— पांच हजार एक सौ पैंसठ —
Last night was dedicated almost exclusively to watching and reviewing a movie, this one streaming. Or VOD, I suppose is more accurate. It's not exactly a "rental," but like buying a ticket to a movie that you just watch at home—something I did several times for the virtual version of the Seattle International Film Festival last year. Just like at a theater, I get a pretty significant discount as a SIFF member, so the base price for me ($5 off, if I remember right) was $7. But, with the online service charge it came to $8.50.
Anyway, I watched a Finnish movie called
Games People Play, and I really liked it, a bit more even than I expected to. I gave it a B+. I had somewhat lower expectations due to it not being released in theaters, which wasn't really fair, as it turns out.
The only thing that sucked was an issue I had also encountered with the virtual festival last year: if the streaming video freezes, and you are forced to refresh, it will restart where you left off in the movie—but only after
all of the front-loaded ads, and trailers, replay
again. Most annoying. Thankfully, I only had to deal with this once; the picture would freeze several times again, but it would then continue playing after several seconds at most.
Side note: when Tracy and I went to SIFF Film Forum to see a movie last Sunday, I saw a flyer for this year's festival, and asked whether it was going to be back to in-person this year. The lady said it would be a hybrid this year, which struck me as ideal. What is
not ideal, however, is that this festival that was always from late May to early June in the past, is scheduled this year for mid- to late-April! It was in April last year too, but doing it earlier in the year then made sense in light of the festival having to be scrapped completely in 2020 due to the pandemic.
It's about two weeks later this year than it was last year, however. It's April 14-24, which cuts into my Birth Week! That bums me out, because my Birth Week absolutely takes priority and I won't have time for movies. So, in this year's 11-day festival, I'll only have 8 possible days I can attend. No, wait! Sherri's birthday, also the same day as Easter Sunday, will be out of contention. So that takes it down to 7, or maybe even 6, if by chance we take that Saturday to go to the Tulip Festival. And, as always, there will likely also be movies in regular release I want to see, and that will pose potential scheduling conflicts as well.
I suppose I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I'll almost certainly purchase my requisite "cinematic 6-pack" of festival movie tickets regardless.
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— पांच हजार एक सौ पैंसठ —
I quite enjoyed the dinner I had, in any case: one of several samples I brought home from work, which necessitated my limiting the amount of walking so I didn't have to carry this heavy tote bag all 2.4 miles. Really I should have just taken the #8 bus so I'd have to walk even less, but for some reason that didn't even occur to me. I walked to the Monorail at Seattle Center, and took that to Westlake Station where I went down to catch Light Rail to Capitol Hill Station and then walked home from there, at the north end of Cal Anderson Park. At least this way I still got some walking in, I guess.
Anyway I had already tried smaller sized samples of this same brand at work with Scott and Noah a few weeks ago, and just finally got around to taking home the larger trays, now that we've cleared out a bit of space in our frustratingly small freezer at home.
The brand is called Komo. What I baked for dinner last night was their
vegan lasagna, which I liked best when sampling it earlier. This lasagna is so good that I totally even forgot it was vegan! I'll never buy this, of course; no matter how good it is I never find it cost effective to pay the prices for stuff like this. I haven't set these up as new items anyway; I'm guessing for some reason they still don't meet our ingredients standards—either that or we've just already got whatever products of this sort that we need at our stores. But, I'll always take free food!
Other samples I now have at home: their surprisingly good, lentil-based
Shepherd's Pie (the other one I already sampled once at work); and a "
Chickenless Pot Pie," which I haven't tried yet but which I'm sure is good.
We also sampled five different flavors of a new hummus at the office yesterday, and Noah said I could take those home too. So I did. I was going to grab a box of crackers from the pantry and I forgot. I'll take that home tonight I think.
My weight broke 165 lbs again this morning, thanks in large part to all those hummus samples yesterday afternoon, in addition to an unusually heavy lunch. Dammit! I'm doing better today, so far at least, at not snacking every few minutes all day. I had a chocolate confection right after coming in but that's it. Which I'm guessing is why I'm very hungry as I write this.
— पांच हजार एक सौ पैंसठ —
[posted 12:29 pm]
