— पांच हजार तीन सौ सत्तर-सात —
I decided to spend the evening at home with Shobhit on Friday, catching up on the week's TV we were behind on, for no other reason, really, than I didn't want to go see a movie three nights in a row—how few, comparatively, I have gone to thus far this year notwithstanding. I even had other plans Saturday, Sunday
and tonight, so I'll just be seeing movies two nights in a row again tomorrow and the next day.
On Saturday, we went to Danielle's place in Renton to watch
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Well, we got maybe two thirds of the way through it. It's a long movie—two hours and thirteen minutes—and we got a late start and Danielle had an infusion appointment at 4:00.
Some of this was a little frustrating. Danielle and I had selected this date for this idea a while back; I texted her on Thursday to confirm and she never bothered to text back. We got on FaceTime Saturday morning and she was like, "What time are you coming?"
Unable to narrow it down, I told her we'd come sometime between 10:30 and noon, but I would text with an ETA when we were headed out. She said okay and my understanding was we had a plan.
Well, we were in the car at 10:30. I texted her an ETA of 11:04, and then she texted back:
Shit! K well my friend and I are going on a local hike. It takes about an hour. For up down and back home
Okay, well, it would have been nice to know that before we got in the car. Shobhit was having me drive, and I was like, what do we do now? Continuing straight there we'd be twiddling our thumbs for half an hour waiting for her to get back to her house. Turning around we'd just go back up to the condo to twiddle our thumbs for another half hour, maybe an hour. Shobhit suggested we go to Costco and get some of the shopping done that we'd otherwise planned to do on our way back from Renton.
I told Danielle this and she asked us to pick her up a few things. Bell peppers, fresh broccoli, Beecher's mac & cheese. It took us some time to locate the mac & cheese in the freezer section but we found it.
There was a phone call later, where she then told us, for the first time, that she had this 4:00 infusion appointment. Had we not already bought these groceries for her, we might have just bagged the whole plan right there. Was there really enough time to go to her place, have lunch,
and watch the movie? (As I already indicated, there actually wasn't; we didn't finish the movie. That's not really that big a deal though.) She clearly thought we should just go straight to her place from our shopping—we were now at Hau Hau Market getting fresh produce—and thinking we could just put our perishable stuff in her refrigerator. We had several bags of groceries, though. That idea really wasn't feasible.
Shobhit said we'd be home in about fifteen minutes, Danielle accepted that, and we were indeed back home in about that time. We put all the groceries away as quickly as we could and then rushed back down to the car. I got another call from Danielle and I was admittedly a little rude: "What now?" I was really afraid she was calling to either cancel or bring up some other inconvenience. She responded as though I were being unreasonable with my attitude. Perhaps she was right, but I also think I was justified in my frustrations here. Trying to coordinate with her sometimes is a little chaotic.
We finally got there, though, and Shobhit had brought leftover pho' to make us all for lunch, needing only added boiled water, which Danielle had ready as requested, which we appreciated. The pho' was actually very good. Everyone, including Rylee who happened to be home, was pretty impressed with it.
So then we watched the movie. I wanted Danielle's take on it because I knew there were some takes over the past ten or twenty years where people have started to come to the defense of Nurse Ratched, who in the movie's time, and for decades after, was an iconic nurse-villain. And: Danielle is a nurse. But guess what? Danielle really never took Nurse Ratched's side. Neither did I. If you actually watch the movie and observe the way that woman treats her patients, with a sort of patience that barely conceals contempt, and sometimes being transparently unethical, it's a little difficult to come to her defense. And: we didn't have to finish the movie to come to that conclusion.
I'd still like to finish the movie later, though. I just haven't yet.
Anyway, by about 3:30 Danielle needed to shower and get ready for her appointment, so we gave our hugs and were off. Shobhit and I stopped at PCC on our way home. So, all our shopping for the next little while is done.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ सत्तर-सात —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ सत्तर-सात —
We had yet another movie watch with a friend yesterday, this time with Laney: a double feature, two Julianne Moore movies from twenty years ago:
Far From Heaven and
The Hours. Officially these are 2002 movies, but I looked up their release dates and
Far From Heaven was not in wide release until January 10, 2003;
The Hours on February 13. I had not remembered they were released so close together. (I went ahead and just looked it up on my old LiveJournal: I saw
Far From Heaven with Craig on February 15, 2003—quite unusually, we saw a second film that same day;
Chicago—and actually saw
The Hours first, with both Craig and Barbara, on January 10.
The Hours must have come to Seattle first, for some reason, in limited release.)
Anyway! The films make a spectacular double feature. I have seen
The Hours many times; I say all the time that it's the most depressing movie I can watch over and over. I hadn't seen
Far From Heaven in many years, and although I remember loving it, I was still deeply impressed watching it this time around. So was Laney.
I had actually reserved the Braeburn Condos theater for this, but Laney and I wound up having to shift up to the condo. There seemed to be something wrong with the screen projector, so I don't think it would have mattered what medium I played it on, it would have been an issue, the screen frequently blanking out, and only sometimes coming back from a few to several seconds later, often causing us to miss important dialogue. Neither of these movies is on a streamer right now, so I had to rent them both, for $3.99. The theater has Vudu as an option, and I logged into my account to purchase the rental. When we gave up and moved to the condo, I forgot to log out! I'll have to go back in there and to that the first chance I get, lest someone else goes in there and rents something else on my dime.
Thankfully, Vudu is also an app on our Xfinity box, so I was able to log in again and just watch from there. Shobhit had been out knocking on doors in the condo building, for his campaigning—he actually got several more signatures, and even some donations, over the weekend.
But, when we got to
The Hours, which now I was able to rent on Prime Video, Shobhit said he had never seen it, which really surprised me. He wanted to watch it, so he did watch that one with us.
Laney had seen both movies but maybe not since they were first released. She was suitably impressed with them both. We chatted a lot about both movies. During our chat after the second movie, we could hear what sounded like a protest a few blocks away. We were like, what are people protesting today? Today Shobhit found out what it was we had overheard: it was actually a vigil, for a shooting that occurred at 5 pm on Saturday:
a local Black activist who was shot in his car, and he died after he drove into a parking lot with his injury at Broadway & Pike. That's seven blocks from where I live.
At first, when Shobhit told me about it today, I thought it was a police shooting. Turns out the suspect is already arrested and in jail. Still, this would be the latest in endless examples of gun violence in this country. It may not have been a police shooting but those are still separate but related issues.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ सत्तर-सात —
[posted 12:35 pm]
