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Last night Shobhit went to our third Action Movie Night in the Braeburn Condos theater. All told, we had 13 people in attendance this time. The theater has been either at or near capacity all three times we've gone (this excludes the one time we went five years ago, in 2017).

I still don't remember most of the names, but I think I learned a couple more. Let's see how many I can name who were present this time:

*Tony (the resident organizer, for fully ten years as of next moth) *Derek (another resident) *Joe (another resident) *Shobhit (obvious resident) *Matthew (obvious resident) *Chris *Another Chris *Ben, whose choice of movie was this week

So, I've learned about half of their names so far. There had been 12 of us through maybe a third of the way into the movie, and then a guy came in, in the middle of it, who surprised and delighted most of the others there when they noticed him after the movie ended: I guess he moved away a couple of years ago and happened to be in town so he crashed the party.

Another thing I learned for the first time this week was that only five of us in this group are actually Braeburn Condos residents. The rest are just part of Tony's group of friends. He actually started it as just him and some non-resident friends in 2012, and later opened it up to the complex. This means that if it weren't for Shobhit and me adding to the mix three movies ago, there would be only three resident regulars in the group—Derek, who Shobhit and I first met at the Braeburn Barbecue Social earlier this summer and was also the one who chose the movie three movies ago, started coming in 2018; and Joe, who chose the movie last time, has actually been coming since 2016.

The guy named Ben chose the movie this week, and he's only been coming since March 2020—the last in-person movie they did, in fact, before covid forced them to go virtual, which they did for one year before returning in July 2021. I'm kind of amazed that his choice, a 1999 film called Payback starring Mel Gibson (which actually wasn't half bad), made three for three on movies I actually had not seen before; I had never seen either JCVD or The Italian Job either. Their total history of movies they've watched, which Tony keeps on a spreadsheet and is even publicly accessible online (this is my kind of guy), includes a lot of great titles, and some duds. The ones we've seen the last three times have been kind of middle-of-the-road. But, getting together with this group is fun, even if we haven't yet fully integrated so it makes us somewhat feel like outsiders. If we keep coming then that will change.

Shobhit and I brought take-and-bake pizzas we added toppings to the last two times we came, but this time we baked a full box of 50 mini vegetable spring rolls we bought at Costco. People kept assuming we made them from scratch, but we corrected them. They proved surprisingly popular, and I think there were only maybe 10 of them left at the end of the evening. That and a slice of quesadilla was all I could eat, along with some chips and salsa; it's good for Shobhit and me always to bring something, just so we can make sure there's something vegetarian available for us. A lot of other food was brought but most of it was meat-centric.

After Ben started the movie, he said, out loud: "I don't really like Mel Gibson as an actor. I really like him, just, as a man." Several of us laughed because he was clearly dripping with sarcasm. Clearly the truth was the other way around.

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Now, I'm working my last day before a week of PTO: travel to Wallace, Idaho with Dad and Sherri tomorrow; Christopher's 50th birthday the next day; travel to Moses Lake with Dad and Sherri on Sunday and then to Leavenworth to meet up with the rest of the family on Monday.

I'm actually finding myself with a much lighter workload than expected today, mostly because of a monthly tasks related to promotions that for a couple of years has meant a lot of extra work due to a glitch in one of our programs, which got fixed a few weeks ago—and I discovered yesterday, for the first time through practical experience, that it has really made a difference. Without that fix, I'd still be on that one task well into today. Mind you, I still have plenty to do, just none of it pressing. I'm kind of not used to this.

Plus, with Amy around, she's taken several of the more time consuming and tedious tasks off my plate. I haven't gotten weeks behind on several tasks in probably a couple of months or more. It's amazing. Now, once it's official next year that I will transition into a new role, my days will feel much more packed again, as I'll be having to spend a lot of time training a new person. For now, I think I'll just bask in the ease of my job for the time being. It doesn't even feel like it'll be that big of a deal that I'm taking the next week off. The same goes for the week of Thanksgiving and the week of Christmas.

I don't even feel like this is any "much-needed" break to relieve work stress or anything like that. It'll just be a nice time off spent just because. How great is that? I've been thinking about this recently: a lot of American society today is, like, legitimately dystopian. But, whenever you read dystopian novels or watch dystopian movies, you never really think about how many people still have it pretty good under those circumstances. It hit me just this week that, for now and for the foreseeable future anyway, I am one of those people. There are far too many homeless people, millions of minorities facing prejudice and racism, even people who are employed but deeply hate their jobs and dread getting up in the morning. Even as a gay man (my being white clearly outweighs any disadvantages I might have as a gay person), I don't fall under any of those categories at all. I'm doing fine. I don't even have mental illness or even anxiety problems anymore. My biggest problem is my husband being the only source of real stress I ever get in my life. Even he's been pretty good lately.

We did have a slightly uncomfortable moment taking the bus home from the movie we saw on Tuesday, which I forgot to mention in yesterday's post. We sat in the back half of an articulated bus, where there were not one, but two people quite audibly talking to themselves in some kind of agitation. There was a guy, sitting in a row ahead of us, and a lady, behind us and on the other side of the bus. She kept on making very homophobic comments, which for some reason only prompted Shobhit to put his arm around me. I didn't shrug it off, but I also didn't quite understand that: why call attention to ourselves in the face of a clearly agitated homophobe?

The one clear thing I remember her saying was this: "You ever notice how the police respond quickly for queers?" She said this to no one in particular. Also, I thought: what fucking planet are you living on, lady? I have no trust or love for the Seattle PD whatsoever, especially after all the shit that went down during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, and the subsequent bullshit with CHOP. I suppose it should be noted, I didn't see any specific anti-Black or anti-queer bias in those cases; in that context, the cops were happy to mistreat any and all protesters. Those babies whined about getting apples thrown at them and then used that to justify tear gassing people. Fuck them all.

Anyway, I digress. It was an unusually uncomfortable moment around that lady, and I don't have any idea why Shobhit decided to sit that close to her instead of in the front of the bus. Maybe just because it was by the back door which was closer to home once we reached our stop. That was probably it. The lady never even spoke directly to us or even indicated she noticed us at all. It's still not fun to hear hatred toward people like you. Still, my overall point here stands: that was the exception, not the rule, and I have it pretty good. I have for a very long time, and when it comes to my job, it's even more chill than it's been in quite some time. I have a lot to be grateful for—you know, while the world literally burns around me.

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[posted 12:29 pm]