— पांच हजार एक सौ पैंतीस —
It's mid-February, and as of the 10th, I had only managed to see and review two movies this month. One of them was the god-awful
Moonfall, solid-F movie that I saw as an advanced screening with Tracy on the 2nd, the worst movie I had seen in over fifteen years. The next one,
First and Last Men, was very weird but good.
I like to see at least 10 movies a month that I review on average, if not more, and I managed to get halfway there over the weekend by seeing, and reviewing, three movies in as many days. Two of them I saw in theaters, and one I watched at home. Thankfully these all ranged from good to excellent.
The first was what Tracy and I left work half an hour early on Friday to go see at 4:15 at the Uptown, which is close to the office: the fantastic Norwegian romance-drama
The Worst Person in the World. We were both impressed with it. And then she gave me a ride home afterward, as usual.
Side note! All of two days later, I got my
fifth Covid exposure notification on my phone, referencing two days before. The exposure had to have been at the movie theater on Friday, which was precisely two weeks after the exposure the night we went out for dinner with Noah and Scott. There was a key difference here, though: I worried about the January 28 exposure because we had all been in that restaurant, dining indoors, for well over an hour without any of our masks on. I booked a PCR test the following Thursday, and got the negative result the next Saturday morning. But, even though she typically has in the past, not even Tracy got popcorn at this movie on Friday, and neither did I. We were both wearing KN95 masks the entire time we were watching the movie, never removing them.
Obviously this is not foolproof, but it does mean we were far more protected this time than we had been when we went out to eat on January 28. That said, it's so easy to book tests right now, I went ahead and booked another test at the Paramount Theater location for Thursday again, because why not? Just for that extra layer of certainty. And even though we have
nine at-home tests right now, I still don't want to burn through any of them too quickly, and getting the far more reliable PCR test done is too easy right now not to do. Just like last time, I can just drop in there right along my route home from work.
— पांच हजार एक सौ पैंतीस —
— पांच हजार एक सौ पैंतीस —
I did some socializing on Saturday too, though, that one virtual: Laney and I had what promises to be our last virtual Happy Hour for at least another year, barring any further strict pandemic lockdowns. She just recently left a five-day stay at a favorite campground outside New Orleans, and is now on the beach at
Crystal Beach, on the Bolivar Peninsula on the Gulf Coast of Texas, basically on the outskirts of Houston. Our last Happy Hour, just two weeks prior due to a needed postponement of the one in January, had also been on the Gulf Coast (Magnolia Beach, 168 miles southwest along the Gulf Coast from Crystal Beach), and we made that one last a quite-unusual three hours or so. Lots of the virtual Happy Hours have been hardly more than an hour, so getting another full two hours or so this past Saturday was kind of a treat in its own right.
Laney had gone to New Orleans in between those two. She explained to us—Shobhit sat down briefly to say hi before he left for work—that she only has to pay $5, I think per year(!), for access to these Texas beach campgrounds, the only stipulation being that she can stay in one spot for a maximum of two weeks, then has to be away for two weeks before she can come back to one again. She's heading back to Seattle to a very nice looking sublet in the Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle next month though, walking distance to the Light Rail station! I can't wait for her to be back in Seattle again, this time for at least a year.
I had a piña colada, in which I mixed fresh blueberries. I included three shots of Bacardi rum, and I think maybe it fucked me up. I had the worst headache, as in nausea-inducing migraine, that evening, so bad that I had to get into bed by 9:30. It was awful, and I felt slightly off most of yesterday too. Then getting that exposure notification yesterday didn't help. I feel right as rain again today, though, so I still don't think the headache and feeling "off" over the weekend was Covid. I think I drank too much rum. Whether that fucks me up or not isn't even consistent anymore; it seems to depend on the day. And that piña colada was super tasty!
Anyway, I had the slightest of headaches Saturday afternoon and I just took one Aleve. I still went ahead and watched the new Steven Soderbergh movie on HBO Max, a midlevel movie for him that I still found pretty entertaining (solid B), and given his stature as a director and the fact that it was just released on Friday, I also
reviewed it.
The headache didn't start getting really bad until well after I was done writing. I took another Aleve (probably should have just taken two to begin with) but it made little difference. I have a lifetime history of migraines, which used to be a lot more frequent when I was little, but every once in a while I get a whopper that is practically debilitating. This was one of them, and I just had to get ready for bed and then literally get into bed, so I could just lay still and not move.
I actually fell asleep fairly quickly. Then Gabriel woke me up with a call around 11:00, so he could tell me he watched the Jennifer Lopez Valentine's Day release movie
Marry Me, and he's gotten so susceptible to even terrible movies that he cried. The call lasted about ten minutes, until he started joking about how much I suck (this is part of our rapport, it's fine) and I really needed to just get back to sleep, so I just said "Okay, goodnight, bye!" and I hung up.
— पांच हजार एक सौ पैंतीस —
Yesterday, I felt much better. I had thought I would see the documentary I planned to see at the Uptown, which I'd have had to pay $9 for, and then I discovered it was also playing Pacific Place, and AMC is the theater chain for which I have a monthly subscription so I went there instead. This was probably better even than the Uptown would have been for Covid reasons, as the screening I went to had all of one other person in it—a guy who left well before the movie was even over, so for at least half of it I was the single person in there. Perfect.
That movie was called
Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, which was excellent and should be required viewing for every white American, no matter how liberal or progressive they think of themselves as.
It was a very nice, sunny day yesterday, and walking both to and back from Pacific Place was quite pleasant. I wrote the review, and soon thereafter Shobhit was home from work and we made dinner. For a couple of hours he flipped the channels back and forth between the Super Bowl and Olympic Ice Dancing in Beijing; eventually we stayed on the latter, after the Super Bowl was over. (I still have no clue who won, because I truly don't give a shit.) And then, finally, we got around to watching last week's episode of
Raised by Wolves on HBO Max. After that it was time for bed, and thus concluded my weekend.
— पांच हजार एक सौ पैंतीस —
[posted 1:00 pm]
