There sure is something convenient about having the major holidays of the year fall on a weekend. Granted, last year it was a little better, as both Christmas Day and New Year's day landed on Sundays, which meant we got those holidays "observed" off of work the next day, and thus had a buffer day off right after. That, honestly, is ideal, and I really should start considering just taking those next-days off as PTO going forward. Those days were a weekday this year, and will be again next year, and again in 2025. Thanks to next year being a Leap Year, at least, Christmas and New Year's Day in 2026 will land on Fridays, and the days after those holidays will either already be a Saturday or Sunday, or "observed" on Monday, in 2026 and 2027 (but not, dammit, in 2028, due to that also being a Leap Year . . . fucking Leap Years!).

In any case, even without the days-after off, at least this year both Christmas and New Year's Day landed at the end of a long weekend—for me, in the case of Christmas, at the end of a week of PTO; I then worked a four-day week last week, and have that again this week. And I have a lot to get back on track on at work.

And now I need to offer a summar of my weekend, as quickly as I can. The above video, which I started yesterday morning and finished up last night, offers a pretty good visual summary of my New Year's Eve. I'll get to that.

Honestly, the amount of socializing was a bit less than it might otherwise have been, although there was still a fair amount of it. I had scheduled my last "holiday movie watch" with Alexia on Friday. But, she had just returned on Thursday, from spending the Christmas week with a friend in Spokane, and she texted me that she was exhausted and had a sore throat. She said I was still welcome to come over and watch the movie, but wanted me to know she had a sore throat. And I was like . . . mmm, maybe not. I suggested we let her get to bed early that night, get a good amount of rest, and perhaps we could watch the movie Saturday night instead.

Well, she texted me Saturday morning, said she got a solid nine hours of sleep, and she felt fine. So, we went ahead with the plan to watch the movie that night instead.

In the meantime, I spent a good half of my weekend working on year-end projects. I wrote up the html version of my "2023 at PCC" email so I could share it as a blog post Saturday morning. And, I pushed back my initial plan to take myself to see Ferrari on Saturday, so I could hunker down and get my "2023 in Ten Minutes" video finished. I had gotten the Australia segment done(ish) a couple of months ago, fully intending to work further on it before December 30, but, of course other shit got in the way.

I had texted Alexia that I would text her again when I was done with the video, and we could then decide when I'd come over to watch the movie. Shobhit worked 11-6:30 that day, and I spent most of the morning and afternoon working on the video. I finished it, and was exporting it when I texed Alexia at 3:43 to suggest I come over at 4:30. She responded that she was at the gym and suggested closer to 5:00, which was fine.

The movie we watched was Four Christmases, from 2008, starring Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, with very "special guest star" like appearances in the roles of their four divorced parents: Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen, John Voit. Then there's a young Jon Favrau as Vince Vaughn's brother, and a pre-Frozen Kristin Chenoweth as Reese Witherspoon's sister. I'm looking at the cast on IMDb, and I didn't even realize two of the other supporting parts were famous country singers: Tim McGraw as Vince Vaughn's other brother; and Dwight Yoakam as "Pastor Phil," the man Mary Steenburgen's character is now dating. There's even a brief appearance by Carol Kane as Reese Witherspoon's aunt; this cast was insanely stacked.

To be honest, a movie that packed with star power is rarely that good, and in my opinion, Four Christmases is no exception. I won't deny that it made me laugh several times, but the writing, particularl the overall story it tells, is uninspired, contrived, and predictable. I knew not to expect any better than that, though, so I had a relatively good time.

Alexia absolutely loved it. "That was hysterical!" she said, when it ended. She was even wiping laugh tears from her eyes. So, if nothing else, it sure as shit hit the spot for her on Saturday night.

So that brings us to New Year's Eve. I posted the "2023 in Ten Minutes" video that morning. Shobhit worked 9 - 5:30 that day, during which time I took myself to see Ferrari, which was . . . fine. Solid B, which was precisely what Shobhit predicted after I told him none of the actors in it are getting any real awards buzz. That did make for 94 movies in 2023, for my film log—a bit short of the 102 I managed in 2022, and indeed the lowest number since 2020 (an anomaly year if ever there was one).

