— पांच हजार तीन सौ नब्बे —
Shobhit and I visited a couple of old friends last night, Charlie and Cavin, with whom we have largely fallen out of touch for the last several years. I've remained Facebook friends with them, and thus had continued occasional online interactions with them throughout, but I haven't hung out with them with any real consistency since . . . based on my Flickr photos archive: 2010! Jesus.
As far as I can tell from my LiveJournal records, I did not see Charlie after my Birth Week in 2010, until Cavin's birthday party in April 2017, which proved to be honestly
kind of awkward, both because so much time had passed, and because we had come to a party where Charlie and Cavin were the only people we knew; they were busy hosting; and there was never any real opportunity to truly reconnect. The other guy they've been in a relationship with, David, actually organized and hosted the party at his house, and I had a sense that he possibly took the initiative to invite us without Cavin or Charlie knowing. I don't know for sure though.
Incidentally, and oddly, I actually saw Cavin
and David after my Birth Week 2010, far earlier than I saw Charlie again: Cavin came to a
a movie night in May 2013 at the Braeburn Condos theater, which Charlie wound up unable to make it to. Even that had been more than three years since I had seen them, so I had been genuinely surprised when Charlie RSVPed to my Facebook Event invite to that, that he would come—only to follow up only hours before the event that he was having to work late and would not make it. But, Cavin came anyway, and he brought David, which was the first time I ever met that guy.
Side note. Re-reading that old post, I also note that I asked David how old he was and he said 25; that would mean today, depending on when his birthday falls, he is now either 34 or 35. Charlie is definitely 50; I remember he was born in 1972 because my brother was too. I can't remember how old Cavin is, but I think it's not too far off from Charlie's age. At the risk of sounding like an asshole—which is not my intent here—I do have a recollection of him explaining his agelessness by saying "Black don't crack," but given how long it had been since I had seen him—six years!—he did look visibly older to me yesterday. He still looked good though, for the record! In fact, both he and Charlie are impressively physically fit, especially compared to most people their age. God knows neither Shobhit or I are.
As it happened, I still last saw
Charlie before last night more recently than any of them: at the
SLGC Family Reunion Picnic, also in 2017—August 13, specifically. That had been all of four months after Cavin's birthday party. But, much like the years between 2010 and the movie in 2013 and the years between the 2013 movie night and the two events in 2017, there were no in-person hangouts between then and—oh wait! One more check of my Flickr account and I nearly forgot! There had also been
an SLGC reunion in July 2021, and Charlie was there too. I totally forgot I saw him less than two years ago. Cavin, though: still six years.
But: now Shobhit is running for Seattle City Council, and he's hitting up every single person he knows or assumes to be a Seattle voter, no matter how vaguely he does or has ever known them. He took the initiative on his own to message Charlie about the possibility of getting his—and hopefully Cavin's and David's—Democracy Vouchers, which was a relief to me. All along I've had no idea what general "etiquette" night dictate in regards to the obligations of the spouse of a political candidate, but I bristle at doing campaign work for him, when I already have an increasingly stressful (unfortunately; this has historically not been the case and I need to find a way to shift away from it) full-time job as well as a very full social life. I don't really like being asked to pester my friends on his behalf, and now I'm getting asked to pester my friends to pester
their family and friends on their behalf. (He now wants me to follow up with Tracy about asking her sister. Which, I will do. I just really don't like it.) It's not that I don't want Shobhit to win. I actually do. I just also don't want to be a source of irritation for my friends on his behalf.
Thankfully, when it came to Charlie and Cavin, not only were they totally receptive, but as Shobhit has gone out of his way to make it as easy as possible for people, he said he was willing to bring the needed paperwork to them, so they set up a time to go to their place in the Central District at 7:00 last night. I had actually hoped to see a movie last night, especially as my Birth Week will preclude any movie-going for the next week and a half, but I discarded the idea when I discovered no movie times would work, especially for the one I currently want to see the most:
Beau is Afraid, the new Ari Aster film that's three hours long. That'll be best watched on a weekend, so I now have to push that out to May 6 at the soonest.
It was better all around for me to come along with Shobhit to Charlie and Cavin's anyway. They had met, and even hung out with, Shobhit before, but it had been a long time, and he still knows them through me. It would just be less awkward this way. And, with it being just Charlie and Cavin at home, and not at a party or gathering, it was easier to get into substantive conversation with them.
