— पांच हजार पांच सौ छह —
I have spent most of October filling up my Daily Lunch Updates (DLUs) with Halloween photos from years both current and past. I had a lot backlogged, and even now still have 9 shots not yet used from 2020, 2021 and 2022. There had been something like a couple dozen. And now, this year I've added another 27, making a total of 36 I'll have to try burning through once October rolls around again next year.
I have far nore Christmas "DLU photos" (I have long been tagging these on Flickr as "dlunused," which I change to "dlused" once I have used them in a blog post) backlogged, which I try to burn through as soon as Thanksgiving is over, and on through December. My backlog of these number 117 presently, and date as far back as 2018. I'll probably never burn through them all, because I do so much every year for the holidays and take so many pictures that add to it. A ton of them tend to be from the Seattle Festival of Trees, but many other events add a lot to the backlog as well.
November is a whole different story. Thanksgiving is a fun holiday, I enjoy it, but it's never been a favorite—nor is it particularly photogenic. I have all of
two photos tagged with both "thanksgiving" and "dlunused."
So? What you see in today's DLU: getting back to burning through "dlunused" photos from our trip to Australia. After today, I'll still have 121 photos left to use from Australia. Although I am saving some for other times of the year, such as stuff from World Pride that I'll use in June of next year when our own Pride comes around again.
I've already used 157 photos from this year's trip to Australia for this purpose. I took a lot of great pictures!
There was a time, maybe five years ago, when I occasionally struggled to keep enough unused photos in there. Now, I do so many photogenic things so often, it will take a lifetime to burn through the overall backlog. I now have over two thousand photos tagged with "dlunused," and the oldest one still not used dates back to 2017. Hell, I still have 180 worthy photos still not used from our trip to Yellowstone National Park in 2018.
The backlog is so large now that, actually, there's a convenient side effect: I can sometimes come up with a theme, just searching for tags: "dlunused" + "birthweek," or "dlunused + easter," or whatever. It could be as simple as "dlunused + sunset." Or even more specific: "dlunused" + "australia" + "sunset". (That's now how I got today's three shots, just to clarify. I just browsed my "dlunused" + "australia" photos and picked from what appeared to be either sunset or nighttime. This killed two birds with one stone: burning through some of the Australia 2023 photos, and choosing a nighttime theme since Daylight Saving Time ended over the weekend.)
— पांच हजार पांच सौ छह —
I had a perfectly eventful weekend, but thankfully this time around I don't have too much to report on any of said events. I watched four movies between Friday and Sunday, and reviewed two of them.
(
On Friday after work, I left half an hour early to meet Tracy and see the 4:30 showing of
Priscilla at the Regal Meridian. Neither of us was super impressed with it.
AMC Theaters was still not showing any showtimes at Seattle theaters as of Monday last week, which was why I went by the theater after work one day to buy our tickets, and avoid online fees. I did this, only to have Tracy show me on Friday that, after all, AMC Pacific Place
was showing the fucking movie—I could have used my AMC Stubbs membership, but I had already bought the Regal tickets. Those motherfuckers! Oh well.
We didn't go out for dinner or drinks or anything. Tracy drove me home as usual and we chatted in the car on the street by my building as usual, this time for probably 30 or 45 minutes. I finally went inside, and after Shobhit and I went through my benefits Open Enrollment together, we went to QFC to do some shopping.
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— पांच हजार पांच सौ छह —
No socializing on Saturday, when Shobhit worked from 2:00 to 9:00, and I took myself to see the truly excellent
Anatomy of a Fall, only the second movie so far this year that I've given a solid A. I very nearly made the same mistake on this day that I did with the movie I went to see on Thursday, thinking I was going to Pacific Place—but this time I double checked before leaving, and, woops! It was playing at the AMC 10 in the U District. Good thing I double checked.
I took Light Rail back to Capitol Hill after that movie, walked home from the station, and spent a good hour or so writing the review. And then I watched the first of two movies I did
not review, an Italian gay romance just released on Netflix called
Nuovo Olimpo. Shobhit had discovered it earlier in the week on one of his days off, texted to ask me if I knew about it, and told me I would like it.
