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After all the events of Pride Month, and June also featuring Shobhit's and my anniversary trip to Toronto and Niagara Falls, and then the Fourth of July holiday, this past weekend was back to relatively standard weekend activity. I went to a movie on Saturday and had a Braeburn Condos theater double feature on Sunday (yesterday).
The movie I saw Saturday was with Laney, rescheduled from Thursday after the server prevented the film from playing at the AMC 10 in the U District. Tracy could not reschedule so she just had to sit this movie out in the end, even though it was one of the few I was seeing that she also wanted to see. Thankfully, we were assured on Saturday—by the same guy at the ticket counter we had spoken to on Thursday, a young man with a strange mix of a super chill demeanor but not much of a sense of humor—that they were not having any server issues that day.
We saw
Kinds of Kindness, a Yorgos Lanthimos film that both Laney and I liked, but not quite as much as any of the other of his films we've seen. I suppose it might be on part, for me, with
The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which really made little sense to me but I also found deeply unsettling.
Laney and I both agreed that we weren't sorry we saw it, but could think of no one else we would recommend it to.
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That movie was at 12:45 and had a runtime of two hours and 44 minutes. It was well after 4:00 by the time I got home, and then I spent the time needed to write the review. What time I was not spending on that movie, in one way or another, I spent that entire day binge watching
Baby Reindeer on Netflix, squeezing in one last show during the one month I had rescubscribed to Netflix; my access was gone by yesterday morning. (The show was very well done, aside from emotional speeches I found incredibly contrived. The woman who played the stalker was amazing, her performance by turns psychotic and vulnerable in a deeply empathetic way.)
I had thought about making dinner before busing out to meet Shobhit when he got off work at Total Wine at 9:00. But, his suggestion had been to make mushroom soup with grilled cheese sandwiches, and that seemed like something that should be fresh when we both ate it. And besides, I barely had time to finish watching
Baby Reindeer, which I watched the last episode of, and even the final minutes of the penultimate episode, on my phone while riding the bus, first on the #11 downtown and then the RapidRide D bus from downtown to Total Wine.
I met up with Shobhit so we could go straight up to the Ballard PCC store to stock up on Zevia Soda since it's on sale this month. And, somewhat to my surprise, Shobhit suggested we just go out to dinner, and find some place to go in Ballard while we were there.
This made for a rather pleasant late dinner out, a spontaneous decision and at a place we found on Yelp that we quite liked. We landed on either pizza or Indian food, and when we found this place called Strega Pizzeria. Our waiter told us they only just opened a couple of months ago.
We sat outside. We got there maybe half an hour before they closed at 10:00, but the
eggplant pizza we ordered, with truly excellent thin crust ("Can we just order the crust?" Shobhit asked me), was ready in minutes. I wasn't going to get a drink, but then Shobhit suggested I look at the menu—and then I absolutely had to order the
Cucumber Mule. It was a bit gingery for my taste, but I liked it. I could have lived without the bitters they added to it. It did occur to me, though, that I am so into ordering the many varieties of a Moscow Mule just about anywhere I go, I think that is officially my favorite cocktail. Some places make it with a lot more biting ginger content than others; some places it's much more light and refreshing than others; it's different everywhere I go, but I love it most places. Twenty years ago my favorite cocktail was a Fuzzy Navel, and I continued saying it was for a very long time. I think I'm officially switching to the Moscow Mule now.
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— पांच हजार छह सौ तैंतालीस —
Shobhit considered getting a canoli for dessert, decided against it. For a split second I thought that was the end of it, and then he was like, "Should we get some ice cream?" He looked on Yelp and discovered there is, like on Capitol Hill, a Salt & Straw shop in Ballard. Fuck, yeah! I noted to him that their ice cream is probably the best we have in Seattle, but it's also very expensive. And still: yes.
The place was all of two short blocks away. Our very attentive, and probably gay, waiter called out to us as we walked away: "Thank you!" with a wave. It was kind of charming.
There was, predictably, a pretty long line at Salt & Straw. We're in the middle of
our first heat wave of the year, so ice cream is a pretty popular go-to anywhere, but especially the places where the quality is top notch.