I don't know that I had a list that low since the very early years of my doing movie reviews. This time, though, it had less to do with the pandemic's affect on the industry than it was the writers and actors' strikes, which postponed a bunch of shit into next year. I don't expect it to be nearly to the same degree, but I kind of expect a jump to an unusually high number of films in 2024, just as happened in 2021. But, we'll see. Although I still prioritize movie-going, I also seem to have a lot more other social things in the mix outside of movie-going (although a lot of it still involves movie-watching, as with twice-monthly double features at the Braeburn Condos theater with Laney).

Anyway! Shobhit asked if I could take the bus and meet him at work when he got off work, which I just barely managed after finishing my Ferrari review. We then drove to the Ballard PCC, to make use of yet another one of this week's $20 off $40 "Friends and Family" coupons, of which I have access to a ton here at the office. I think this might have been the fifth time we used one, and this time we got a bunch of pantry foods, mostly canned beans, and also severa Indian meal packets.

We came home, and put groceries away, and Shobhit called all his family members to wish them a Happy New Year—all the family in India were already well into New Year's Day; Shivy, in Maryland, was surprisingly at home, when Shobhit called her around 7:30. It was while they were talking (Shivy was on speakerphone) that I managed to get this fun shot of us drinking mango nectar mimosas, using a split bottle of proseco a broker left on my desk earlier in December.

We decided we would leave at 10:15. Unlike when we had Shivy visiting last year, and so we drove down to Seattle Center, and this year Shobhit is on Weight Watchers so he is obsessed with getting in all the steps he can (he's actually down to 185 lbs, having been at 205 lbs in September), this year he wanted to walk. I was fine with this, as it's a two-mile walk that I would always find pretty easy. The only problem was his insane rush to walk as quickly back home after the fireworks at the Space Needle ended, which really irritated me. He did this when he first lost a bunch of weight in 2010, zipping all over Manhattan and bitching at me for not keeping up; after he gained a bunch of weight he was constantly lagging behind me and making no effort whatsoever to keep up with me; now he's losing weight again and just acting as though I should always go at his pace. I really get tired of him behaving as though his way is the only way, based only on his own preferences and abilities.

To be fair, he did slow down and wait for me a lot more on Sunday night than he ever did back in the New York days.

Back to the walk down there. I actually kind of enjoyed that. We were at Seattle Center right at 11:00, an hour before midnight as planned, and Seattle Center was already kind of crazy packed. I was almost tempted to say we should have gotten there earlier, but actually I think it was fine; we still found a suitable vantage point near the International Fountain, and we didn't have to stand around waiting for any longer than an hour.

Also, this year they added 10-minute light shows on the Space Needle at 10:00, 10:30, 11:00 and 11:30, which made for some moderately distractable pre-show entertainment.

This was also the second year they included a drone show, which they timed a lot more successfully than they did last year. Also, after having experienced it once before, I was much more proficient at getting both video clips and still photos that I wanted out of it—just about all of which are showcased in the video at the top of this post. They started the drones at 12:53, so that the focus could shift to the fireworks at midnight. The fireworks then lasted until about 12:10.

And I have to say: the drones really made a difference in making it worth actually going to Seattle Center to watch the show in person—rather than, for instance, watching the fireworks from the PCC office, as we have done four different years since 2017. There's no way we'd have an adequate view of the drone images from the office, which means I probably won't ever watch from the office again, especially considering the likelihood that we'll move to a new office location in the next couple of years. But also, this year in particular, the drones, which were truly dazzling to me, went a long way to make up for the lack of a breeze that night resulting in the Space Needle itself getting about 80% obscured by fireworks smoke for nearly the entirety of the fireworks display. (You'll see this effect quite well in the video at the top of this post too.)

