— पांच हजार छप्पन —

I had a pretty low-key weekend, which is good because it means I don't have to spend a whole lot of time and energy writing about it! This will be a bit different for the next several weekends in a row: I have plans with Tracy both next weekend and the weekend after (both Daniel Craig James Bond double features, in prep for No Time to Die coming out on October 8); Auntie Rose's memorial October 2 plus the opening of the Northgate Link Light Rail extension that same weekend; and the Seattle Pride fall in-person event at Volunteer Park October 9. The following two weekends have no plans booked currently but of course that could change; then the weekend after that brings us Halloween. I still have no clue what I'll be doing for that, but you can bet it will be something.

Anyway! Let's get back to this past weekend. I had multiple possible plans for Friday, maybe Happy Hour with Shobhit at Olympia Pizza III which I have wanted to do for a while, or maybe review a SIFF movie on VOD. Neither of those things happened—Shobhit had his Microsoft internal training video acting gig, which had him out of the house until close to 8 p.m. as I recall. Ivan was out of bed earlier than usual and I liked the idea of just hanging out with him for a bit—and he, for the first time in a while, made an open-ended bid to "watch something." He had suggested On Golden Pond some weeks back, which he said he had only seen once maybe a decade ago, and when I suggested that he was kind of all about it.

He still worked that night, though, so we only had time to watch the first 70 minutes or so. We finished it on Saturday night before he went to work that night. It had been a slight challenge at first to find that movie streaming somewhere, because Shobhit and I had actually watched it not long ago on Prime Video but I could no longer find it. (I really thought it had been more recent, but based on my blog searches it looks like we watched it in 2019, so I guess it had been a couple of years.) But, I did finally find it on the Kanopy app that Seattle Public Library users have access to, and I could mirror it from my iPad to the TV through the Apple TV box.

— पांच हजार छप्पन —

Before finishing On Golden Pond with Ivan and Shobhit on Saturday, I took myself to see a movie at the Regal Meridian cinemas: Language Lessons, a two-person movie entirely consisting of FaceTime-like video chat calls, not about the pandemic but clearly a movie that was a product of it. It didn't really work. But, I had a movie to go see and then review, I guess.

Before that, though, Shobhit and did a few errands, walking. He wanted to use his points at Starbucks to get a free drink, and we walked through Cal Anderson Park to the Starbucks on Broadway, where he got an iced latte and I got a hot chocolate. He said he was going to wait until we got home so he could put some alcohol in his, and I liked that idea so I did the same.

We also stopped at the bank so he could deposit a check, and then we walked over to Pike Street and did some actual shopping at the Amazon Go grocery store for the first time ever. He and I walked in there for the first time maybe a week ago just to check it out, and Shobhit found the gallons of milk to be just as affordable, maybe even slightly more so, than the ones we get at Costco. And Costco is in 2-packs, and now that we need to share refrigerator space with Ivan, sometimes it's easier just to have one gallon in there.

Amazon Go has been on Capitol Hill for a few years, but we had never been in one, let alone shopped one, before this month. I have to say, maybe this is just the latent technophobe in me, I don't know—although all the arguments against supporting Amazon for any reason are legitimate; I maintain a membership anyway—but even after all the shit with the pandemic over the past year and a half, this was one of the most creepily dystopian things I have experienced before. Okay, wait, I should back up. I mean, shit: consider the empty streets everywhere for several months in 2020 when we were all staying in our homes. That was way worse than this. This shopping experience was still very weird, though, especially looking up at the countless overhead fixtures that are used to track whatever products you pick up off a shelf, put back, or take out of the store without ever having to deal with a cashier.

Shobhit actually asked the one employee we saw working there, as we were a little uncertain about the process. She was the one who pointed at all the sensors mounted above us. That level of intricate tracking is wild. I mean, of course, Google has been doing the same shit for decades, but that's all online. We're now talking about external tracking of our physical movements. I don't suppose it's conceptually all that different, though.

We left with a loaf of fresh bread, a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs.

Should I count this for Shobhit on the Social Review I'll be posting tomorrow? I've decided . . . no. This was really all just running errands, not additional walking just for the same of walking (unlike the previous time we did this), and although we went to Starbucks we did not stay there to consume what we bought. I still have rules!

Not that it matters: Sachin came over for a while later Saturday night anyway, affording both himself and Shobhit a Social Review point. I actually almost forgot about that until just now.

— पांच हजार छप्पन —

— पांच हजार छप्पन —

So, I actually kind of barely convinced Ivan to watch the last 40 minutes or so of On Golden Pond at about 4:30, earlier than he would have liked, so that we could be done before Sachin was expected to arrive at around 5:30.

