— पांच हजार दो सौ साठ-नौ —
This has been a rather nice, chill week at work this week. Next week will be different, as deadline-oriented things are happening then and we also have Monday off for Labor Day. But for now, largely thanks to a lot of work Amy is taking off my plate, I've actually had a truly rare opportunity to start cleaning up my inbox in Outlook. Two days ago I still had over 600 emails in it. As of this writing I'm down to 207! I also finally have nothing older than from last November in there.
I've only gotten even this far once before since the pandemic. The pandemic really fucked shit up, creatin a scenario where I had far much to do and all I could do was focus on what was the highest priority at the moment and not even think about the rest. This resulted in a
huge backlog of email that I wasn't able to even start paring down until over a year later. And then, things always come along that re-compound the backlog issue, usually time off like for my Birth Week. And this year, I had three days off work for covid in April, which pushed my Birth Week back a week, and managing the backlogs as a result of those things creates even more backlog as it takes time to get on top of the initial backlog, etc etc.
Well, this week I have extra time. I even had time to take the afternoon off on Tuesday to go get my second monkeypox vaccine dose. I was told that a common side effect was itching around the injection site, and it's itchier than ever today. I still have the Band-Aid there so I don't scratch the precise spot, but I keep scratching around the Band-Aid and even that's leaving my skin red. Shobhit removed his Band-Aid after two days so I may do the same tonight.
Anyway, I also had a good hour yesterday for the Office Barbecue, to which I brought nine of Shobhit's samosas and they were a smash hit. The funny thing to me is that Shobhit's samosas are usually even better than these were—these didn't even contain paneer as they usually do—but I knew people would still love them. These ones were kind of improvised out of leftovers: Shobhit already had made a potato dish, and we had leftover eggplant still from the dinner we hosted on the 12th. He made puris to have with those things for dinner on Monday. The potato dish was a lot, let's say,
wetter than it usually is when he makes something with the initial intent of it being used as samosa filling. His samosa filling is almost never as dry as that in samosas typically ordered at Indian restaurants, but these were even less so than by his usual standards. And he used the last of the dough that had initially been made for deep frying puris. And
still they made fantastic samosas. Chris L from IT was so impressed he stressed, "Please tell him, they were delicious!"
I think I'll go ahead and regard this as "socializing" for the purposes of my next Social Review. It was official a work social event, after all, its location being at the office notwithstanding. Many people who typically work from home now came in for it. We still fell far short of filling up the office like in the Before Times, but it was still a pretty good showing, I'd say thirty or forty people. Forty-six people RSVPed on the digital invite, with nearly thirty of those signing up to bring food or beverages. Not everyone on the invite actually showed up, though; Shelley signed up for instance and I never saw her.
Who would count as people I personally "socialized" with, though? People sitting with me at the table I sat down at on the patio, I suppose. That would include Benny, the new guy in Deli who I've never had much occasion to talk to but we chatted a little this time for once; Amanda for sure; also Mackenzie; maybe that Chris guy. I looked for Justine because she got so excited after she came to my desk to say hi earlier in the day and I told her I had brought samosas. But, she got stuck in meetings all through the barbecue, and I pulled one of the nine samosas I brought aside, and put it on her desk. She came by again later, in the middle of eating it and really appreciating it, both because it was the only lunch she got (ironic, given the large amount of food there had been) and because it was delicious.
I didn’t get any of the samosas yesterday. That was fine because I already ate one the night before, the one out of the ten Shobhit made that got eaten that night. It had too many holes in the dough with potato filling poking through and he did not think it was presentable enough for me take to work. It was still delicious, of course.
— पांच हजार दो सौ साठ-नौ —
— पांच हजार दो सौ साठ-नौ —
I ate too much yesterday, largely because in addition to the afternoon barbecue, Alexia and I rescheduled our watch of
Solo: A Star Wars Story for last night. Her mom actually stabilized after a couple of days last weekend and did not pass away after all. I do not envy her that experience, coming to terms with her mom dying only for it not to happen. She'll have to go through all that all over again when her mom's time actually does come.
This is making me think about my dad. I need to talk to him, probably, and get some real specifics that I write down so I have facts handy, what decisions will indeed be under my purview in the even that Sherri is not around to make them (she probably will be, but we want to be prepared). I don't want to get blindsided by any end--of-life questions or responsibilities, and honestly, I want to be a lot more prepared than I was for Mom. I was emotionally prepared in her case, or as prepared as I could be, but she had wanted me to become her Durable Power of Attorney. She wanted this specifically so Bill would not have the power to make these decisions, as she knew he would be unable to pull the plug when she wanted it to happen. And I dropped the ball, she had her stroke, and Mom was on machines a good week or two longer than she'd ever have wanted, because the responsibility fell to Bill by default as her husband and he couldn't stomach it.
My point is, whatever responsibilities I may have with Dad, or he may want me to have, I want to have learned from that mistake and
not drop the ball with him.
Anyway, I digress! Alexia still help up her promise to buy us dinner from Aviv as a thank you for my looking after her cat for a few days two weeks in a row, last week and the week prior. She ordered takeout, went to get it, and had it all ready by shortly after 6:00. Shobhit and I went over with drinks we had made in hand, and we all watched
Solo. Alexia had seen it but did not remember most of it; Shobhit had never seen it; and I had not seen it since going to theaters to see it opening weekend with Gabriel in 2018. I clearly remembered it better than Alexia, though, which was kind of surprising.
That movie is . . . fine. There's nothing bad about it per se, but it's far from the classic status of many of the other Star Wars films. I think it also suffers from the boneheaded decision of market saturation during the era of the Sequel Trilogy: not only were each of those three films released only two years apart as opposed to the standard three years apart for both of the other trilogies, but there were "stand-alone" films
also released in the off years, which meant a Star Wars movie of one kind or another
every year for the five years between 2015 and 2019. It was too much, and I felt that way in the middle of it.
Solo was the fourth of these five movies, and by then people were getting close to having Star Wars fatigue, something that would have been unthinkable even a decade before. It didn't help that 2019's
The Rise of Skywalker was such a disappointment, a moment that should have been climactic falling fairly flat. It's now been three years since that film, with the next theatrical Star Wars release not scheduled until 2023 (and I won't be surprised if that is delayed), but, Disney has still managed to keep us over-saturated in the meantime with an endless conveyor belt of Star Wars streaming series, from
The Mandalorian to
The Book of Boba Fett to
Obi-Wan Kenobi to, premiering next month (I only just learned this; previously I had read it was to release this week),
Andor. And there's a bunch more planned. Eventually I'm going to fall off. I kind of already have; I only saw two episodes of
The Book of Boba Fett and I still need to get back to it. I only want to because I know Baby Yoda appears in it at some point.
Okay back to the food. Shobhit asked to order one pita plate with an extra pita and the a couple of sides. We had a sort of buffet set up to use in Alexia's kitchen. So I had a single pita sandwich with three falafel balls in it, but also some of the fries Alexia also chose to order, plus Shobhit brought over chopped watermelon for dessert.
I don't know when we'll watch our next movie. I'd love to watch
Rogue One and
A New Hope as a double feature because
Rogue One ends right where
A New Hope begins, but I don't know if Alexia would ever be up for that. We'd need a weekend day to schedule it.
— पांच हजार दो सौ साठ-नौ —
[posted 12:22 pm]