Without the drone show, I'd have been genuinely disappointed with this year's show, thanks to the lingering smoke. The drones absolutley made it worth the effort to get down there, in my opinion. (We did briefly think Laney might come with us—and if she had, we'd have had to drive—but then she changed her mind when I pointed out how crowded it was likely to be. On the upside of the fireworks show, I did get a truly spectacular photo that still showed the Space Needle stucture, at the very beginning of the fireworks display, with the drones still in the air next to it shaping the digits of "2024." I didn't even realize how great that shot was until I was processing photos on my laptop yesterday morning. I literally said, "Wow, that's awesome!" to myself—and I promptly updated my Facebook profile cover photo with it, replacing the image of COMIRNATY covid vaccine viles I've had there for nearly three years.

It was very close to 1 a.m. by the time we walked home afterward, and I was in bed at about 1:10. I then got up at 7:00 so I could get ready in time to drive Shobhit to work by 8:45, as he let me use the car yesterday so I could drive to hang out with both Danielle at her place in Renton, and Gabriel and Lea at their place in Federal Way.

My initial intent, actually, was just to see if Gabriel and Lea would be available for me to come by, and we can finally watch Sideways as we have been discussing lately. Dad didn't do the New Year's Day family gathering this year since they hosted Christmas, which left the day wide open for me. I called Gabriel and Lea to suggest this on Saturday, when I discovered they were on their way to a weekend trip for the new year in Cannon Beach, Oregon. They noted that they had to check out of their hotel at 11:00 so would presumably get back home three or four hours after that. I was totally cool with geting there mid-afternoon, and basically settled on that as the plan.

This meant I would have some extra time between dropping Shobhit off at work and going to Federal Way, so when Danielle called to chat on Sunday morning (and we gabbed for well over an hour), I asked if she'd like me to swing by her place for a bit first. She noted that she'd be working an all-nighter at the ER the night before, but told me I should come by anyway. She was going to need to stay away as much as possible before starting a regular shift today, so she'd need to be able to sleep overnight last night.

I was cutting it pretty tight before taking Shobhit to work, getting ready barely just in time. So, instead of driving straight to Renton from Total Wine, I came home first, and took a covid test for Gabriel and Lea's benefit. It was negative, as I assumed it would be. Then, at 9:19, I texted Danielle, U up? Assuming she probably was alseep, I just let it go for the next hour, during which I began assembling my 3-minute, 23-second "Happy New Year 2023" video (the one at the top of this post).

Danielle then texted me at 10:20, Hey! Come on down How long? So, soon enough I was texting her that my ETA was 11:04, and I was off.

When I got to the house, she was clearly asleep again. I rang the doorbell several times and there was no answer. I tried calling her. No answer.

I had made the mistake of not drinking water and taking Aleve before bed, even though I'd had both the mimosa and the two-shot hot toddy with apple cider whiskey that I'd taken to Seattle Center in one of the ThermoFlask bottles we got at the White Elephant gift exchange on Christmas in Olympia (Shobhit's one-shot hot toddy was in the other bottle). I didn't really get buzzed, but I clearly still got dehydrated, and I drank a lot of water in the morning. The problem with that, of course, was that even though I peed right before leaving, I had to pee so bad it hurt when I got to Danielle's house, and she wasn't answering.

I knew there was a park nearby. I looked it up on Google Maps, and it even had a public restroom identified on it. Bingo! It took like two minutes to drive there, where there was a surprising lot of people hanging out with kids at the park. I was dreading the possibility that the bathrooms would be closed, but thankfully, they were open. Sweet relief!

Danielle called me back while I was washing my hands, which prevented me from answering the phone. I called her back, and told her where I was. "You could have gone in the back yard, it's fine," she said. Hmm. I suppose I could have, but, peeing in a friend's back yard doesn't tend to cross my mind when all I can think about is finding an actual bathroom, especially when I did know there was likely one at the park anyway. And I'd have been more comfortable even finding a bush at the park than in Danielle's back yard.

But, whatever, now Danielle was awake, and she told me the door would be unlocked. I finally got inside the house at about 11:25 a.m.

And then, I was there for the next five and a half hours. We hung out, we chatted, we tried playing two different games, both of which we decided Shobhit would be way better at than we were. She also baked up some pesto stuffed mushrooms that were delicious and I ate way too many of. Also, a great dish idea that's easy and tasty that I could consider for the next potluck I go to. It never even occurred to me to put pesto into mushrooms.

