— पांच हजार दो सौ तीन —
Most of my time yesterday evening and last night was taken up by my first movie I went to see in a theater since nearly two weeks before:
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which Shobhit joined me for and which neither of us really liked that much. I did not like it nearly as much as I wanted to, especially knowing Sam Raimi was directing for the first time in nine years. But, I nodded off several times in the first half hour or so, and Shobhit fell asleep a couple of times during the second half (which was actually by a fair margin the better half). I had to poke him a couple of times, literally to get him not to snore. He wasn't quite snoring, but I could hear the snores approaching in the way his breathing sounded.
If you want some further reading, I guess you can just click through to the review to find out why I didn't like it very much. The movie has a lot about it that's different, but they are just details largely rendered inconsequential and/or inconsequential by typically rushed storytelling, overly busy action sequences, and subpar special effects. That about sums it up, really. The first one was better. And the first one was . . . fine.
Shobhit brought his Yeti mug with mango lemonade with vodka in it. That, honestly, was the best part of the movie experience. I had even looked forward to seeing the first trailer to
Avatar: The Way of Water, and frankly it didn't look any more "advanced" than the previous film, now 13 years old, did. I thought I might be compelled by it and I was not, at all.
I had left work ten minutes early and walked from the office; Shobhit walked too, from home in the opposite direction. We met in front of Pacific Place, but then we took about 10 minutes to go down into Westlake Station so he could load some more money onto his Orca Card, knowing he'd want to take the bus home afterward. Once we got home, we had dinner, I spent roughly an hour writing that review, and then we watched Sunday's episode of
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Then I went to bed.
— पांच हजार दो सौ तीन —
— पांच हजार दो सौ तीन —
The bigger news, really, is that I had lunch with Scott and Elin today, that being the reason I'm posting this later than usual. We had a long tradition of a joint "April birthdays lunch" as all of our birthdays are in April, although this was our first time being able to do so
since April 2019—three years ago. We spent quite a bit of time in planning stages for this year's lunch, coordinating schedules; when we first planned, there was no April date where they were both available on the same date that I was, and my initially planned Birth Week couldn't work either—neither could the week after, which wound up being my actual vacation week this year. Once we finally settled on a date it was decided, weeks ago, that we would meet on May 11.
This was also the first such lunch since Scott left PCC; Elin retired in 2015. So, he was coming from his home in Issaquah and Elin was coming from Edmonds, which was probably why she suggested Saffron Grill instead of our usual Little Thai in the U District, as it's further north and closer to her. This does mean Scott had to travel by far the farthest, but he seemed okay with it.
I thought about asking Scott if he could swing by the office and pick me up, but that actually would add a lot to his drive so I decided against it. This meant that I had to take transit, and probably took at least as long as Scott did to drive. I had to take a bus to a transfer point to get on Light Rail, which, at the very least, now has a stop in Northgate, so this route would have been a lot longer were it before last October and I had to bus the entire way. Well, except of course they did still have the pretty fast #41 express bus from Downtown, so maybe not. In any case, I had to leave the office at 11:10, so I could be at a restaurant seven and a half miles away for lunch at noon.
By the time I actually got back it was probably around 3:20, which meant I took a four-hour lunch today, effectively nullifying the rest of the day, given how much time I had to talk to both Noah and Tracy about the lunch as soon as I got back. Scott told me I could have asked him to pick me up, and I explained to him why I didn't, but he then offered me a ride back. "I won't say no to that," I said. And then, when he was driving us south on Aurora, he was so distracted while chatting with me that he missed the needed exit and accidentally got stuck in the tunnel, forcing him to drive all the way to the south end of Downtown. And even after that, he kept missing at least two perfectly good exits, and probably went at least two and a half miles further before he finally managed to turn around. There was even a moment I nearly had a fucking heart attack in the middle of this, as he was distracted again and didn't notice heavy traffic slowed down ahead of us, and if I hadn't told him to watch out in a panic, he may very well have rear ended the car in front of us. In any case, his GPS initially said the ETA to the office was at 2:59 and this detour added at least twenty minutes.
All that aside, it was really good to see him. Scott and Elin were already at Saffron Grill and seated when I arrived, and Scott even immediately stood up to give me a hug when I got there, which was nice. Elin didn't, but we did hug when we said goodbye—right after I got the
requisite group selfie outside the restaurant.
There was a fair amount of catching up personally over lunch, but also a lot of shit talking and discussion of rumors regarding PCC, which was fun. My favorite moment was when Tracy W, the mentally unstable CEO who left the company around 2014 and actually passed away just the next year, came up in conversation. Elin immediately said, "May he rot in hell." Then she contemplated whether that would be better for him, or for him to come back as a roach. "But you're not still bitter about that man," I said, sarcastically. I mean, he really was kind of psycho, but it's also been, like, eight years.
And it was, of course, particularly wonderful to see Elin, someone I love to tell people was the sole person I worked with at PCC who I invited to Shobhit's and my wedding. (Saffron Grill catered the wedding, so I had to note today that it was actually the second time she and I had eaten their food together.) Three years was certainly the longest I had gone without seeing her. And, although it will be good for her, I was quite surprised to learn her announced "big news" soon after I arrived: she and David have decided, within the next year, they are moving to Georgia—the greater Atlanta area. Why there? I already knew she grew up in Florida, but apparently she also has family in Georgia, and it's just a better state in which to be nearer family in her and David's remaining retirement years.
I was pretty bummed for a bit, realizing we'd probably never get to do this previously-annual "April Birthdays" lunch with just the three of us. But, we all agreed we'd do this at least one more time before they move. And! She said she plans to be in a house with a pool and a guest room, and if Shobhit and I ever want to visit we can stay with them. I was like, "Oh, okay. Done!"
They gave us a dessert on the house. This has always happened in the past when Shobhit and I were there together, so either Prospero was there and happened to see me (I didn't see him) or this is just something they do with many people. Probably the latter. They gave us a rice pudding this time, not a lot of which got eaten; I don't think either Scott or Elin liked it that much. I don't usually like rice pudding either, but this actually wasn't that bad. I had several bites just because it was sitting there and we were taking so long with our lunch.
I'd say our time actually together in the restaurant probably lasted two and a half hours. I took nearly an hour just to get there on transit and the drive back with Scott was at least half an hour, maybe a little more. Oh wait, I just looked at the time stamp of our selfie photo: 2:31. Holy shit, it actually took fifty minutes for Scott to drive me back, largely because of the added twenty minutes due to detours. It's fine though; I could say I might as well have taken transit back, but it was still nicer having Scott's company on the way back. Plus, he bought lunch for all of us, which was incredibly generous of him. And nobody cares at all that I was gone so long, truly—the real challenge is just how much work I could have gotten done today but didn't. But Scott and Elin were worth it, of course. It was truly a delight to be able to have our trio lunch once again.
— पांच हजार दो सौ तीन —
[posted 4:26 pm]
