this first installment were particularly impressive to me. There's a wide, overhead shot early on of so many cars driving away from oncoming cops that the driving choreography alone was very cool.
I wonder what Roger Ebert thought of the first movie? He liked it, in spite of its obvious ridiculousness. (Choice excerpt: The races involve cars four abreast at speedway speeds down city streets. This would be difficult in Chicago, but is easy in Los Angeles because, as everybody knows, L.A. has no traffic and no cops.)
The bottom line is, the movie delivers on its own promise of what it wants to be, which is an action movie with great chase sequences. Gabriel is in love with the characters and has to drink Corona beers any time he watches. (I had thought I might just get a coronavirus plushie, since I don’t drink beer, but then I spaced it.) He's excited about moving on through the rest of the series. And I'm glad that this time we'll see them all in release order.
[posted 12:36 pm]