— पांच हजार छह सौ तीन —
I just discovered today that the library book I am reading . . . may have been stolen? Inadvertently, by me?
I logged into my Seattle Public Library account to see what the due date was, because the receipt I am using as a bookmark is from my previous book. Now, I know for certain I went to the checkout computer, set the book on the magnetic reader thing, and went through the motions of checking it out. And yet, my account online is only showing one item checked out: the DVD of
Sense and Sensibility, which I just checked out on Monday.
Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson, a book I am very much enjoying, is not there. What?
I had to look up my own record of when I started reading the book, from my ongoing (since 2003) Book Log: March 24. That's three weeks and four days ago. Books are checked out three weeks before they are overdue, and you can be overdue 31 days before the library will consider it lost and charge you the cost of the item. They suspend your account whe the item is 14 days overdue.
Had this book been checked out properly, it would have been overdue at least by Monday of this week. I never got any email notice as usual. I didn't even realize it would have been overdue already. But the thing is, they don't even have a record of my having checked it out on my account. This is very weird, and I've never seen it happen before.
This is what I suspect happened: either the computer did not properly check the book out but the book being placed on the de-magnitizing mat still de-magnitized it, so none of us was the wiser when I left the building; or, the book wasn't even de-magnitized, and there was some beep when I walked through the door but just didn't register it. The latter doesn't seem that likely, but either way it seems weird that I could just walk out with a book I haven't checked out so easily. (That said, if the alarm went off in any way when I did leave, and clearly no one did anything at all about it, that strikes me as an example of White privilege—would they have been as likely to ignore it had I been a person of color?)
This is pretty convenient for me, though. It seems to me that I can hang onto this book for however long it takes before I finish it—which I am reading more slowly now that I am cycling to work and back, and don't have bus or walking time to read. I'm reading only during my lunch breaks, basically. I'll still return the book when I finish it, though, and their system will presumably then recognize a book that hasn't been accounted for. Everybody wins!
— पांच हजार छह सौ तीन —
— पांच हजार छह सौ तीन —
Last night was Action Movie Night at the Braeburn Condos theater—the second of two to occur while Shobhit is in India (he gets back on Tuesday next week). It was Ryan's choice, and when I looked at his history on the log, it was a bit curious: about half of them movies I think are excellent; the other half movies I thought were terrible. The most recent couple of them were terrible.
Tony brought someone new this week, a young(ish?) Black man named Ulysses. I told him I thought that was a cool name and he said, "Yeah. It's old." Ha! Indeed. He introduced himself as Ulysses to all of us and shook hands in turn, but then Tony referred to him as "Uly" (pronounced
you-lee).
After a little while I asked how they know each other, and Ulysses told me they had met at Bar Cotto. It sounds like they must have struck up a conversation and eventually Tony invited him to these movie gatherings. It felt very much like the guy might come back.
We found out Ulysses was in the film industry, working as a Director of Photography. Of course I had to mention that my husband spent six and a half years pursuing a career in acting, and we got into a discussion about the key differences between actors and pretty much anyone else on a film crew, and their experience with the film industry. It didn't sound like Ulysses had much difficulty finding work. I never did ask him for specifics about what types of projects he gets hired on here in Seattle. He must get enough, if he moved up here from California and likes it here.
Anyway, with that addition, I think we had eight people in attendance last night: Tony, Jake, Ryan, Chris G, Chris B, Derek, Ulysses, and myself.
I'm sure glad I made the fusilli pasta that I brought, because this was a very unusual case of my being the only one who brought anything vegetarian. Tony had like one and a half pizzas, but he told me he thought what he ordered was vegetarian—and then it came with all these thin slices of meat all over it. Chris G almost always brings a (reliably delicious) vegetarian pizza, but he arrived saying he'd had to work, no food at all in hand, and saying "With the week I've had, all I want to do is drink."
It was fine, though. I had my own cocktail as usual (Zevia Cherry cola with regular & coconut rum in it), and had plenty of my own pasta to eat. Tony complimented me on it, even asking what kind of veggie meat had been used (
Field Roast Italian Garlic & Fennel Plant-Based Sausage), because apparently his wife has "gone full vegetarian" since January, and though he still occasionally eats meat, most of the time he eats vegetarian stuff with her. Every part of that made me happy: even drastically cutting back on meat consumption is a huge step for bettering the planet.
Ryan's choice was a film from 2000 I had never heard of called
The Way of the Gun, about a pregnant woman (Juliette Lewis) getting paid by mobsters to be their surrogate mother and getting kidnapped by two men (Benicio del Toro and Ryan Fillippe) for ransom money, and pursued by an oddly stiff-necked James Caan playing a so-called "Bag Man."
I have to admit, the movie got better as it went along, but its opening scene is wild and not at all relevant to the rest of the movie, featuring Sarah Silverman as a woman offended by the guys sitting on her boyfriend's car. She winds up getting punched in the face, and my favorite thing about the whole movie is that in the end credits she' credited as "Raving Bitch." And incidentally, when Laney and I watched
School of Rock (2003) a few weeks ago, Sarah Silverman had a small part in that as well—as another bitch girlfriend. It seems maybe she got a bit typecast early in her acting career.
The most memorable sequence was when the two criminal characters are undergoing interviews to be sperm donors, and they are asked "Are you heterosexual?" First of all, in what universe is that question relevant in that context? Secondly, Ryan Fillippe's character responds by asking the interviewer, "Are you a faggot?" He then goes on a monologue that ends with the point, "It's not what you say, it's how you say it"—a fair point, I guess, except he uses the word "faggot" several times before he gets there. He's not the only character to use it, either; the "Raving Bitch" also hurls the insult "you fucking faggot" several times in her scene. The word gets used an astonishing number of times in this movie, all of them in the first fifteen minutes or so. It's a little jarring.
But then, that sort of goes away, the plot kicks in, and it's kind of a throwaway story but I found myself surprisingly engaged by the rest of it. When the movie was over and we all went our separate ways, I went upstairs and got on Skype very briefly with Shobhit as I put the leftovers away and washed dishes. But, then Shobhit kind of abruptly had to leave as he had to go out with his mom to get certain financial errands done. So then I went to get ready for bed.
— पांच हजार छह सौ तीन —
[posted 12:32 pm]