And actually, it wasn't just Charlie and Cavin: shortly after Shobhit and I got to their townhouse, David arrived as well. I don't know what the story is there overall and it's none of my business, but I know David kind of left the picture for a while during the pandemic, as I recall because of his lax attitude about mask wearing, or something to that effect. Last night was the first indication I got that evidently, on some level anyway, he's back in the picture. David had a take-out dinner with him when he arrived, which he opend and ate while Shobhit was chatting with Charlie and Cavin, and it immediately filled the space with a fairly pungent odor.
When it came to Shobhit's purposes: the more the merrier. With their signatures and contributions, not to mention all three of them allocating their Democracy Vouchers to him, Shobhit is now about a third of the way toward his goal of 150 sigatures, and a bit less to his goal of 150 contributions. He needs 150 of both before he can qualify to use the funds from all the Democracy Vouchers allocated to him.
They all made contributions as well. Shobhit has taken to telling people that a minimum contribution of $10 is the only way to really help him, which is actually fair: every contribution comes with a signature, so getting a signature without a contribution does nothing for him if it does not also get him closer to the 150 contributions goal. We reiterated that $10 is all he really needs for his current purposes, and yet they were all surprisingly generous: Charlie donated $25 and both Cavin
and David contributed $50 each. Shobhit was openly taken aback and thanked them profusely.
The three of them did not confer about how much they would all contribute, which resulted in Charlie feeling bad about his lower contribution than the other two, which really wasn't necessary at all. The total combined between the three of them was all that mattered, and getting any contribution of $10 or more from any of them was what mattered even more.
Shobhit and I had attended a housewarming party at this place in 2010; they noted they had lived there since 2009. We hadn't been there since, but we all kind of marveled at how long they had been there—as of this year, for them, 14 years. Last October made 15 years since Shobhit and I moved into
our condo; this October will be 16.
We were probably in there about 45 minutes, maybe an hour or so. Most of the conversation was about Shobhit's campaign, his platform, and how the Democracy Voucher program works. I thought about whether to make this a point for all four of them on the next Social Review, and decided against it. This was not a social call, it was basically a campaign stop. Not the same thing.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ नब्बे —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ नब्बे —
Shobhit asked me to drive there, and I drove back. They actually don't live far away, generally just a ten-minute drive or so. We got home and dished ourselves some of the spaghetti we prepared before we left, which we sat down to eat while watching this week's episode of
Ted Lasso. I finally figured out, five episodes in, that opposed to season 1 and season 2 which both had all the episoded average half an hour in length, all of season 3 episode is one-hour episodes. This one was the longest, at 63 minutes.
Shobhit pointed out that it's a little less like a comedy and more like a drama now. It's really more of a dramedy. It's still really good though—good enough, in fact, that I let my three-month trial subscription to Apple TV start charging the monthly fee until we can finish it. In the meantime, I've temporarily canceled my Netflix subscription, for the first time since first signing up when it was DVD delivery-only (initially it was a gift from Gabriel!) in 2004. I'll re-up with Netflix either in a couple of months, or when there's something released on it that I'm dying to watch. I really should have done this earlier, as it's now common with a lot of subscribers, due to the glut of subscription streamers out there now.
Anyway! Although I am at work today, it's also Friday, and that makes it Day 1 of my 10-day Birth Week. If all goes well, I won't have to do any "make up" days a week or a month later like I have in past years, and was forced to in a couple of cases last year after I had to push the whole vacation back a week due to having covid. I've got the week all planned out and confirmed now, with 14 separate "hidden gems" to visit over the next ten days—three of them between Saturday and Sunday alone, as I am renting a car for a couple of days for my traditional overnight stay with Jennifer in Shelton.
I'm actually largely caught up on my work this week, and today, which is kind of a pleasant surprise, largely being right where I'd like to be before a vacation, and having gotten here after being behind on most things for several weeks after returning from Australia last month. I'll be behind yet again when I get back in a week, but that will be far easier to overcome after only one week away than it had been after two and a half. I'm excited!
— पांच हजार तीन सौ नब्बे —
[posted 12:35 pm]
