— पञ्चसहस्राणि चतुःशतानि एकनवतिः —
I spent most of my evening on Friday night working on the 2024 calendars. I've got all the grid photos selected and edited the way I want, and I have one of the templates at Shutterfly (which I have to use now that Costco photo outsourced their service) about three quarters full with them. The upside is, once that first template is done, all of the holiday events
and all of the photo birthday and anniversary events will be saved, for me to either check or un-check the next time I start a different template, on which there will be a differnet configuration of photos. (The calendar I make for Shobhit—and myself—has the most photos, as it's the only one that includes not only all family on both Mom's and Dad's sides of the family, but Shobhit's family as well.)
I started a movie I rented as a DVD from the library right around the time Shobhit got home from work that night. I needed to get it returned to the library, and for some reason I just decided that would be the ideal time to watch it. It's a film from 1969 called
Women In Love, written by Larry Kramer.
I had never heard of it, until Shobhit and I watched
A Room with a View to see the contrasting performance by Daniel Day-Lewis after watchin him in
My Beautiful Laundrette, which opened in the U.S. the same weekend and his wildly different characters astonished critics. Anyway, I did already know about a kind of famous scene with several men swimming nude in
A Room with a View, and I had gone to Google to find modern takes on it. I found
this column, from July 2020, entitled "Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy: The Naked Men of 'A Room with a View' are Real Period Pieces."
That column references
Women In Love, and even links to
a separate column about it from December 2019. (FAIR WARNING: The web pages these links direct you to feature film stills that show full frontal male nudity.) I found other references online to an "erotically charged friendship between the men" (who get into relationships with the women, incidentally sisters, of the title) and "infamous fig eating and nude wrestling scenes." This all piqued my interest. How had I never seen this movie? One of the women even won the Oscar for Best Actress (though, spoiler alert, neither Shobhit nor I could quite understand why).
Shobhit is all about any male nudity in movies—it's always a detail I can use to get him to watch something. Well, in this case, here was the rub: the wrestling scene, which I had already watched once online, began, and I recognized it as the two men are in a drawing room in front of a fireplace. And suddenly, the DVD appeared to be damaged, it got stuck, and then skipped ahead an indeterminate amount of time—anywhere from ten to twenty minutes, probably. The rest of the movie played fine. And I really didn't get the movie overall.
When it ended, after one very strange rape scene that is very casually passed on from, and then that very same man's death, I thought, well, I'm going to bring up the wrestling scene on YouTube so Shobhit could see it. Somewhat surprisingly, YouTube has not blocked whoever's account it was from uploading the nudity, presumably because there's no sex or arousal in it.
And, honestly? As fascinating as the scene is on its own, on multiple levels, I found it to be very tonally incongruous with the rest of the film. Maybe it would have flowed better had the DVD played correctly in context, I don't know.
Still, I posted
a brief review on Letterboxd. This is a website for cinephiles like myself, mind you, and somewhat to my surprise, this film is a lot more appreciated than I might have expected: on their five-star rating system, 5,826 ratings average out to 3.7 out of 5 stars.
I have it two and a half stars.
Another surprise: Shobhit seemed to understand and appreciate it more than I did. I think maybe he actually has a thing for period pieces, particularly ones with subtle examinations of class differences. I found good stretches of it very hard to follow.
— पञ्चसहस्राणि चतुःशतानि एकनवतिः —
Okay, anyway! That was Friday night. Saturday was very eventful. First, we went shopping at PCC Central District, leaving at 9:00. We also swung by the dry cleaner's so I could exchange shirts. Then we went down to Costco so Shobhit would get gas, and we went inside to maybe shop, and all we ended up buying was a single box of Omeprazole. We keep hoping to find it on sale so we can stock up on a bunch at a cheaper price—as I had just done, actually, with 6-packs of Zevia Soda at PCC.
