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I actually found a movie I would have liked to see yesterday, and technically I would have had plenty of time to go to it, since Jennifer and Matthew left to go back home midmorning. But, I had already booked the next three movies I'll be seeing with Laney on the AMC app:
Civil War after work tomorrow;
Abigail (about a preteen ballerina vampire!) on Saturday;
Sasquatch Sunset on Sunday. And not only does my AMC Plus A-List monthly membership only allow me to see three movies a week maximum, I can only have three movies booked with reserved seats at a time.
What this means is, the only way for me to go to a movie yesterday would either to be to pay extra for it (which would be really stupid given my monthly AMC membership), or to cancel the reservation of one of the other three movies so I could book one yesterday and re-book the other again after I've gone to see yesterday's movie. This just felt like way more trouble than it was worth.
And besides, having a quiet day just to myself with no major plans for most of the day was actually quite pleasant in the end. I will admit, I felt a little bit lonely at moments, an unusual experience for me, but as soon as I found things to do, that basically went away. It was a spectacularly nice day, so right after eating my leftover buscuit and gravy from breakfast at around 5 pm, I took my bike out for a short ride.
Actually I had started to think maybe I should go for a walk. I just wanted to get back out into the nice weather—it was clear skies and 65°, with the forecast calling for clouds and a high of only 51° as of today. I even texted Alexia to ask how her cold was, with the idea that maybe she'd want to go on a spontaneous walk with me. I had forgotten she was on her way to San Antonio to see her dad one last time as she's headed for hospice. She had a work reason to go to Houston anyway, and was driving three hours to San Antonio from there. She said her cold (and she's taken several covid tests that have all been negative, she said) was only slightly better. That must really suck, making a downer trip even worse. I'm sure she'll be much relieved once she gets back home.
So anyway, it finally occurred to me that I could just ride my bike around a bit. And I wasn't out for long: I rode north on 15th Avenue E to Volunteer Park. I rode
through the park from its north end, around the small road that goes through it, until it spit me out on 12th Avenue. I then rode that road south to just a few blocks south of Union before turning around and heading back up to Pine. It was maybe a three mile ride, if that. But, it got me all the outdoor nice-weather time I needed.
I did pause for a good few minutes before I turned around back up 12th, to post that video from Volunteer Park onto my socials (Facebook, Instagram, Threads; I am engaging in a sort of trial period with BlueSky because certain people I loved from Twitter moved there instead of Threads but I hate that it doesn't allow direct uploads of video clips).
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Aside from that, I spent my afternoon yesterday writing my pretty lengthy
post about Jennifer and Matthew's visit, and then the rest of the day mostly catching up on TV. I
finally watched last Tuesday's episode of
Shogun—excellent, as always—and then I caught up on
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, only then discovering that I had not yet watched
last week's episode. This week's episode went live while I was watching that, so I went right into watching this week's episode as well. And then! A new miniseries started on HBO last night, called
The Sympathizer, set in the final days of the Vietnam War, and it was very good as well. A lot of it was setup, leaving me more intrigued with what's to come than amazed by the first episode, but I think I'm going to like it. We'll see how the fact that Robert Downey Jr. is playing several characters will shake out.
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So now here I am, Monday starting the two weeks between Jennifer's visit and the start of my Birth Week—the latter of which will start all of three days after Shobhit gets back from India (on Tuesday next week). The new Grocery Merchandiser we hired started today, and I'm guessing the Merchandising meeting we have scheduled this afternoon will largely consist of introducting him to everyone. His name is Frank, and he's the one I was part of the decision to hire, as Gabby was so gung-ho on my being on the interview panel. I think she really thinks of me as, among many things actually, "keeper of the culture," at least among a few other people who have been around as long. I got the sense that he will fit into our office culture very well, and time will tell whether I'm right. Shelley was a little borderline on that front.
Actually would have had this blog post posted two and a half hours ago, but then Justine came by and invited Noah and Frank for lunch—and, probably mostly because I both sit in the same quadrant of cubicles as they do, and I was in earshot, Justine extended the lunch invitation to me. She bought us all lunch, although she merely drove us all up to the Ballard PCC store. I had a half pint of Smoked Mozzarelle Pasta (my all-time favorite PCC product) and a half pint of the Deli caesar salad with vegan dressing. Anyway, we then got back with minutes to spare before a
two hour Merchandising meeting that I probably normally would not be a part of, but Gabby asked both Amy and me to join because Dave was going to go over a pricing presentation he had gone over with LT (Leadership Team).
There was a ton of stuff covered that had no direct relevance to me whatsoever, but whatever. It's over now! And I need to get this posted so I can get some work done.
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[posted 3:02 pm]
