It's Thanksgiving now. About half past noon though, so this post is not about Thanksgiving. I am just posting now for a quick update on the past week thus far, as I have not posted a regular blog post since Monday, which itself was just to catch up on the goings-on over the weekend.
I've gone to see two movies, both of them by myself while Shobhit was at work:
The Menu on Monday, and
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery yesterday. I enjoyed them both a great deal. B-plus in both cases. As I even noted in the review of
Glass Onion, I actually look forward to rewatching that one with Shobhit when it's streaming on Netflix in a month.
So how about Tuesday? I spent a good majority of the time that day, while Shobhit was at work, finishing up the 15 calendars I ordered for this year's Christmas gifts. Three different themes, five different versions (as in, five different sets of family birthdays and anniversaries represented depending on who I was giving the calendar to), fifteen calendars total. I got them all assembled in their online templates, did proofing comparing to last year's templates to make sure I didn't miss anyone or anything (and I caught one or two errors this way), and then finally placed the order.
Here I had been all worried about not placing the order as early as I did last year, and I really still had plenty of time. Estimated delivery, all of them being sent to my address, is between November 30 and December 2. That's just next week. I will, however, have three of them to send again in the mail to their recipients: Christopher in Wallace; Nikki and TJ in Spokane; Becca and Tyler in, apparently, Arlington, WA now—that's north of Marysville. The last Christmas before the pandemic, Shobhit and I drove up to their area to take them out to dinner and hand them the calendar in person. I'm not certain we'll do that this time, for several reasons actually, not least of which is it will likely be cheaper just to mail it and we're trying to save for Australia.
Anyway. Save for some minor shopping still left to do for Shobhit's and the cats' Christmas stockings, my Christmas shopping is basically done now. I'm nearly set for the holiday, and certainly am in regards to the calendars. And I must say, having this entire week off of work, but not doing any traveling, has been a godsend for getting this done in a timely manner. Had I been working all this week, I wouldn't be even close to finished with the calendars until at least this weekend.
Yesterday, I was busy pretty much all day, without much time to have worked on the calendars anyway had I not finished with them on Tuesday. After Shobhit left for work, and before I even got into the shower, I vacuumed the condo. I vacuumed in the nude, actually, if you must know. I recommend it, you should try it! Vacuuming is sometimes more of a workout than it seems.
I then went to the movie, came back home, and wrote the review. Between finishing that and Shobhit getting home from work, I single handedly made the pasta Shobhit suggested we make for the potluck party Sachin had invited us to, at his house. Right when I had finished putting the grated cheese on top of the pasta inside the ceramic dish we brought it in, and just as Shobhit got home, Sachin texted him:
We have lots of food. Bring little or nothing please. Oh, nice .
We brought it anyway. Several people had some of it. Having lots of leftovers, today being Thanksgiving notwithstanding, still works for us: when we got home later last night, I packed the rest of it into five different lunch boxes for work next week.
Shobhit and I left just minutes after he got home from work. To my relative confusion, Sachin made the official start time of the party 4:00. On a weekday? A Wednesday, no less? I found that very, very odd. The next day may indeed have been a holiday but most people would still have been working yesterday. Like Shobhit. Not me, though! And Shobhit's schedule thus gave me plenty of time to get all those other things done.
We only stayed at the party a couple of hours. It was only about an hour in that Shobhit texted me,
I'm ready to go when you are. I even managed to get my jacket and scarf on, only to wind up staying nearly another hour.
Shobhit keeps doing shit like this to me. He did the same thing at Action Movie Night on Wednesday last week, telling me I should set up the movie, only for it to take so long before everyone actually moved from the kitchen into the theater that the Blu-Ray player shut down, and it took me several minutes to get it going again. Shobhit's impatience is going to be the death of him, Maybe at my hands. (If he ever gets killed, I'm going to be in a lot of trouble for how often I've joked about murdering him. So. Let's just hope he never dies suspiciously!)
We wound up staying longer because, after an hour of my mostly sitting quietly and Shobhit kind of uncharacteristically doing the same, we both wound up talking to people for a bit. Shobhit started chatting up this very young South Asian man who was very cute, clearly a big reason Shobhit wanted to talk to him, and when he found out the guy has no plans today he invited him for Thanksgiving dinner. Whether he actually comes remains to be seen, but I'm fine with it if he does; he seemed like a nice enough guy.
And then, Kim, Sachin's ex who he's still friends with, showed up. She had some of the pasta and was openly impressed with it, which was nice; she was part of the small minority of us there who were actually vegetarian. She asked how I've been and we chatted for a bit. I learned she's taking a three-day trip to Vancouver, B.C. for Thanksgiving weekend. Incredibly, she has not been there since she was a kid. I had to note that I have been there
many, many times (12, to be exact; I had to look at that link to be reminded—I had guessed 8 or 9 to her off the top of my head. ha!). She then asked for recommendations of things to see and do there, and Shobhit and I got into that subject kind of deep with her, before we finally left.
Although for the first hour or so we sat at the table on either side of Sachin, we easily engaged much more directly and for longer time with Kim. Shobhit was very skeptical that Sachin would have a lot of people there, estimating while we were in the car that there would only be 7 or 8. In the end, he had at least twenty people there, the vast majority of them from Sachin's meetup groups. This would be the first party of nearly-all people I don't actually know that I've been to since before the pandemic. I have no idea how concerned I should have been about that, although I did do a covid test at home yesterday just for my own peace of mind (negative), and Sachin did tell us he asked that only vaccinated people come to the party. Not that vaccination does a whole lot anymore to prevent infection—it's far more effective at preventing hospitalization and death. He also said this was why he waited until Monday to even invite people, and that's why I didn't even know about this party until this week: it was short notice by design.
Sachin almost had me panicked when he declared "Australia is covid-fucked right now," whichis not exactly true. I looked it up, and apparently they are in an official new wave of infections. Apparently epidemiologists predict this wave will peak in early December. By the time we're traveling there in February, the metrics will all be different. Hopefully not worse than now, and hopefully better. My point is, it's too early to worry about it all that much. I sure would love being able to get another immunity boost with another vaccine update right before leaving, but that will probably be too soon for anyone to think it would make any bigger difference than the boosters we just got a few weeks ago.
So we drove home, and I kind of stupidly made myself another Moscow Mule. I woke up with a slight hangover this morning. I'm feeling all right now. I may stick with wine during our holiday dinner today.
[posted 1:06 pm]