Danielle also asked if I wanted to watch a movie. I mentioned the fact that the last three times we tried to watch a movie, we were unable to finish them. We tried to watch Knives Out virtually together during covid, and she fell asleep. When we tried to watch Contageon, it got interrupted by a phone call that Patrick had gotten into a car accident. And when we tried to watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, we got it started too late and Shobhit and I had to go before it finished.

Well, this time we actually managed to finish the movie! Not that Danielle paid as much attention as I wanted her to. She's just not that type, and I need to accept that. We should pick movies we've both already seen many times, so distractions aren't such a sticking point for me. I didn't even think I'd be there long enough to finish this one, but I was: I waited to text Gabriel and Lea my photo of the negative covid test until 1:15, and didn't hear back unti Lea texted at 3:30—that they were still on their way back home and I could still come by if I was okay with getting there between 5:30 and 6:00.

I considered bagging it, and Shobhit clearly wanted me to. But, I didn't want my covid test to go to waste. And, I still wanted to see them. So, I told Lea I could make that work. And, Danielle and I watched the movie and it ended right at about 5:00. She made popcorn, and she offered me lemonade, which I accepted. We'll get back to that momentarily.

Danielle spent a lot of time on her phone, missing crucial plot points, and certainly subtle subtext and gags. I'm pretty sure she was spending most of her time on the several dating apps she uses, because at one point she just said to me, "Look at this," and when I turned my head she was holding up her phone, which showed just a photo of a man's hard cock.

I was not expecting that. And, it was a relatively impressive cock, I will concede. But it was certainly not the context in which I would ever expect to see such a thing, and I was trying to watch Barbie! Focus!

This made the third time I have watched Barbie—which is now streaming on Max, hence Danielle being able to watch it; she had not yet seen it and I felt that should be remedied—and it really holds up on multple rewatches (even when distracted by dick pics). I feel very justified in ranking it #10 on my top ten movies of 2023.

After the movie ended, I asked Danielle to take a photo with me in front of her rainbow Christmas Tree she had in the kitchen (in addition to the live tree had had in the living room next to the mounted TV—which she only managed to get lights, a garland, and about three ornaments onto). I wanted the width of the lower portion of the tree behind us, so I said, "I need you to get on your knees," which I could not say without laughing. Then, we got the quite lovely photo that you see as the second shot embedded in this post.

I went to the car, and texted Gabriel and Lea: I'm headed out from Danielle's now, so my ETA is 5:43, if that's not too early. I was really afraid they wouldn't actually get home until even later, in which case I would be cutting it too close and really shouldn't go over there after all. I got a thumbs-up reaction from Gabriel shortly after that, so that was kind of a relief.

Now. Remember when I mentioned the lemonade? My fucking bladder. I literally peed right before I left Danielle's, but I could feel the need to pee again by the time there was about 30 minutes left until I was to arrive at Gabriel and Lea's house.

It got worse and worse. I kept telling myself I could just tolerate it, it's not that bad, maybe I would push through some threshold and the bladder pressure would go away. Then I thought about the one time I was stuck in heavy traffic on Snoqualmie Pass for over an hour and I had to pee so bad I thought I was going to die. There is no "getting past" the pain of needing to pee really badly. Fuck.

But, still: I would get closer to Gabriel and Lea's, the time left would get lower, I was in agony but at least the time left in it was less and less. (This, at least, was better than the time on the pass when there was no known end in sight.) Nevertheless, even after I lost five minutes due to accidentally driving onto I-5 North instead of I-5 South when getting off I-405, once in Federal Way I saw a gas station alongside the road and thought: gas station! Bathroom! I pulled off 320th Street, got out of the car—and discovered they did not have a public restroom. FUUUUCK!

Getting up and walking around for thirty seconds actually helped a little bit.

I got back in the car, having accomplished only adding a couple more minutes to my ETA. When I finally got there, it was a bit of a flurry of chaos: Lea had not held Lady (their giant dog) back, and she was flipping out at a visitor arriving, and Gabriel was struggling to keep her back. And still, in the middle of that, I had to say, "I'm sorry, but I really have to pee, I'll be right back." I was going to want to wash my hands anyway, which I still like to do as soon as I arrive at work or at anyone's home. Two birds, one stone!

