— पांच हजार तीन सौ पैंतालीस —
It's regularly amazing, truly, the kind of luck I have. Even though I don't really suffer any delusions that great luck will never run out—I'm just not superstitious enough for that—I have to admit, I've gotten kind of used to it. That doesn't stop it from surprising me.
Latest case in point: I don't know how it keeps happening, but I've had several exposures to covid since September, three of them known full well to be in indoor, unmasked, large groups. In two of those cases, I did test first before attending; I learned my hard lesson after Shobhit and I brought covid to Dad and Sherri at Easter 2022. In the latest case, even the person who had covid at the family holiday had tested, and tested negative! I suppose it's possible that meant she was less likely to infect others on the day itself, although I have no authoritative knowledge on which to make such a claim. In the middle example, it was the "Ugly Sweater Brunch" we had at work. It was that one that had me testing four times over the five days leading up to Christmas, I was so afraid of getting it and potentially spreading it. And, I never tested positive.
In terms of last week, there was no known exposure to covid, actually—just too many instances of my being around unmasked people, combined with Shobhit complaining of "feeling something in my throat" on Thursday, which I did not take seriously, and we went to the wine tasting class at Total Wine & More that evening. For all we know, whatever Shobhit had—not covid, evidently—was spread to someone else at that event.
And here's the thing, the kind of most amazing part of the past week. Shobhit woke up coughing a lot, and deeply congested, on Friday morning. I felt okay. I tested us both that morning: not covid.
I did spend a fair amount of time on Friday with my body kind of feeling like
it was trying to decide whether or not I was coming down with something. I had a movie night scheduled with Alexia that evening, and I texted her as a heads up, and although she never seems all that concerned when it's just her, she had some friends coming over Saturday, one of whom had had lung cancer, and so she suggested a rain check. She actually went back and forth on this over text on Friday, as she'd had a tough week and was looking forward to some Friday night entertainment. At one point she even texted me,
Although I can air out the condo and spray. We will be fine come over. I need to be entertained.
And I kind of thought: Uhhhh. Okay, let's say just for the sake of argument that I
was infected with something—covid or otherwise—and I went over on Friday, and then infected Alexia. What the fuck difference would it make to air out the condo and spray? If she were infected, she could still easily spread it to others regardless.
Although! I have to make a slight narrative detour here, because I was on the phone briefly with Gabriel last night, and we made what felt like fairly solid plans for me to come over to his and Lea's place to watch
Tár this Saturday evening, something we had tentatively planned for this past weekend but I postponed, for all the reasons noted above. I mentioned that I would be at Laney's in the afternoon, at her new apartment in downtown Renton, putting me kind of halfway there already, which made Saturday the more ideal day for me. In an effort to reassure him, though, I added, "She's almost as cautious as you are about covid, though, and she also asks me to test before coming over." Gabriel then noted that even if Laney did have covid and she did transmit it to me, it would be too soon for me to have the ability to then pass it on to them.
Really? I was not aware of this.
How the hell long does it take to become contagious, anyway? Surely enough study has been done to estimate this, or else Gabriel (as science teacher, it should be noted) wouldn't have said this. I'm struggling to find definitive answers to this on Google, however, as almost every page that comes up focuses on how
long you are infectious, as opposed to how soon you become contagious after infection. Gabriel reads like, legit science journals though, so I trust what he says about this kind of stuff. Also, graphs like those on
this web page also support what he said.
All of this is to say, getting back to the hypothetical in which I went ahead and saw the movie with Alexia on Friday and I
were infected with something, Alexia would probably still have a low viral load, if any, as soon as the next day. Our decision to postpone was actually probably better for Alexia's sake herself than for that of her football game watching friends on Saturday. In which case, actually, maybe if she had just kept the windows open and sprayed, that could have made some measure of difference. I could be wrong about my initial judgment about that. I don't know. Whatever, I didn't go over on Friday, nor did I get sick.
