— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ अड़तीस —
Busy, social weekend I just had—even more social than I had scheduled, as I actually did something very spontaneous yesterday. I'll get to that momentarily. I need to
try and get through this post quickly, as I had a dental cleaning appointment this morning, got to work later than usual, and have a lot of work to get through this week.
The weekend was, of course,
very movie-centric—pretty par for the course in my life in January, after the holiday season has ended. That said, it's January 8 now and I remain amazed at the number of Christmas Trees I still see in people's windows. On the other hand, in all likelihood these people did not set up their tree right after Thanksgiving like I always do, so it's possible they have their decorations up just as long as I do, just shifted forward a week or two.
I'm digressing already. Friday was a Movie Night with Alexia, in which I went next door to watch
Barbie with her—the second time I'd watched it within a five-day time span, having just watched it with Danielle on Monday. Danielle was distracted half the time on her phone, though, getting sexts and such.
I will say that Danielle found herself really identifying with America Ferrera's character, and her relationship with her teenage daughter, as she also has two teenage daughters. This did not hit the same way with Alexia, who has only one child and he's a grown man in his late thirties. (His name is Bram, literally named after Bram Stoker—maybe my favorite thing about Alexia—and he has absolutely no online presence whatsoever, living more off the grid than anyone else I am in any way acquainted with. When I made Alexia a calendar for this year as a Christmas gift, since I could not find any photos of him, in the square for his birthday I just put a black and white photo of Bram Stoker. Alexia got a kick out of that.)
I figured Alexia would connect a bit more with the idea of condescension among men benefiting from patriarchy, which is very much what
Barbie is about. Alexia is in a prett high-level position at a chemical distribution company and speaks frequently about being the only woman in a room, and what that's like. That said, she's also disinclined to assume the worst of any of the men she works with, even when they get into a bit of trouble—at least, not until she experiences some of their shittiness first-hand. My only point here is, she's a very moderate person, so I knew she wouldn't exactly go all-in on the movie's inclination to make fun of men by painting with broad brushes. Still, in the middle of America Ferrera's famous monologue about the challenges of just existing as a woman, after at least one of her points she said, "That is true."
Alexia laughed a fair amount at the movie, albeit often not at the same things I laughed at. Still, she seemed to enjoy herself, and when it ended she said, "I can see how that was such a big hit." She clearly didn't have as much of a blast with it as she had with
Four Christmases, but that's okay. Now she's seen
Barbie, which I felt was important.
— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ अड़तीस —
Saturday was the Braeburn Condos double feature with Laney, who I spent a lot of time with both on Saturday and yesterday.
I had both Shobhit and myself take covid tests on Saturday morning, because Shobhit has a cold, and had cold symptoms since Thursday night. He was clearly already feeling better even by Saturday, though still pretty congested, so I very much doubted it was covid. That said, ridiculous numbers of people I'm connected with on socials keep posting about how they've tested positive, so I was unusually nervous Saturday morning waiting for test results. God, my work flow at work would seriously get fucked if I got sick this week. Thankfully, the tests both did indeed come up negative.
Laney, for her part, was herself just getting over a cold—the very reason we postponed seeing
American Fiction, which we originally planned to see on Thursday, to Sunday. She very deliberately just took it easy and rested at home all day for two solid days, and by Saturday was back to "nearly 100%." She had also tested, and it was not covid.
Laney and I both still wore masks for most of our time in the theater on Saturday, though. We don't normally do this, and even though she was exhibiting clear concern about it all when we exchanged texts about it on Friday night (when I warned her that Shobhit had a cold, but was not likely to join us, and I was going to do our tests in the morning), by the time she actually arrived on Saturday, it seemed clear that if I wanted to go ahead and go maskless, she would have been willing. It was pretty obvious her biggest worry was the covid test results, and with them being negative she really wasn't worrying about it anymore.
But! As I noted to Laney, who knows what Shobhit
does have, and although he never caught the cold I got back in November and, so far, I don't seem to be getting what he has now, there's no harm in taking some extra precautions. We both brought drinks and she even brought me a bag of popcorn, so we were going to be spending some time with our masks off, but I told her that, outside of the eating and drinking, I was still going to mask up for the majority of the time we were in that small, windowless theater, just as a precaution. And so, she did too.
The movies we watched were
The Road Warrior and
Mad Max: Fury Road. The former was pretty good, some of it not aged very well but most of it aged surprisingly well (particularly the car chases and action sequences). Laney hadn't seen the latter since she and I went to see it together in theaters back in 2015. Laney even remembered that I
posted a photo of us in front of the poster, with the caption MAD MATTHEW: LANEY ROAD. (She may have more easily remembered this because I shared it to her Facebook page just last May, on the eighth anniversary of having posted it, which I had also forgotten, until searching Facebook just now.)