We got a double scoop waffle cone to share, of one of the seasonal flavors. We actually sampled all the seasonal flavors, but felt this was by far the best: "
Wild-Foraged Berry Slab Pie." And it was . . . transcendant. Good enough to truly not give a shit about the nuclear bomb of calories it contained. Compulsively eating sweets even when they are of mediocre quality is one thing. Savoring exceptional confections is quite another.
We shared the ice cream cone as we walked down Leary Way for several blocks, and then back again. We finished the cone and I actually said, "Holy shit that was delicious."
We got back to the car, drove back home. It was a lovely, deeply pleasant late evening out with my husband.
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Shobhit had a four-hour shift yesterday evening, from 4:00 to 8:00. I had a planned double feature in the Braeburn Condos starting at noon, with both Laney and Alexia coming over for it. I noted to Shobhit that there would be time for him to watch the first movie with us, and so he did, clearly in large part so he would get the point on the next Social Review.
The first movie we watched was
Twister, because it was by far the more fun of the two and thus it was what Shobhit was interested in. He had seen both movies before but I think it had been a while. It had certainly been ages since I had seen
Twister, even though I had seen it many times. I still hadn't logged it on Letterboxd yet, which kind of amazed me.
The other movie was
The Impossible, which I had only ever seen once before and probably assumed I would never see again—we only watched it this time because Laney had suggested it as the paring with
Twister for a double feature. This was very much not Alexia's bag, only in that she likes to watch esapist entertainment when she watches movies, which this movie absolutely is not. It's very well made but kind of a tough hang.
It's slightly problematic in its focus on a White family in a disaster that mostly affected people of color, though, which I felt compelled to address in my Letterboxd review for this watch. In spite of that, I seemed more impressed by it this time than I had when first seeing it. The acting is amazing, especially by noth Naomi Watts and a 14-year-old Tom Holland. I had no idea who he was, of course, in 2012, but now he's Spider-Man!
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Yesterday Shobhit made the mushroom soup and I made grilled cheese sandwiches. We both took sandwiches down to the movie, then had more grilled cheese and the rest of the soup for dinner while we watched an absolutely spectacular episode of
House of the Dragon, with its first-ever set piece of battling dragons.
I definitely consumed too much yesterday. I thought I had done okay, except that I took a cocktail to the movie with me; made myself chai after Shobhit went to work; and later had some of the Peruvian whiskey Alexia gave us a while ago, with Shobhit during dinner. I broke 166 lbs this morning. Wrong direction, goddammit! (I was actually slightly down yesterday morning, which astonished me after that ice cream cone.) I wish I could learn to stop obsessing over my weight, but I just can't seem to. I like how I look so much better when I'm closer to 150 lbs, or even more ideally 145. These are more elusive goals the older I get, but there's no question that my consumption of things like sweets is a far bigger factor than my age. I need to get it together.
That said, Friday night I had no social plans, and Shobhit was at work. This made for my first evening at home alone since we put Guru down on Monday. The condo felt way too empty, and it made me restless. I made a semi-impromptu decision to go to Steamworks, which I had not done in three months. When I went in April I got no action whatsoever so it was a total bust; I didn't get quite what I wanted out of it this past Friday, but I got enough out of it to make it worth going. And, it was a preferable way to spend the evening than just sitting at home, watching TV I didn't really like, feeling restless. Thankfully I had plenty of other stuff to fill my time for the rest of the weekend.
The rest of July looks to be fairly standard on the socializing front, escept for Tacoma Pride on Saturday next weekend. Laney was going to go with me but she canceled in favor of something else she really wanted to do that day. I asked Tracy though and to my delight and minor surprise, she said she would go. Last year I just went by myself, taking the bus. This means she'll probably drive us.
The next actual travel will be in mid-August for the Family Vacation—more in attendance than ever before, new additions this year being Wendy (Sherri's sister) and Nikki and TJ's whole family. Eleven rooms booked, 30 people (29 if Jackie isn't able to exchange shifts with someone). This will be, I think, at least 5 more people than either of the previous Family Vacations had (in 2020 and 2022). There's been a lot of chatter in the "Family Vacation group" on Facebook, so much reassurance and planning, etc. It kind of amuses me, because I may love to plan well in advance, but this is getting incredibly detailed and the trip is still more than a month away. Gina replied to one of my comments in that vein by saying, "We are a family that likes to know what to expect aka anxiety ridden! 🤣"
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[posted 12:34 pm]
