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I had no extracurricular plans on Friday. I signed up for a week free trial of AMC+ through Amazon Prime Video just so Shobhit and I could binge episodes 2-7 of the 2022 British limited series
This Is Going to Hurt starring Ben Wishaw. We watched all six of them Friday evening. They averaged about 45 minutes per episode, so that amounted to about four and a half hours of television.
We have until next weekend with AMC+, though, and I was excited to discover this meant we could finally watch the entire second season of
Interview with the Vampire, which had finished its run at the end of June. That season has eight roughly one-hour episodes, and I think between the couple we watched Saturday night and the couple we watched last night, we're now about halfway through.
I have no plans this evening but unfortunately Shobhit has a work shift 5-9 p.m. Tomorrow he doesn't work but he has a board meeting with local SAG-AFTRA, and I'll be seeing
Borderlands with Laney anyway. We should be able to burn through several episodes on Wednesday evening, though.
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On Saturday, we finally had an opportunity to take the fast/foot ferries across the Sound to visit Claudia in Port Townsend—together. I had already done this myself a
total of three times before, those being among five visits with Claudia I had already done before (twice I drove and stopped by during my Birth Week). Since she and Dylan moved over there in 2022, I visited twice in 2022; once in 2023; and now three times in 2024. For this third visit, I had been waiting for a Saturday when Shobhit had the day off of work
and Claudia would be around, as we had talked many times about Shobhit coming along for a visit one of these days.
I think we did make it kind of tight for Claudia in terms of scheduling this visit, which Shobhit picked up on and was worried we were "imposing." But, I don't think that was accurate; I asked Claudia weeks ago if this date would work, and she said yes. She just happened to also have plans to go camping the night before, but assured me they would be back by 12:45, when I figured we would get to their house, about a mile walk up a hill from the Port Orchard ferry dock.
That said, we never did discuss lunch, which I did not want her to feel obligated to provide. She did tell us that she had been up later than anticipated the night before and was "level 2 hungover" when we got there. Shobhit had brought two thermoses full of what he calls a "mango shake," which makes Americans think there is ice cream but it's more like a simple smoothie: blended mango, milk, and a bit of sugar. Both Claudia and Dylan declined, Claudia saying she would not have been able to handle milk. Jasper, Claudia's son who is 18 and just graduated from high school, happily accepted; and between him, Shobhit and me we all had one cup of it and that took all that Shobhit had made.
We did all have a little something to eat, though: when we got off the 12-minute foot ferry that was the connection from Bremerton (to which we rode the 30-minute Fast Ferry from Seattle's Pier 50), Shobhit noticed the Saturday Farmers Market off to the left and immediately wanted to go browse. We killed a good 15 minutes there, and I even wound up buying
a $35 bottle of mead (a booth was having a tasting and it was delicious). Claudia offered to come and pick us up when I texted her that we were shopping the Farmers Market—which she later told us she has enver gone to!—but we said we were good to walk, and so we did, and we got to the house at about 1:15. One of the things Shobhit bought was six ears of corn, and he suggested we grill them, and so we did.
Dylan turned on the gas grill for him, and Shobhit took it from there. No butter was used, but rather Shobhit's suggestion: rubbing lemon juice, salt and pepper on it. This is actually quite delicious. It made for a very tasty snack, if not a legit lunch.
We thus visited for a good three and a half hours or so, before it was time to head back and catch the 5:00 foot ferry returning to Bremerton. Claudia offered a ride again, and this time we accepted. Carrying the heavy produce inside my
beloved Star Wars tote bag, the weight suddenly tore a hole in the side of it, a few inches below where one of the handle straps were attached. I figured it was done for, but Claudia offered to sew it up!
I'm almost positive that bag had been a gift from Jennifer, either for Christmas or for my birthday, several years ago now (that photo linked to above was from 2017). A few months ago a bunch of food liquid got spilled all over the inside of it, so I ran it through the laundry, which I think weakened and tattered it a bit. We'll see how it fares after Claudia mends it. Anyway, we had to accept a new tote bag (a Josh Groban one) to help carry our purchased farmers market produce back, but getting the ride back to the foot ferry was still very helpful.