And I have to tell you,
Fury Road is a movie that
really holds up. What a thrilling movie that is. Both of us remain baffled that it wasn't a bigger hit at the time, although it does seem to have become more broadly loved as time goes by. There's a good deal of anticipation for
Furiosa, the prequel coming out this spring, which Laney an I will absolutely also be seeing and which was a big part of us watching this double feature. That, and
the book I recently read about the making of the movie, which I wanted to rewatch while the book was still relatively fresh in my memory.
— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ अड़तीस —
— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ अड़तीस —
Yesterday, Laney and I met at a bus stop to take the #2 through Downtown to Lower Queen Anne, where we watched
American Fiction a SIFF Cinema at the Uptown. I
kind of loved it, and so did she. (Also: this was the first movie I went to see in a theater in the new calendar year, 7 days in being an unusually long time.)
I'm sure Laney and I have seen a movie together at a SIFF cinema before, but this was almost certainly the first since the pandemic—since she's been back to Seattle permanently and we've been back to a regular cadence of movie-going, we've pretty much exclusively been seeing movies together at AMC theaters. But, both yesterday's and tomorrow's movies are only showing at SIFF theaters, so here we are. (Conveniently, tomorrow's movie is at the Egyptian, and Laney lives literally on the same block now.)
So, anyway. Shobhit asked me to make chai before I left, which I was happy to do as I wanted to take some with me to the movie anyway. And, instead of walking two blocks south to catch the #2 at 14th and Union, I left a bit early and walked to the Walgreens on Broadway and Pine (right next door to the Egytpian Theater, incidentally), hoping to find a small packet of cookies worth dipping into my chai at the movie.
I had very low expectations, mind you. Walgreens almost never has what I'm looking for, and I had even allowed myself some time to go peruse at QFC a block away if necessary. But then, a minor miracle happened. They had a 4.8oz packet of Biscoff cookies, my favorite cookie to dip into chai! (Okay, it might be a very close second to Good Day cashew cookies.) The weird thing was, it was set atop some other cookies, and I could not find where the Biscoff was actually stocked on the shelf, to find a price. I was bracing myself for paying something like four bucks—and then it scanned at 89 cents. Sweet!
So then I walked down to the #2 bus stop at Broadway & Union, where I was a few minutes early still, and was surprised to find Laney already there. She explained she always leaves early to give herself extra time because inevitably someone in the lobby will chat with her. But, no one did this time, so she got there even earlier than I did.
— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ अड़तीस —
It was after seeing
American Fiction that the spontaneity happened. Laney wanted to get some walking in for the day, so instead of catching a bus right there on the block the Uptown Theater is at like I usually do, I took her suggestion that we walk into Belltown and just hop on a #2 from there if one happens to come along.
But, as we were walking past Climate Pledge Arena, I got a call from Gabriel—telling me he was right by my condo, and wanting to know if we wanted to meet for drinks.
Well, I was two miles away, not at home. I did ask Laney if she'd be up for getting a drink, though, and somewhat to my surprise, she was.
Gabriel wanted me to come up with a place we could go that had year-round, heated, covered outdoor seating. This is an increasingly tall order, four years past the start of the pandemic and in the middle of winter. Still, he's now asked this of me multiple times ("I know I live here and all," I said, "but it's still a big city and I do not have it memorized"), and I'm beginning to think maybe I should do some preemptive research so I can be better prepared the next time he asks. It's just that I am typically downtown when this happens and virtually any place that has heated outdoor seating is too high-end.
Although! Shit, I'm kind of kicking myself now. We really should have considered The Fog Room yesterday. I think I thought of this too late the last time this happened too. Dammit! —Oh wait, never mind. I just checked their hours and they don't open any day until 5 p.m. Well, note to self for when he might ask this of me after 5:00, anyway.
Anyway, I shared my location to Gabriel on my phone so he could find Laney and me, as we walked our way through Seattle Center, then through the open space in the middle of KOMO Plaza, and then we waited for him to pick us up in his car at 5th and Denny. Neither Laney nor I had taken a covid test yesterday morning, so we all wore masks, and Gabriel rolled his window down a few times.
In the meantime, in his quest to find heated outdoor seating, we first aimed for a place on Lake Union, which was on a web page he keeps handy with a list of just such places—but, he called them to confirm, and they said their outdoor seating was inside an enclosed tent, which wasn't going to cut it. He changed his mind and decided we'd drive to Fremont, which was strange there on 15th Avenue W because it felt very much like we were headed to Shobhit's work at Total Wine & More (though he had taken the opportunity to call in sick, both yesterday and today). He called Lea to see if she could remember a specific place he could not think of, either in Fremont or in Greenwood. In the end we finally decided on one of the earliest suggestions I had made: La Cocina Oaxaqueña, right back on Capitol Hill—a perennial favorite of Laney's and mine, which has outdoor seating, covered,
and a heater. So Gabriel turned back down Dexter and we headed south again.