I could not believe how much I peed that time. There was a moment when I actually thought, Is it going to stop? But then, it did. And once again: sweet relief!

I came out of the bathroom. I assumed Lea would be in the kitchen, so I went that way first, and I was startled by jackets on a coat rack on the wall because for a split second I thought a person was standing right there. And: no one was in the kitchen. "Hello!" Lea called from the living room. But, not Gabriel. I went to the living room, and Lea was there but not Gabriel.

This was when things got strange. Gabriel had been fine, apparently, until a moment while I was in the bathroom, and he was suddenly experiencing both a bout of dizziness and a stomach ache. That seemed . . . concerning. Lea told me he was upstairs, evidently trying to make sense of it. (Those weren't her words, but it was the gist.) "It's not covid!" she said. They had also taken tests when they got home.

Lea and I chatted a bit, and after a few minutes Gabriel came into the living room, clearly still not feeling well. The experience was almost eerily similar to when Laney and I went to Saint John's for Happy Hour last month and she also had a sudden bout of incapacitating dizziness, which only lasted maybe five minutes but long enough for me to start wondering whether I should call some paramedics. Her issue passed a lot more quickly than Gabriel's, though, and Gabriel characterized it as feeling as though the back of his head was opening up and floating away. Um, okay.

Lea looked up symptoms on her phone, which I knew would be of no help at all, though perhaps she was just trying to do something, which was understandable. He was clearly so affected, spending a fair amount of time with his eyes closed and/or his hands over his face, I was like, "Maybe I should go?" Gabriel made a reference to me "running away," which I didn't really think was fair, but I'll let it go—he was completely out of sorts and clearly had no intention of being rude. In fact, he kept apologizing to me, quite unnecessarily. What's with all the unnecessary apologies! What is he, an American woman?

Let's be fair, though: I get it. I just really wanted him to know he had no reason to feel bad, even after he did finally say, "I'm sorry, I think I'm going to have to bail." I got up to leave, maybe ten minutes after I had arrived. I suppose it could have been fifteen. And Lea said, "I'm going to get this one to bed."

Gabriel texted again after I was home, at about 9:00 last night, saying he had "no idea what is or is not going on with me. I was feeling great just before you came and then weirdly crashed." I told him not to feel bad, I didn't; he had more than enough to worry about without being concerned about inconveniencing me. I was, honestly, just relieved to hear from him again so I knew he was both still alive and coherent—I had been debating whether I should follow up last night or wait until this morning to see how he was doing. By this time, he was still dealing with weird symptoms but seemed to be feeling a bit better so long as he was staying still.

Also, after a couple more text exchanges, he told me he did some Googling and discovered he was experiencing something that happens to some people with the pretty severe acid reflux issues he has (like, even Shobhit and I are now taking Omeprazole regularly, but Gabriel has had to cut certain things out of his diet completely, including anything citrus and, much to his enduring disappointment, wine). He was behind on a dose of his own medication after not bringing as much as he should have on his trip, and had eaten more things than he usually does. So, hopefully that's what this was related to and he'll be back to normal soon enough. He and Lea are getting married this year, they don't need him keeling over from some bizarro ailment!

He also felt bad that I had driven all the way out there, but whatever. Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches, and for me it was hardly a "punch" compared to whatever was happening to him. It was just bad timing. He even suggested maybe they could come up to Seattle sometime to watch the movie in my theater, which I would love, except that I think I'd still rather just come to them another time than listen to him bitch about how much he hates Seattle. But, we'll see. We can get back to that when it actually matters, which it clearly does not right now.

On the upside, I got back home far earlier than I had been resolved to expect. I came in the door at home and Shobhit was like, "That was fast." I said, "I guess you haven't seen your text." He finally looked at it, and thankfully, he was actually fairly empathetic. And, there was also the silver lining of getting some dinner Shobhit made, and I had the time to finish my "Happy New Year 2023" video before bed on New Year's Day, which I did using my AirPods on my Macbook laptop while sitting in the living room with Shobhit.

[posted 12:29 pm]