Sachin had asked if he could bring his girlfriend yet, who, because she has a state job, has had to get immunized. However, she has only had one shot, so basically the question was posed to me, specifically, as to whether I would regard that as "vaccinated enough." I have a real feeling that Ivan would not have put up any resistance to it (although he should; he's a nurse for Christ's sake—but, he also probably doesn't think of himself as having equal say when he's a subletter, though I'd rather he thought he did) and Shobhit would have allowed it. When it comes to this, Shobhit has very much been deferring to me. And I have to admit, for a minute I pondered it. But, considering the havoc the Delta variant has wreaked this year, I decided I still had to insist. "I really think we need to be strict about this right now," I said. I didn't add this part, but, permissiveness is really a driving force behind the rapid spread of the virus, particularly among the unvaccinated. I made the objectively dumb mistake of starting to argue about this with someone in a TikTok comment thread today.

So: no girlfriend, not until about halfway through October once she is two weeks past her second shot. Sachin did come over though, and he brought some experimental banana bread his girlfriend had made. He asked me what I thought of it and I was like, "Do you want me to be honest?" He said yes. It wasn't that good. Sachin basically agreed, although he seemed to think it had to do with consistency. To me that was a minor part of it. The real issue was a lack of flavor: they were almost shockingly bland. Banana bread should really taste like banana, and have real flavor to it.

But hey, did he bring something! Later though, he and Shobhit got into such intense "debate" and argument that Shobhit got severely defensive and basically shut down. I'm not entirely on Sachin's side with this one, though. He was over-focused on the concept of "trauma" and how Shobhit hasn't "worked through" the supposed "trauma" of not meeting career goals over the past decade. And I'm just like . . . what? I asked why he kept bringing up trauma, and he cited an eight-week "training" about trauma that he had taken a couple of years ago, and then proceeded as though that made him an authority on the subject. Considering he tried to insist that trauma "exists only in the mind," I'm a little like . . . uh, no. (Does he really think there's no such thing as strictly physical trauma? What the fuck are hospital trauma centers for then? Therapy sessions?) Sachin actually had a lot of accurate insights about Shobhit's attitudes and behaviors, but coming from what I found to be a rather misguided and frankly uninformed angle. In other words, they found no common ground from which to help each other in any real way, which was unfortunate.

Not only that, but I'm not sure Sachin even sees clearly how much Shobhit actually cares about him. Sachin has a tendency to drink a little too much when he visits, and Shobhit is constantly either trying to get him to take it easy or, if he thinks Sachin is too drunk, get him to stay the night. He didn't on Saturday (and I didn't think he was drunk, but he did have a few glasses of wine), but he has on many occasions in the past—not my favorite, but still objectively safer. Shobhit doesn't do this because he gives a shit about the other people on the street.

All the frustrating value differences between us aside, I genuinely think of Shobhit as a truly decent, caring person at his core. It's too bad that I often feel like I'm one of, like, three or four people even capable of seeing it.

— पांच हजार छप्पन —

So that brings us to yesterday, when Shobhit and I spent an astonishing five hours or so just, shopping downtown. This is not my thing, and when it's Shobhit who wants to do it, I am usually so bored I want to shoot myself in the face. And this time it was my idea!

There's a key difference, though. I had specifics in mind as to what I was out shopping for. Just being out "browsing" is a horrible pastime—something Shobhit loves and I hate. But, I really wanted to get a new light, waterproof rain jacket. I had a blue one I used to love which I bought on my birthday at REI in 2009, but which I had to throw out roughly a decade later because it started literally disintegrating: the most recent photo I could find of myself in it was during my Birth Week in 2018.

I had remembered that I bought that old jacket for $140, although I forgot until re-reading that caption that a) with tax it was $153; and b) I covered that cost with "Commuter Bonus Points" vouchers I believe I had gotten through work, worth $60 total; plus birthday money Dad had sent me. Out of my own money, I paid all of $43 for that jacket.

Well, this new jacket is a different story! I spent $250 on a new rain jacket from The North Face, which was the first store Shobhit and I went into, I found a jacket I knew I liked and wanted, and Shobhit insisted we go into a few other stores to compare. We went into maybe two or three others, and they all either had coats I didn't want or they were far more expensive, and even $250 was pushing it in my mind.

We shopped a bunch of other stuff first before returning to get that jacket. First, we decided to go get some lunch, first walking down to First Avenue and then turning up that street, until heading up to The Crumpet Shop, which was Shobhit's idea—until we got there and there was a sign that said, due to staff shortage, they had sold out of their crumpets and were closed for the day. So instead, we went over into Pike Place Market and to Honest Biscuit. We couldn't find a table outside so we sat at one right next to the door. That lunch was . . . okay. Shobhit complained about the lack of seasoning (uncharacteristic of me to say but: fair), and for me the sandwiches were so biscuit-heavy it was like trying to force down bread that was slightly too dense. Oh well; I was very hungry and it ended the hunger.

Then, Shobhit decided to walk over into Indi Chocolate, right next to Honest Biscuit. He had gone in looking to get some water, but then he decided to buy a slice of their Lavender Lemon Cheesecake. We absolutely did not need this, but you know how sometimes a food is so amazing it absolutely justifies the calories? This cheesecake was stunning. I had to get up and tell the lady Shobhit old me was the owner that the cheesecake was unbelievable. She pointed to a woman sitting at a table next to her, in the back area of their shop (but still very open and easy for me to talk to them), who must have been the baker: "It was all her." I'm sure they both still enjoyed hearing that though.

