— पांच हजार सात सौ छह —
I'm in the middle of a quite welcome few days with nothing in particular planned. I took myself to a movie on Sunday last weekend, but had no plans last night and also have none tonight or tomorrow evening. After that, it's back to something all but one of the next eight days: movies with Laney Thursday and Friday; a movie and packing for the trip to Phoenix on Saturday; we fly out to Phoenix on Sunday, back Wednesday. I kept Thursday next week open deliberately, just as a buffer and in case I still need to work on my email travelogue. But Friday next week through the following Tuesday, I once again have movie plans each day. Some of that is tentative, as I am not yet certain all of the films I currently have on my calendar will be opening locally next week, an eternally frustrating quirk of limited releases.
I actually walked the entire way home from work last night, since I was in no rush to go anywhere else. I don't often do this anymore. I listened to Fleetwood Mac as the sun set, this being the first weeknight after Daylight Saving Time ended.
There didn't seem to be a lot of chatter about how much people hate changing their clocks this time around. I would assume that's a mixture of distraction by the election, and the fact that we "fell back" and therefore gained an hour. This could be different when we "spring forward" again in March.
I'm a big advocate of stopping these semiannual time changes, but the problem is that I seem to be the only one in the world who wants to stay on Standard Time. This would simply mean it got fully dark at 9 p.m. on the summer solstice instead of 10:00, at least here in Seattle anyway. Everyone wants to keep those late summer daylight hours, but they don't think too much about how making Daylight Saving Time permanent—which is what most advocates of stopping the time changes want to do—would mean the sun doesn't come
up on the winter solstice until 9 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. Everyone I talk to says they'd be fine with that, but I really think it would be a problem for a lot of people—the U.S.
actually tried this once in the seventies, and it was meant with a lot of pushback after tons of parents discovered their kids were going to school in the dark all winter.
— पांच हजार सात सौ छह —
— पांच हजार सात सौ छह —
Anyway. I made chai. Shobhit made dinner. We ate while watching last week's episode of
What We Do in the Shadows. I spent much of the evening working on photo editing for this year's calendars. They are starting to come together.
Shobhit spent a lot of time watching news programs. Later, I called Gabriel and we talked on the phone for an hour. He had lots of genuinely interesting things to say about his trip to Mexico with Tess last month, the first time he had gone on a trip of that magnitude with just her and no one else.
We also commiserated about our mutual anxiety about the election. And that, finally, is today. The day we either save ourselves for another four years, or this country makes an active choice to begin watching democracy crumble at an accelerated pace. I've seen a stunning amount of optimism—not from Gabriel—and I am less inclined. I'm hopeful because I can't help it. But I remain far too burned by my participation in a collectively cocky attitude in 2016 not to be incredibly cautious in my expectations. This is very much a "Sliding Doors" moment for America, and I am eager for it to be over.
This is a big reason I made no plans tonight, though. I'll be at home all evening, watching returns and biting my nails.
— पांच हजार सात सौ छह —
[posted 12:30 pm]