He watched it dubbed in English, which I hate. So I was happy to watch it on my own later, in Italian with subtitles. Had it been a great movie, even with it being a Netflix released, I would have posted a review. But, it was B at best, so I didn't see any need for the effort. Out of the thousands of options on Netflix, who needs to hear: "This is one you don't need to watch"?
One of the guys was super hot. It does include some full frontal male nudity. It's also really romantic and handles the romance pretty well. The flip side is that it also spans four decades, and instead of casting older actors, they put them in old age makeup that is among the worst I have ever seen. I did post a brief, one-paragraph review
on Letterboxd. Three out of five stars. That's what I give any film I rate a solid B in my reviews.
Yesterday I spent the afternoon with Laney, first walking down to her apartment on Broadway to see it finally fully settled in; we sat and chatted for about 50 minutes. Her apartment looks quite nice, and I was corrected iin regards to its size: I kept thinking it's 480 square feet, but it's more like 380. Given the small amount of stuff she has and how she's utilizing the space, it feels spacious and not cramped at all. I think she'll be perfectly content living there.
Then, we walked down to Pacific Place to see
Killers of the Flower Moon—my second time seeing it, and her first.
We walked down Pike Street so we could walk on the Convention Center side where Pike goes over the freeway, as over there there's no view down to the freeway below to freak her out. She's more and more freaked out by heights as time goes on. It's kind of weird, honestly. But, that doesn't make her reaction to it any less valid.
The movie is three and a half hours long and, I will say: it feels slower on rewatch. Also, I brought a can of hard cider and some Smoked Gouda Triscuit crackers. The hard cider really made me drowsy and for the first couple of hours I frequently had a hard time staying awake. Laney had ordered some cheddar popcorn only to discover the small of that size was way smaller than the small regular popcorn, and when she wanted to change her mind she had already made the transaction—but a
regular size regular popcorn cost just as much, only a quarter more, so she agreed to just swap them out. This left her with way more popcorn than she originally intended to get, and she shared with me. Halfway through the movie I asked if there was any more, not because I was hungry but because eating would help keep me awake. There were only some crumbs left in the bucket at that point. And even with how much she had already shared with me, on our walk back up the hill she complained of a bit of a tummy ache: "I think I overdid it on the popcorn."
Anyway, aside from all that, there was plenty to unpack and talk about the movie on our walk back to her building. We also saw a back patio sign for Saint John Bar & Grill, went to check it out, and decided we'd go there for our next Happy Hour—which we then rescheduled from Saturday to Friday so we could take advantage of their literal Happy Hour, this frees up the entire day on Saturday for the Diwali Festival at Seattle Center, which Shobhit and I will go to and Karen has tentatively marked on her calendar as well.
Once home, I had some dinner, and later got very close to finishing up all of this year's calendar templates. I think by tonight they will all actually be ready for placing orders. There will be five different themes among a total 17 calendars ordered this year. I went and designed one for Uncle David and Mary Ann, totally forgetting the fortune I had to spend just to mail theirs to them last year. But, the one I designed this year is focused on our time with them in South Australia, and once again I don't want the work to go to waste, so I am just going to bite the bullet.
—Wait, hold on! What a relief! I checked this while I was writing: Costco did not have international shipping as an option when they were doing Photos themselves, which meant I had to have the calendar shipped to me first, and then go to the post office to mail it. Well guess what? Now that Costco photo services are being outsourced to Shutterfly, Shutterfly
does have international shipping options! I just placed the order for Uncle David and Mary Ann's calendar to be mailed to them—and shipping cost me only $30! "Only" may seem weird to hear when it's still more than the cost of the calendar itself, but shipping from the post office, when I last sent them a calendar (in 2021, for 2022), cost $83.
It looks like Shutterfly has a lot more different shipping options than Costco did. I can even send the same calendar to multiple address, it looks like, which is also going to make shipping to my brother and my nieces and nephews a lot easier. I shouldn't have to ship any of those directly to my address first anymore. It almost makes it worth dealing with the largest size calendar option being smaller and a slightly different shape now.
— पांच हजार पांच सौ छह —
[posted 12:49 pm]