After that, we went into several stores, including Target, where I hoped to find a couple new shirts I was looking for—their clothing section was virtually empty; I was surprised. Shobhit, having extensive experience with this shit at Big 5, could see people who were likely shoplifting, and theorized their inventory was low because otherwise it all just gets stolen. It's difficult to get any kind of law enforcement involved with low-level crime like this because we also have a police shortage right now. And why? Because a bunch of them have resigned because they're pissed about being held accountable. Wonderful. (I will concede it is more nuanced and complicated than that, but after their behaviors with protesters last year, no one can tell me I have reason to trust the SPD. The whole thing is a mess with no easy answers.)

Anyway, I still got a few cleaning supplies at Target and then got out of there, off to See's Candies next! We finally decided to use the two $25 gift cards Shobhit had put in our stockings last Christmas. From there, over to Nordstrom Rack at Westlake Center, where I finally did find two shirts I wanted, both of them black—I'm not really interested in keeping most of my wardrobe black like I was twenty years ago, but I have two old black shirts I really like that have fallen apart and so I want to replace them, including a black turtleneck I have always loved and which I cannot find being sold anywhere. The other was just a long sleeved crew neck shirt I needed to replace; I found both that and a collared one I really liked (I was afraid it was too small and the lady working there was like, "I like it!"—okay then) so I bought them both.

We then went into Zara, which was unbelievably busy, especially compared to most of the other stores we went in. We spent an inordinate amount of time just waiting in line for a cashier, three of which were working the checkouts. I didn't find any shirts there, but I did come across a great find I wasn't even out looking for: a pair of rubber ankle boots, so now I finally have boots to use in the rain again! Those cost me seventy bucks.

Then, back over to The North Face again, where the same young, college-aged kid was still working there in the Men's section in the basement. He relayed a story about how on his lunch break he was trying to order a sandwich, and the cashier there not only got robbed at knife point, but he actually tried to fight back and they were literally rolling on the floor fighting. It sounds like no real injury happened but the kid was kind of shockingly blasé about it: "I just wanted to get my sandwich." I don't even remember whether the attempted robber actually made off with anything.

Shobhit had asked the kid about working there, and we learned that it's "an easy college job" and he's studying to be a marine biologist.

I bought my very expensive jacket (easily the most I have ever spent on one; the pea coat I bought in Phoenix on Black Friday 2014 was half off; this one I got 10% off just for joining their store membership), and then we stopped in at Old Navy only to find they had no turtlenecks in either. Why the fuck does no one sell turtlenecks? I don't get it! Is it just because Steve Jobs is dead? I'm kidding.

After that we caught the bus back up the hill, basically just in time to watch this year's Emmy Awards—really the only awards show that had found a way to make a good show during COVID lockdowns last year, and this year with a live audience, albeit much smaller, all vaccinated, and with groups at tables like at the Golden Globes. It was still nice to see a live show though. I did wonder how many breakthrough cases might result from that event. Any? It's possible there will be none, I suppose. Having everyone there vaccinated will certainly make a huge difference, and I was glad to see they, at least, were clearly signaling that vaccinations are to be taken seriously.

Shobhit made pizzas for dinner, using thin crusts we got at World Market, which I forgot to mention we went to first right after having lunch. Yet another store! I could not tell you how many stores we went into yesterday. We made two pizzas; Shobhit ate his entire pizza and I had two slices of mine; kept two slices to bring for lunch today; and offered the other two slices to Ivan, which he accepted and seemed to like.

. . . Well, there you have it. I actually wrote way more about my weekend than I expected I would. A lot more happened than I thought! I didn't mind all the shopping yesterday but I do hope it's a long time before I have to spend that much time shopping in one day again. I'm slightly bummed I don't have a clue when I'll actually have need to use that raincoat: we got 86% of or normal September total rainfall in Seattle just over the past three days—but, it was perfectly timed over just the weekend, somehow it was still dry just during the times Shobhit and I were out walking, and currently there is no rain at all forecast over the next ten days! That still works okay for me as it allows me to keep biking to work, and will keep the day decent for the Washington State Fair with Gina and Jennifer F on Thursday.

I asked Shobhit if I could use the car that day. Then I thought: I took the bus last time, why not do that again? And then I thought again: an hour bus drive twice in one day, with a bunch of strangers in that small enclosed space, during a pandemic, even masked? Why not avoid that, if I can? I have the money to pay for parking, I can suck it up and do that. Especially if Gina does indeed have radio contest-won tickets we can all use. I still need to get confirmation on that. If I do, though, then I'll only have to pay $12 for parking to get in. I should still bring some spending cash though. I want to get something ridiculous deep fried!

— पांच हजार छप्पन —

[posted 12:22 pm]