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I totally forgot to mention in yesterday's post that, before I went home and Shobhit and I did our shopping and joyriding of the newly reopened West Seattle Bridge, right after work on Monday I actually went the few blocks over to Queen Anne Beerhall to meet up with Mel (our Office Manager) and Steve (our Training and Development Manager) for the inaugural meeting of our "Non Fiction Book Club." There are two other people who joined the club as well but they couldn't make it.
Time will tell whether I am in over my head with this book club; the last one I joined, years ago, was the one Karen was a part of, and I take so long to get through any book that I found I never had time to read books of my own choosing and only ever could read Book Club books. Making them all nonfiction, though, as that's about 9 out of 10 of the books I read, may make a difference. We took a good 75 minutes to come around to a consensus on a choice, and landed on a book called
This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan. I was so interested in that one that I already wrote it down in my phone when it was first suggested, to add it to my holds list at the library.
I would just read that one next, but I only placed a hold on it yesterday and it's not yet ready for pickup; another one I've been wanting to read for ages, called
Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing, is, and I'll be going to pick that up after work tonight. My immediate concern right now is that I have a book handy over the next week while I'm traveling. I doubt I'll finish it in that time, although I'd like to. We're meeting again with Book Club next month, as we agreed to meet monthly.
Anyway, we had a lively discussion at Queen Anne Beerhall, topics often veering far afield from Book Club and choosing a title, so once or twice I took it upon myself to steer it back. I might have stayed longer than until about 5:45 (we met at 4:30) but I had also made a plan with Shobhit to ride the West Seattle Bridge, so I had to excuse myself. When I flagged down our waiter to pay for my drink, Steve insisted on springing for all of us. That was very nice of him. It also made me wonder how much more he makes than I do. (He's far newer than I am, but also in a definitively higher position. I don't have a clue how we compare in wages but, for instance, I'd have never insisted on paying or all of our drinks. Then again, I am also not particularly generous in these specific types of scenarios.)
I had my bike and I rode home from there.
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Yesterday I did
not ride my bike, because I thought the movie I was seeing was only playing at the AMC 10 in the U District—that was the only place AMC had listed showtimes for the movie when I first reserved the seat. But, I discovered just yesterday that it actually was playing downtown after all; it just meant I had to see it at 5:50 rather than 5:15. Not a huge deal. I just wish I had discovered this earlier, as then I would have ridden my bike to work yesterday. As it was, I took the Monorail and Light Rail, walking the six blocks home from the station, instead, and got home maybe 10 minutes later than I would have on the bus.
Alexia recently got back from her own trip with family, and apparently they had more booze than they drank, and Alexia doesn’t drink, so she offered us two bottles of wine and about a third of a bottle of Tito's Vodka. We were unable to connect on Monday and then when I had a small window last night between getting home from work and leaving for the movie, she had left to get her own dinner and so she told me to go ahead and just go pick up the "gift" from her kitchen counter (because I take care of Cassie, I have a key to her condo; she has one to ours as well). When I went to get it, I was rather surprised to find a wrapped gift in the bag to: it turned out to be
a book, called
Cocktails of the Movies: An Illustrated Guide to Cinematic Mixology. Ha! She knows me well. When I texted her to thank her, she replied, "It screamed Matthew at me!" As well it should.
Anyway, Shobhit joined me for the movie, largely motivated by the knowledge that Tuesdays are half off, so my purchase of his ticket cost me all of $5.25. What we saw was
See How They Run, which was . . . fine. It has its clever aspects, but also could have been edited and paced better. Still, Shobhit tried to say he "slept through the first half," even though he chuckled regularly throughout the movie. And the climactic sequence actually was quite funny.
We walked downtown together before the movie, but as is typical with him, he preferred to take a bus back afterward. It wasn't too long of a wait anyway. I also got my review written within about half an hour, because it was shorter than most but that's fine.
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[posted 12:17 pm]