In fact, I tested both Shobhit and myself for covid three days in a row: Friday morning, Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon—burning through six tests in half as many days—and every test was negative every time. I already felt better on Saturday, if not quite perfect, and I went ahead and took myself to a movie that afternoon (masked, of course, and with all of maybe four other people in the theater). I felt basically fully back to normal yesterday. I never did even quite cross the line into "feeling ill."
Shobhit was a different story, as he felt worst on Friday, better Saturday and better yet on Sunday, but still coughing and congested the whole time—far less so by the end of the day yesterday. With the guest bedroom now empty since Ivan moved out on May 1 of last year, Shobhit took the unprecedented decision to sleep in there all three nights, which I really appreciated. By Friday, I have no idea how much of a difference it might have made in terms of risk of infection, but far of far more immediate concern, it made a
huge difference in my quality of sleep, not having him coughing, tossing and turning, shaking the bed all over the place right next to me. It was because of that that I was woken up at 4 a.m. on Friday and never got any more sleep. Friday night, I was in bed an astonishing nine and a half hours, that amount of rest clearly having been good for me. I slept nearly eight hours Saturday night. It was wonderful. It was barely more than six hours last night being a night before work, but it was still solid sleep. I'm feeling good today. Well, except that I am anticipating my dental appointment for a crown this afternoon. Bleh.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ पैंतालीस —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ पैंतालीस —
So, I saw only one movie for review over the weekend: on Saturday, I took Light Rail to the U District to see a French film called
Saint Omer, which is getting nearly universal acclaim, and I
really did not enjoy. Oh my god, did that movie bore me.
Having postponed both Afternoon Happy Hour with Laney and the movie night with Gabriel and Lea a week, I had plenty more time than initially anticipated over the weekend, and also spent a good amount of time reading my library book—also recommended by Laney—
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber. By my own usual standards, I've kind of devoured this book, always wanting to pick it back up again instead of setting it down and forgetting about it like I often do with books I'm reading. I have about 18 pages left so I'll have it finished today.
I
did, however, have more socializing yesterday than initially expected, because we wound up hanging out with Danielle for just a couple of hours, late morning and early afternoon. Danielle has started a side hustle giving people infusions in their homes, and happened to have a client right there on Capitol Hill at 10:00. So she texted me in the morning, asking what my plan was for the day. I let her know about Shobhit's coughing but that we had tested negative for covid multiple times, so she was unconcerned about coming over. I even barely finished getting ready yesterday morning, after making scrambled eggs and hash browns for Shobhit and myself for breakfast, in time to head out and meet her, so I could provide her company walking from the place she was at on Mercer & Harvard. She actually finished a bit early and I caught her on Broadway; she had to backtrack a block as I was also returning a library book for Shobhit at the Capitol Hill branch library.
She was really hungry, I had just had breakfast, so she decided to stop at Dick's for a burger, which she ate as we walked the rest of the way to my place. "How's your disgusting burger?" I asked. "Delicious," she replied.
Danielle happily accepted my offer of chai, so I made some for all three of us as soon as we got back to the condo. I keep burning it, which is frustrating the shit out of me as this never used to happen even though I swear I'm not preparing it any differently. Shobhit thinks it might have to do with the pot, which I don't want to have to change as this one has a great lip on its edge for pouring that helps prevent spillage. Danielle suggested I start making it at a lower temperature, because apparently milk is easy to burn. Hmm. I have been heating it on high; that may very well be the problem. Next time I'll spend more time with it on medium or maybe medium-high. Let's see how that works.
It evidently wasn't
too burnt, because Danielle sipped it, as Shobhit played the
Our Great National Parks nature series on Netflix, and she said, "This chai is really hitting the spot." Nice.
Danielle had not drive into town; she got a ride from her boss, whom she later told us was astonished Danielle would go into the city without a car. Okay, using a Park & Ride is not that hard, lady. So, Danielle accompanied Shobhit and me for a minor shopping stint at Hau Hau Market in the International District, where she even bought a few vegetables herself. And after that, Shobhit and I drove her to the International District Light Rail Station.