We got back with barely enough time to put away groceries and then I could walk over to the Rudy's on 12th between Pine and Pike, to get my October 2023 haircut. You can see in the photo at the top of this post how much shorter the cut is, although I wasn't quite satisfied with it for my "before & after" photos for my "
History of Matthew's Hair" photo album. I had actually taken a "before"
selfie in the elevator at work on Friday, showing the length of my hair just before the haircut. It was actually a good amount longer than it normally would be by now, because usually it would be six months of growth, but this time it was nine—I got the previous haircut three months earlier than the usual April timeframe, in January, so I'd have a fresh cut before going to Australia. I actually did exactly the same thing back in 2020, of course having no idea that I then would not be able to get my hair cut again for a
year and three months, due to the pandemic. That time my hair got
longer than it had been in over a decade. Amazingly, my hair last week didn't look all that far from that, probably because of cuts in the meantime not getting quite as short as they could have been. Anyway, I took an only slightly better "after"
selfie yesterday while walking through downtown back from Seattle Center with Shobhit. I'll come back to that.
I was pretty happy with the haircut, which, after having to wait a good 15 past my appointment time, took maybe half an hour for the hairdresser to complete. She did ask if I wanted a shampoo, and I was like, "I just shampooed yesterday" so we skipped it. That may have jacked up the price anyway.
I was home about an hour after that, before Laney arrived, having driven up from Renton, and parking on 15th Avenue. We then walked over to Chuck's Hop Shop, where we hung out for just a couple of hours.
I think I need to start a log of drinks I've had, how many, what type, and what the effects were. It seems to vary these days. I had two hard ciders at Chuck's, and they were both delicious. The "Apple Pie" one, the guy said, "I have to warn you, that one's pretty boozy." Perfect! Or so I thought. I had a good buzz going by the time we were getting up to leave, which only lasted a few minutes. I could feel a very slight headache coming on within about an hour after that, and I drank a full glass of water. By mid-evening, I had both a terrible headache and I was so drowsy I was fighting to stay awake. I didn't feel right again until I'd taken a couple of Aleve and gone to bed; yesterday morning I felt normal again.
Anyway, back to drinks with Laney. This was our last scheduled social outing before moves up to Capitol Hill and into Pride Place. We're not scheduled to do anything next weekend, so the next time I see her will be October 26, two Thursdays from now, when I am taking the afternoon off to help unload her moving truck. (We then have our next double feature in the Braeburn Condos theater two days later, on the 28th.)
There's not much to tell about what we chatted about, sitting at the outdoor tables at Chuck's Hop Shop. I had worn my pea coat even though the high was expected to be above 60°, just to be sure I didn't get chilly, with a breeze or anything. There was no rain and no breeze, though it was cloudy, and Laney was actually hot enough to take her jacket off, which is why she's in just a T-shirt in the photo and I'm actually bundled up. I didn't get super hot either, though; I never took the jacket off.
— पञ्चसहस्राणि चतुःशतानि एकनवतिः —
— पञ्चसहस्राणि चतुःशतानि एकनवतिः —
We walked back to Laney's van together, and she noted that she'll probably continue parking her van there even after she moves, even though 15th is six blocks away from Broadway. But, parking near her building will be impossible; she always finds parking on 15th; and with her handicapped flag she can hang from the rear view mirror, she doesn't have to abide by the 2-hour parking limit. (Shobhit and I don't have to either, but that's because we have a
Zone 4 parking permit. Laney's new address will actually be only qualified for the smaller parking Zone 21.) It only occurred to me as I was writing this very paragraph that this means a lot of the time, even though she'll live six blocks away, she'll be parking right by my buildig. on Saturday she was just across the street and maybe halfway down the block.
So, soon after that, Shobhit and I did what I had hoped for a while that we would do after my drinks with Laney: we went to LensCrafters in Northgate.