It was all very much . . . kind of a whirlwind. Par for the course with Gabriel. Laney and I were on a chill walk on a winter afternoon, Gabriel comes along and we pivot to chaos. To be fair, if I had been more prepared with knowledge of heated outdoor seating, much of that whirlwind would have been avoided. I just rarely need anything with that level of specificity: as careful as Laney still is, she and I do go out for drinks regularly now at indoor spaces, just choosing places and times where they are nearly empty of other customers. (Also, we plan ahead of time. We have Happy Hour on Sunday this coming weekend, and we've known the place for about two months.)
I could have just told him I didn't have the time to meet up, of course—I also had intended to be home in time for the Golden Globe Awards at 5:00, which I later just texted Shobhit asking him to record them for me—but, Gabriel still felt bad about how little time I was able to stay at his place New Year's Day, and the idea of spending some time with him yesterday actually did appeal to me. For the record!
Here was the downside of La Cocina Oaxaqueña: they were out of gas for their one heater outside. We still sat outside, and it was fine, but it was pretty chilly. Thankfully it wasn't raining. Some of the chairs were still slightly wet from recent rain, but we found dry ones to use. I was pleased to find they do Happy Hour every day between 3 and 5 p.m., including Sundays. Slightly bummed to find their Happy Hour house margaritas have gone up to $9—I could swear they used to be $5. But, whatever. Still a pretty good price. Shobhit was going to have dinner made at home and I made good on my promise (over text) that I wouldn't order any food, and all I had was the one cocktail. Laney did order some chips and guacamole though and I took her up on her offer of some of the chips.
We must have hung out with Gabriel for at least ninety minutes, maybe close to a couple of hours, including the driving all over town. I'm pretty sure the last time Gabriel and Laney actually hung out together was at my birthday party in 2016, which was not the most positive interaction. I was actually very happy to have a newer amount of time spent which, in the end—once the zipping around town was done (and mind you, we did appreciate him actually coming to pick us up)—was very pleasant.
Gabriel happened to have been in town because he was getting the final orders done on his highly customized wedding suit. By all accounts it's really going to look amazing. I may be the only person in the wedding party wearing a rental suit, which kind of makes me the cheapskate of the bunch (Gabriel has never once even suggested such a thing, I am the one saying it), but that's okay. Getting a highly tailored, custom suit that cost a fortune would be wasted on me when I would be very unlikely every to wear it again. And, I honestly think I'll look pretty damned good in the rental suit anyway. In any case, this was probably why Gabriel happened to be in town without Lea.
When we finished with our drinks, Gabriel made sure we were good with walking the rest of the way home as he now needed to get back—and we absolutely were: home was not far for either of us from there anyway. It was about 6:00 by the time I actually got home, and thankfully Shobhit was pretty cool about my last-minute change of plans. He made some rotis from scratch and we had a delicious dinner with leftover "royal corona beans" (which are huge) from the gift box Alexia gave us for Christmas. And, we spent the next couple of hours watching the Golden Globe Awards, after which I was finally able to sit down and write my first movie review of the year—altough I got increasingly frustrated with constant interruptions. But, it's done now, I am satisfied with the review, and I can move on with the rest of my week.
— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ अड़तीस —
Except! I also just had a rescheduled FaceTime lunch with Karen.
We spent several minutes at the top of the hour settling our lunch dates for the entire year. I actually had a FaceTime lunch with her on my Google calendar Friday last week, and then completely spaced it. I texted her over the weekend, only to have her reply that she hadn't put any lunch dates into her calendar for 2024 anyway. Well, now that's all settled for the year.
We then spent most of the rest of the hour talking movies. This happened because she asked me how my weekend was, and I told her about all the movies I'd watched. Then she wanted recommendations of good movies I know are on streamers, especially after I brought up
Maestro, which she'd never heard of. She got very excited when I told her it was about Leonard Bernstein, though, and said, "I have a weird, six degrees of separation with Leonard Bernstein."
I don't think I ever mentioned this on my blog before, but James Spader was the child of family friends with Karen's parents growing up, and he was apparently referred to as a "cousin." Karen tells me today that his parents worked in some capacity for the Boston Symphony (she said something more specific that I can't remember now) at the time that Leonard Bernstein was conductor there, so although she never met him personally, she grew up hearing a lot about "Lenny." A fun and fascinating tidbit.
Now though I really need to actually try and get some work done.
— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ अड़तीस —
[posted 1:07 pm]