Shobhit had me drive, and we took a moment to figure out the best spot to drop her off. I finally settled on the corner across the street from the station, saying, "I'll drop her at these garbage cans." She was like, "Oh, nice," and then she got out. When we rounded the corner, Danielle was nowhere in sight when we figured she would be visibly waiting to cross the street toward the station, which left Shobhit far more worried about her than he needed to be, thinking quite irrationally that she might have gotten lost. He even texted her to make sure she found the station. After a little while she texted back,
I took a detour with a photo of a very odd looking tub of some kind of a food on a stick, which she later explained was a mozzarella stick. (It had some kind of sauce all over it, and little square foodstuffs of some kind all over it, so it did not look like what you would expect a mozzarella stick to look like.)
— पांच हजार तीन सौ पैंतालीस —
Alexia had yet another football game to watch yesterday, which was why our new planned time for our next movie watch was 4:00, but just with the understanding that she would text me when she was ready for me to come over. The game ran long, and she later said "No later than 5," and then when she texted around 5 that she needed to make her dinner, I said I would come over at 5:15. Then I texted pushing it to 5:30 so I could wait for Shobhit to finish making his taro root dish, which I then had with a baked frozen naan, which I took on a plate over to eat at Alexia's while we watched the movie.
This was movie #2 of our "Harrison Ford-athon," the first having been
Raiders of the Lost ArkScrooged. My idea was to go through the rest of Harrison Ford's filmography in chronological order of release, which thus made last night's movie
Blade Runner.
After months of it being available on HBO Max . . . now it isn't. These rotating streamer options are a real pain in the ass. She had to rent it on Prime Video for four bucks. Which, of course, she really didn't give a shit about. It was four bucks.
We had both seen this movie many times before already. The great part about it for me was seeing it on her new TV screen, which has stunning picture quality. It might have been the most crisp photo quality I have ever seen that movie in, and it's a beautifully designed production, so that was actually very cool.
Also, it wasn't a big deal to do a fair amount of chatting during the movie, since we've both already seen it so many times. This helped cut down on the typically long amount of time we sit chatting after the movie is over. Gabriel had called me in the middle of the movie and I had to text him back that I would call him later.
So, shortly after the movie ended—but still with a few minutes of additional chatting with Alexia, always hard to resist—I went back to my condo next door, and called Gabriel back. Now he was the one in the middle of watching something, but he and Lea still chatted briefly. They were at a cabin somewhere, celebrating their anniversary, watching the
Harry & Megan docuseries on Netflix, and also . . . doing laundry, apparently. This was when it was established that, evidently in all likelihood, coming over to watch
Tár Saturday evening should be fine.
Then I spent the rest of the evening, first waiting for Shobhit to finish watching
The Dig (which I reviewed in January 2021 when stay-home orders were still in place, so I would have also seen it streaming:
solid B), and then watching the 80-minute series premiere of
The Last of Us on HBO Max, which we both got pretty immediately sucked into. Shobhit was all about the apocalyptic scenes with fungus-infected people eating each other. And then we realized the teenage girl who shows up later in the episode is none other than Bella Ramsey, the young actor who became viral as the badass young head of House Marmont on
Game of Thrones. She was 13 when she appeared on the show then; she's 19 now, clearly playing younger.
I'm not usually one for "zombie shows," but I am compelled by this show for multiple reasons: the wide expectation of it being maybe the first-ever quality adaptation of a video game; the fact that it's on HBO Max as opposed to any other streamer (and HBO has reliably high quality shows); and perhaps most crucially, there is no plan for any more than two seasons of it. So, unlike the likes of
The Walking Dead which aired for an eternity (and which I never watched), this show has no risk of outstaying its welcome.
Anyway, it was nearly 10:00 by the time it finished so that was that for my weekend.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ पैंतालीस —
[posted 12:32 pm]