Somewhat to my surprise, he suggested we take the train. He'd had a drink of his own. (He might have joined us otherwise, but while Laney and I were hanging out, he actually went and got his own vaccines, for both covid and the flu.) I had just gotten buzzed. Not a great idea for either of us to be driving. Yay Light Rail! Hooray for the Northgate Link,
opened two years ago this month! It makes it so easy, to travel from Capitol Hill all the way to Northgate without having to drive. Now, it's a surprisingly long walk from the Light Rail station to the actual LensCrafters store, but, whatever. Northgate's shopping center—much of its renovation
still under construction—is very big.
Now. Back in the summer, I had gotten an updated glasses prescription, thinking I would be getting progressive lenses to use in place of the glasses I can no longer use to read in bed because I'm getting old. Shobhit and I have had multiple back and forth about this, because he was convinced I could just get drug store readers, and the eye doctor has explained, in ways I can't adequately re-explain to Shobhit, that putting regular reading glasses on without my contacts in won't work. More than once he tried "explaining" the prescription number math to me like I was a moron.
This was precisely why I wanted Shobhit to come with me this time, so he could hear explanations from the source. It only made matters worse, at least temporarily, when we got different answers depending on who we spoke to at the LensCrafters store. Ironically, it was the guy behind the counter at the actual eye doctor office in the back who was the most wrong: he actually told Shobhit I
could just get drug store readers without needing to update my glasses.
Thankfully, they had regular reading glasses there that I could test,
and I had just happened to bring my library book with me, to read on the train. The magnification for reading in my prescription is 1.75 for both eyes. So, I took out my contacts, opened my book, and tested both a 1.5 pair of readers and a 2.0 pair, because they didn't have a sample 1.75. But, both did absolutely nothing for my eyesight without contacts in. The book had to be an inch from my eyes, just as it does without any readers on. I still don't know why it had to take so much time and rigmarole to conclude something so fucking simple.
Part of the problem, I think, we a combination of Shobhit being convinced I had no need for anything besides drug store readers (absolutely, wildly wrong), and LensCrafters staff assuming I just wanted reading glasses I could wear over contact lenses—in which case, drug store readers
would work. What I had to explain, multiple times, was I wanted
to be able to read a book in bed, when I would have my contacts
out.
Now, here's the thing. Having Shobhit with me this time still saved a bunch of money. ("Saving" is kind of a debulous term in this instance, as I still paid for this with my FSA card, and I can't use that money for anything that's not a medical necessity.) I had thought I would be buying progressive lenses, basically a version of bifocals without the visible line across the middle of the glass. But, Shobhit asked if it would be cheaper to get two pairs of glasses, one regular glasses with my prescription updated (I haven't updated my actual glasses in many years) and one with my prescription updated but also made as reading glasses. Compared with the "cutting edge technology" (the store manager's term) of progressive lenses, doing it this way actually was considerably cheaper.
I decided I could live with that. It means that from now on I'll have two pairs of glasses instead of one, which I'll have to swap out any time I'm in bed reading, and if I want those handy any time I travel, I will now have to
pack two pairs of glasses instead of one. I decided I could live with that. Especially considering I was expecting to use up my FSA balance and pay around six hundred bucks for one pair of progressive lens glasses, and instead I bought these two separate, updated pairs of glasses for a total of $298 (because they had a deal for a second pair of glasses at 50% off). We found the drawer with their cheapest frames and found two that each had a list price of $95 that I could totally live with, especially as I don't generally go about my day with glasses on anyway. I only wear glasses between getting out of bed and taking my shower in the morning, and between taking my contacts out at night and going to bed. If I wore glasses all the time (Shobhit, for example, spends the day with glasses on a bit more often than he puts contacts in), it would be a different story. But I think this will work for me.
The glasses should be available for me to pick up by next weekend, when Shobhit already has his own eye doctor appointment. Whew! Glad we got that all squared away.
— पञ्चसहस्राणि चतुःशतानि एकनवतिः —
So that brings us to yesterday, which I spent with Shobhit. This was his first full weekend without a work shift since the first weekend in September (not counting Labor Day itself, as he did work that Monday evening), and he asked if I'd be interested in going to this local theater show, where local writers get their short plays performed by local actors, and I said, sure!
