the french connection
My weekend wasn't super eventful until Sunday, at least that I can recall. What did I even do on Friday evening? I can't remember! I do know Shobhit and I watched the majority of season four of The Expanse on Prime Video over the weekend—I just looked up my watch history and see that episode 3 was indeed watched on Friday. Hold on, maybe we watched four episodes on Friday? This is weird because I know we watched the first two episodes of season five yesterday but the Watch History is dating that one today! Is Prime Video's record keeper hanging out on the other side of the International Date Line or what? Anyway, working backward from those two episodes actually watched yesterday, another three watched the day before, then presumably the four the day previous were actually on Friday rather than Saturday. This would make sense as the one episode the day previous would have been all we really had time for after Shobhit finished his Project Management class on Thursday.
So, that must have been how Friday evening was spent. Four episodes of The Expanse.
What about Saturday, then? I took myself to a movie. The documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain. I really didn't like it that much, even though lots of other people are apparently liking it a lot. This was after Shobhit and I had had strawberry pancakes for breakfast, which Shobhit made from a different recipe he found than the Martha Steward one I usually use, and it yielded more volume. Shobhit actually saved about half of his for later and I ate most of mine. I think this was part of the problem with my difficulty at the movie, because I think I kind of carb-crashed and I kept on nodding off.
I had asked Ivan if he wanted to join me, and that was how I found out Ivan just thinks Anthony Bourdain was an asshole: so that was a no. Shobhit worked 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. that day, and I went to an 11:50 screening in the late morning. I rode my bike there and back, getting home only maybe 15 minutes before Shobhit did. I still had to spend roughly and hour writing the movie review, but later in the day Shobhit and I still watched the rest of season four of The Expanse. Ivan asked a couple of times what we were watching, and I know he wants to find something else for us to watch together; I think maybe tonight we'll watch the nature docuseries Penguin Town on Netflix.
It was yesterday that I did the most bona fide socializing, with three different people gaining Social Review points (none of them Shobhit, unfortunately; he worked yesterday from 9 to 6).
I had another double feature in the Braeburn Condos theater scheduled with Tracy yesterday, but had also exchanged texts with my neighbor Alexia on how we needed to catch up. So, we scheduled a walk to Volunteer Park and back at 9 a.m., giving my Sunday a kind of unusually early start. She has finally convinced her mom to move into a place where she can get better care than in the condo she's currently at, and Alexia was scheduled to go with her mom to an orientation appointment later yesterday afternoon. That was the big news in Alexia's life, really: pretty big life changes for her mom, and a lot of logistical involvement on Alexia's part. It really made me think about how I really need to prepare for when I have to make these sorts of decisions for myself, and that's something I need to start thinking about right now. No kid should be burdened with that responsibility, really, but I don't have any children to burden that with anyway. For me, it's either make the necessary plans while I still can, or risk winding up in a state and/or understaffed facility while I waste away with bed sores. I've heard way too many horror stories.
The big news I had to tell Alexia, which I didn't even get to until we were just about back home, was that Ivan is officially living with us again. I'm still fine with leaving the spare condo key with her indefinitely; there may yet be times when we need her to look after the cats—but, for the foreseeable future, it will now be Ivan looking after than any time Shobhit and I go out of town.
And then, the aforementioned double feature: which Ivan actually joined us for part of. The movies Tracy and I watched were Alien: Resurrection (1997) and Amelie (2001). Tracy watched the first three Alien movies last fall but had not gotten around to the fourth; I wanted her to see it. And, just to make it a bizarre double feature, I decided we would then just watch the next film by the same director, French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, which was Amelie.
Tracy got a ride from her sister this time instead of driving herself, and she was thus running about fifteen minutes late. I started the first movie very soon after she arrived because of this, so we'd have plenty of time for our lunch break in the Community Kitchen between movies. The break still happened a lot closer to 1:00 than I realized, making me think for a few minutes that I had allowed for too much time, but in the end Tracy and I talked easily enough for the bulk of that hour.
When I had told Ivan I was doing this double feature and he asked what we were watching, he clearly had zero interest in Alien: Resurrection, but when I mentioned Amelie he commented on how long it had been since he had watched it, and he was interested in joining us for that. Given his established history with things like this, I kind of felt like it was a 50/50 chance he would actually join us in the end. But, after I got back from my walk with Alexia, and Ivan was out of bed and returning from his customary trip to a nearby coffee shop, he didn't even give me a chance to remind him of the movie and asked me, unprompted, what time we'd be watching Amelie. I told him to aim for 2:00, and that was exactly what time he showed up.
Ivan really did not spent a lot of time chit chatting; we started the movie only minutes after he arrived. I quite enjoyed the movie, which I had probably not watched in more than a decade myself (oops, make that six and a half years: quick check on my Google Calendar reveals I went to a reissue of it at the Egyptian Theater in the fall of 2014). It's still delightful, easily my all-time favorite foreign film.
Anyway, Alexia and I had stopped at Bakery Nouveau on the way back from our walk, as I decided to buy some macaroons. Tracy had suggested making some kind of theme out of our outfits or lunches, and I drew a blank—except that these movies had a French director, so I thought if nothing else I'd get something from my local French bakery. Their macaroons are delicious. I offered one to Ivan and he declined, saying he had just eaten a bunch of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
After the movie ended, Ivan left almost immediately. He did say he didn't think he had seen it since it was in theaters and he was in high school. He graduated high school in 2003, he said, so I suppose he was probably a Junior in the fall of 2001. He'd have been 16 when that movie came out; I was 25. High school already felt like such a long time before by then, to me . . . now, it's like: holy shit, 25 was young in its own right!
No one else had a reservation for the theater and kitchen yesterday, which made it easy for Tracy and me to just continue hanging out there for a while afterward—she even helped me clean up. We then hung out for another good two hours or so on the chairs and ottomans in the Community Kitchen room, before Tracy texted her sister to come and pick her up when it came close to time for Shobhit to be getting home from work.
Shobhit made a lentil and kidney bean dish for dinner, and we started in on season five of The Expanse.
[posted 12:39 pm]