— पांच हजार तीन सौ साठ —
The door to our master bathroom at home is not a conventional door, but rather the kind that slides across to close, gliding on hanging rollers from a slot inside the wall. Sometimes, though, I pull the little hook used to roll it out a little too hard, and as I was just leaving the bathroom to go to bed, I stupidly was pulling at it too quickly with the lights off and my face turned away from it as I was headed to the bed. I didn't pull my hand away fast enough though, and in the process slammed the edge of the sliding door right onto my left ring finger, right at its tip, on the fingernail.
It hurt so bad, I felt like I was going to throw up. I kind of limped over to the bed, not from any pain in my legs, but just doubling over from the pain in my finger. I got into bed, and continued moaning from the pain for several minutes, my finger throbbing.
I really thought it might be hugely bruised today. It's got a kind of minor bruise to it—so far, anyway—but nothing anyone would likely notice as different from the other fingers. It still kind of hurts, though. I'm not in agony or anything, but it remains tender each time I hit a key with it on my keyboard. What a pain in the ass. Or rather, the finger.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ साठ —
The highlight of my day yesterday was having Laney over for a movie watch in the Braeburn Condos theater. I had assumed Shobhit would not be joining us, but then when he heard the 1997 film
Wag the Dog was a political satire, he was interested. So, in the end he joined us.
I had just brought home sample microwave popcorn from work, so he popped a bag of that, and I shared just a little bit of it, as I had also made myself chai and had five Biscoff cookies with it. Laney had none of the above because of her strict diet, having finally decided to lose weight for no other reason than her doctor said it was likely to be the single thing to offer some relief to her knees. She's already looking pretty thin, honestly. She has her own goals, of course.
During the movie, Laney put on her face mask. I thought that was kind of odd, as I had already gone out of my way in the morning to test both Shobhit and myself: both negative. But, Shobhit has a chronic cough too.
After the movie, Shobhit wanted to show Laney the rough draft of the platform he's working on, with the idea in mind of running for city council. He has no political experience currently, but he loves politics and this is getting his passions fired up, so, whatever floats his boat I guess. As I mentioned to Laney, there's something to be said for shooting for the stars and getting the moon: he wants to go for his goal first and then if that doesn't work out, maybe wind up working on a competitor's campaign.
Anyway, Shobhit wanted her to come upstairs to the condo to read it, and Laney didn't want to. Shobhit really pushed back on this at first, and I was like, "Just go get the laptop and bring it down here." He finally did, and while he was gone, I asked Laney, "You've come to our condo before without a mask, what's changed?" That was when Laney told me that Shobhit had been coughing without covering his mouth, and so it just made her uncomfortable.
I hadn't even noticed it during the movie, honestly. Laney said he did indeed cough in there, in the windowless theater with no ventilation, without covering his mouth—and I have no reason not to believe it, as I have had conversation after conversation with him about this. He insists he should be able to do what he wants "in his own space" when I complain about it at home or in a hotel room (never mind that it's still shared space with me; he's made it abundantly clear he doesn't give a shit about that). Sometimes he'll cover his mouth if he can tell it's bothering me, and to be fair (sort of) to him, whenever we're in public, he never just open-mouth coughs into the air.
This has been an issue inside people's homes before, though: like the time we went to Gabriel and Lea's for a movie, and he sneezed a few times before covering his mouth, something that deeply bothered both of them. I keep telling Shobhit that if he doesn't stay in the habit of covering his mouth at home, he'll just get used to not covering his mouth and slip up somewhere else. And that's exactly what happened yesterday, at one point with him coughing through audible phlegm like an oblivious old man.
Laney has this issue with her own sister, and has had many similar conversations with her, she's told me. She's much closer with her sister and is far more comfortable setting her straight. She's not as at ease with Shobhit. "Telling someone to cover their mouth is like asking them to use a breath mint," she said. Which is to say, it embarrasses them and makes them defensive. She doesn't want to be in that position with Shobhit. But, she also wouldn't come up to the condo as long as he was coughing like that.
The coughing itself wouldn't even be that big a deal if he would just cover his goddam mouth when he does it. It's just simple, common courtesy.
On the upside, Laney responded very positively to Shobhit's political platform daft, and gave him extensive, constructive feedback that he mostly responded well to. There was a little bit of debate in there, but there was good will to it on both sides. I didn't mention the coughing issue to Shobhit until this morning, so when the political platform discussion happened yesterday, there was no awkwardness or anything.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ साठ —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ साठ —
On Saturday, I did indeed take up Shobhit's suggestion after all and go get my haircut nearly three months early, because we're headed to Australia, now two weeks from yesterday. I went to Rudy's as usual, but this time, for the first time, I went to their new location that's even closer to home, over on 12th and Pike: that's all of three and a half blocks away.