The show was at Seattle Center, but at my suggestion, we walked to Pike Place Market first. So, you could say we went on a walk first. The show was at 3:00, and we must have left home somewhere around 1:00, giving us plenty of time to amble around town. Shobhit recently re-joined Weight Watchers, so he was all about adding "steps."
I wanted to show him the
Rainier Square redevelopment, and particularly the new public terrace inside the block and two levels up. I also wanted to get some better shots of the terrace space itself, as in previous visits I kept focusing on the views you can see from up there.
It's a very cool space, but Shobhit could not possibly have cared less. Whatever! He walked around half the time looking at his phone, glancing up when I pointed out this or that.
We went down to the Downtown PCC, which is in Rainier Square Tower, to see if there were any specials we didn't want to miss. Nope.
From there we walked over to Pike Place Market. We walked through the Market. We went to the MarketFront expansion (opened 2017), from which I got
a photo of the Overlook Walk, mid-construction, now slated to
open in 2025. Well, crap. I really thought they were closer to opening than that.
Then, we walked up to Seattle Center, where we got to the Theater Puget Sound "Theater 4" venue on the fourth floor of the Armory building, about half an hour early.
What I had not realized when Shobhit suggested this show, was that there would be several people he knew there—from back in his Northwest Actors Studio days. I got the sense that maybe there's a tiny germ of interest on Shobhit's part, to start getting involved in local theater again. I actually think it would be good for him, give him something he's passionate about to engage with. God knows his job doesn't qualify.
There were six short plays, three each before and after an intermission. A couple of times people had to get in front of the audience to vamp for time. The most time had to be spent on this at the very beginning, apparently to wait for a woman in the first play to finish an elaborate makeup job. The guy really talked it up, too, saying how great it was. (It was fine. Maybe arrive early enough to be done by showtime?)
Overall, I'll say the show was . . . well. It was better than the last show Shobhit and I went to! Granted, that was a
very low bar to clear. At least these shows appeared to have had a modicum of rehearsals. The writing, on the other hand, was kind of all over the place. That kind of goes with the territory when it comes to anthology presentations, I suppose.
An older lady who Shobhit also knew from the old days sat next to me on the other side from Shobhit. She kept coughing. The audience numbered, I don't know, maybe twenty people? I was the single person in there with a mask on. Incidentally, the Turkish Festival was happening downstairs in the main hall of the Armory, and it was quite crowded. I also did not see a single other person wearing a mask. All the more reason for me to wear one, actually. I learned my lesson after the bathhouse in Sydney, after which I still felt like I dodged a bullet by merely getting a very mild cold for just a few days. After that, any time I'll be in a really crowded place, I wear a mask. Or! As was the case at the Northwest Chocolate Festival the weekend before last, where I would be unmasked most of the time for eating, I used a couple sprays of
Covixyl (which I learned about from Gabriel, who noted there is actual science backing it up) before leaving.
Anyway. The lady didn't cough a lot, just one small cough every few minutes. She still made it a point to tell me, "I just have a tickle in my throat, I'm not sick." I was just like, "Okay." I didn't mention this but I did think it: what if
I were carrying something, even if I had no symptoms? I was preventing
her from getting sick. People never think about that.
Shobhit and I walked home from there, this time up 5th Avenue (where I was when I took my "after" selfie to show my haircut) and then turning left up Pine Street toward home. I worked a bit on calendard, a bit on logging movies on Letterboxd (I suddenly realized I could log and rate the Oscar-nominated Shorts I've seen most years as separate, individual films, so I got caught up on those back to where I already was with feature films, currently worked backward to late 2015), and watched a couple episodes of TV with Shobhit before heading to bed.
And there you have it! My weekend.
— पञ्चसहस्राणि चतुःशतानि एकनवतिः —
[posted 12:32 pm]