Taking the 5:00 foot ferry meant getting to Bremerton at about 5:15; then taking the 5:30 fast ferry back to Seattle, which thus arrived at 6:00. We then walked up to the Central Library so I could
finally return my copy of
Dune—it was only as of last week that Seattle Public Library was back to the capability of both returning books and allowing for online holds again. So now I finally have
Dune Prophesy on hold! After that we walked up to Pine Street to catch the #11 bus, and thus we got home probably sometime between 6:30 and 6:45. Honestly not bad for coming all the way from Port Orchard, never driving, and never even using Light Rail.
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So that brings us to yesterday, when I went to see a movie with Laney. But first, I walked down Madison Street to the Central Library again, on the very unlikely hope that they would have a copy of
Dune Prophesy checked in. Nope! I finished my fifth read of
Brave New World last week, though, so I decided I should find another book to read. After a few minutes of thought, I finally thought of
Sea of Tranquility, which Krish, our CEO, recommended to me several months ago at work. Luckily one copy of
that was checked in, so that settled that. I also discovered something I had not realized when that book was recommended to me: it was written by Emily St. John Mandel, which wrote
Station Eleven, a book I have also never read but I did love the HBO limited series that was based on it. So, knowing that and finding the book is shorter than I expected (less than 300 pages), I found this to be a perfect choice for my next book.
I had some extra time so I went over to the public terrace at Rainier Square to kill some minutes. I was going to read but then I spent most of the time figuring out the hours at Fonté Bar on the lower level, which used to be open on Saturdays but isn't anymore, and then texting Laney to suggest we do a weekday Happy Hour there sometime in the spring when the weather gets warm again. (It's still plenty warm now, of course, but we have locations selected for all our weekday Happy Hours from now through November!)
So then I walked down to University Street Light Rail Station, where I found myself feeling a bit dirty by drooling after a super hot but
very young man in short shorts and especially tasty looking legs—he looked like he was in "barely legal" territory, but for all I know he was 28; a thirty-year-old can look really young to me now—and I took the train up to Capitol Hill Station. I got off that train, and Laney arrived to meet me before the next train came along.
We rode the rest of the way to U District Station, then walked over to the AMC 10 and saw the absolutely phenomenal film
Sing Sing, which as of now is my #2 movie of the year. Laney said it was her #1, and that's absolutely valid; I even considered bumping
National Anthem from my own #1 spot for it. But, considering that without thinking about it I gave
Sing Sing a solid A but
National Anthem a truly rare A+, I think the greater impact that film had on me will keep it held at #1. It's tight, though; neither of them had any genuine flaws that I could ascribe to them—even though others could find a couple minor ones with
National Anthem (notably the Whiteness and thinness of its primary characters, details that are not flaws by definition, only by context), which I argued could be rejected.
In any case, both are amazing films, and
Sing Sing, being a far more mainstream production (just by virtue of it featuring the likes of Colman Domingo and Paul Raci), is guaranteed to get far more awards attention, unfortunately to
National Anthem's detriment. (To be fair, my love for
National Anthem notwithstanding, I would still vote for
Sing Sing in the acting categories, for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.)
Laney and I took Light Rail back to Capitol Hill, and went our separate ways there. This was the first of three movies we'll be seeing together this week;
Borderlands is tomorrow, and
Alien Romulus—which I am very excited to be seeing at Cinerama (technically now "SIFF Cinema Downtown")—is on Thursday.
Next weekend is a big one, and it kind of starts on Thursday, because I will be out of office Thursday through Tuesday next week. Thursday I'm technically still working, just out of the office, for the annual Wilcox Farms tour. Then the movie in the evening. I took Friday off just to burn through PTO, and I still need to confirm with her but may hang out with Danielle that day as it's her birthday. Saturday is a day in Everett, as
that day was the first day we could coordinate with Shobhit's availability and Lynn and Zephyr being avaialable, and we're all taking the passenger ferries across from the Everett waterfront to Jetty Island. Shobhit works at 5:00 that evening, so we're doing this early: I've reserved spots for all of us on the westbound ferry at 10:00 a.m., with a return at 2:00. After that, on Sunday we head to the Washington coast, Tokeland at the north end of Willipa Bay, for two nights at the biannual Family Vacation. Thus, we head home on Tuesday.
It's a lot, but I'm really looking forward to it—even though the forecast currently shows clouds and highs in only the mid-sixties on those days in Tokeland. Whatever! We'll make it work. I posted to the Family Vacation group page on Facebook that we're probably all going to want to dress in layers.
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[posted 12:29 pm]