I tried finding someone there when I had my haircut in October, but if I remember right, they had no one with the $39 base price for a short haircut. This time they did, and I found a woman I later found out during my haircut is queer, named Emma. I rather liked her, and may seek her out again this coming October, although she expressed desire to move to the 15th Avenue Rudy's closer to where
she lives on Capitol Hill. I'm very happy with the cut though, so if she does shift over by then, I may actually follow her.
I usually take specific "before & after" pictures for my haircuts, but lately I've liked waiting at least a day so that my hair has been styled again the way I like. I did take
this photo with Shanti laying on my butt just yesterday, so that will suffice as the photo representation of this haircut.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ साठ —
I had another movie watch on Friday night, this one the next in our "Harrison Ford-athon" with Alexia. Shobhit was invited to a party at Sachin's, and when he asked if I had plans I said I was going to watch the movie with Alexia. I said I could see if she could switch to Saturday, but Shobhit said I didn't have to; he decided just to go to Sachin's party on his own—which, apparently, wound up being just four people or so, so, nothing like the size of the previous party we had gone to over there. Still, Shobhit made a huge pot of food with the last of the large bag of Yakisoba noodles I had gotten from Laney's apartment building kitchen in Renton two weeks ago; when I last mentioned it, I didn't realize exactly how big it really was: 5 lbs! Damn. We've been surviving on that for about a week now.
So, while Shobhit went to the party, I went next door to Alexia's condo. It rained pretty hard on Friday night and I could hear it hitting the siding of the building right on the other side of the wall where I was sitting at the end of her couch. It made for a nice ambience, actually.
I was jerked to attention when characters in
Witness, which is about a Pennsylvania Amish boy who witnesses a murder (and this was Harrison Ford's single role in his career for which he was nominated for an Academy Award—amazing), mentioned the Amish community living in "Lancaster County." Wait, what? I confirmed this is the county where the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania is located—of course it is—and immediately messaged Ivan about it, as Lancaster is where he was born and raised:
Oh my god, I wrote.
Alexia and I are watching WITNESS and the Amish characters live in Lancaster County! Of course I immediately thought of you
I had no idea he would reply with such warmth toward the film:
It's a special movie to me, he replied.
One scene was filmed on the little street I grew up on, and it was released in 1985, the year of my birth.
A few moments later, after I expressed how cool I thought that was, he added,
I know and recognize many of the locations in that movie, as it was filmed where I grew up
I shared all this with Alexia, who found this as interesting as I did. Then she just said, of Ivan, "I miss him." I told her I do too. And then of course I had to message Ivan that Alexia had said that.
As for how the movie holds up today? Surprisingly well, actually, with the one notable exception of all the Amish characters wearing clothing with buttons. This error would not be a huge deal, except the main woman character even specifies this early in the film: "buttons are vanity," and that's why Amish don't use them. Why would they put that in the script, and then show literally every Amish character wearing button-up shirts in every subsequent scene in the movie?
The film did win two Oscars: Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing. This alone seems indicative of a different time, as it's very rare these days for a film to win Best Editing without winning several of the other major awards.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ साठ —
I just finished with virtual lunch over FaceTime with Karen—I'm sure glad I saw her email to confirm this morning; I had completely forgotten that we rescheduled from last week, so even though it is indeed on my calendar, I almost certainly would have spaced it. Whew! Plus, unfortunately, our next scheduled lunch was for Friday next week on the 17th, but she's going to visit her parents in Massachusetts that weekend, and is too busy earlier in the week to reschedule. So, we have to cancel that, and won't have a chance to reconnect until after I get back from Australia.
Other than that, this is probably the most notable thing from our conversation: she was telling me about a
New Yorker article she recently read about the streaker at the 1974 Oscars, and after some time we discovered it was written by the same author as the upcoming nonfiction book
Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tears, which I already have on hold at the Seattle Public Library for when it get released later this month. What she read in the
New Yorker is likely an excerpt from the book.
Anyway, that's not actually the notable thing I'm getting at here. I mentioned that I would probably really enjoy a subscription to
New Yorker magazine, as I have often found their articles very interesting—it just wouldn't be worth the money because so many issues would just go unread. She said, though, that she can start saving her own issues and giving to me when they're done, and if I don't read them I can just toss them. I love this plan! Granted, Karen and I hardly ever see each other in person anymore so I don't know how this will go, but she'll also just save ones with articles she thinks I will find interesting, so I don't think it will result in any huge mountain of magazines either.
Okay I've written enough, I need to get back to work now.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ साठ —
[posted 1:09 pm]
