— पांच हजार सात सौ चौवन —
I have plans now all three days of next weekend, and none of them are movies! Can you believe that shit?
By contrast, this past weekend was pretty movie-centric. The one exception was Friday, when Shobhit again met up with me at the office after his own long, circuitous route walk in order to rack up steps, and then we walked home from my office together. Another Social Review point for him! And on a day Laney did
not get one—which could not be said of the other two days.
On Friday, we went home, had dinner, watched some episodes of
Being Human on Britbox. I researched ways to get the movies scheduled to watch as a double feature on Saturday without having to pay to rent, and indeed, I was able to sign up for a week trial subscription to "Sundance Now" in order to see
Memoir of a Snail—which is one of this year's Best Animated Feature Oscar nominees—at no extra cost. As luck would have it, Sundance Now
also has
Being Human, including season 3 which weirdly is apparently the only one of its five seasons not available on regular Prime Video, so that bought us another five days to binge season 3 at least.
The show isn't even that good, honestly. I find the writing sloppy, where characters clearly demonstrate certain capabilities which they do not employ later when its use is obvious. The writing often looks a logical turn in the face, and makes a different turn for no clear reason. But, we do like the characters and now we're invested.
Anyway!
Memoir of a Snail, which
was all right, was the second of the two movies we watched; the first was
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which both Laney and I had already seen and loved, and figured would be a perfect part of this double feature. And we were right.
Shobhit joined us, and we spent about half an hour down in the Braeburn Condos theater before we had to pack it up and come up to the condo to watch the movies. This was the second time this has happened—last time, after taking a long time to get the wifi to finally connect, the stupid projector wouldn't work. This time, the projector was fine, but I could not get the wifi to connect. For the first time, I wondered if the scaffolding all over our building was a factor, as we're in the middle of a year-long residing project on the building. I need to figure out whether I can download streaming content on my laptop (I already know it can be done on mobile devices, but there's no easy way to connect those to the PDMI input), which would be an easy solve for the wifi issue.
— पांच हजार सात सौ चौवन —
— पांच हजार सात सौ चौवन —
Shobhit was going to join us for our scheduled Happy Hour after the movies. But, while we were all walking together to Bar Vacilando, Laney asked Shobhit to cover his mouth when he coughs, which he responded to with typical defensiveness: "I would say that's a very Western thing." He's made this argument many times already about chewing with his mouth open, but this was the first in regards to not covering his mouth when he coughs, which actually makes no sense at all. Chewing with your mouth open is disgusting and makes irritating sounds, but isn't a well-known spreader of germs. Coughing literally hurls germs out into the air; covering your mouth is not just common courtesy but literally a way to limit the spread of infection. (The fact that Shobhit has a chronic cough and was not contagious is beside the point.)
Shobhit started just walking behind us instead of in front of us as he had been. It would be easier for him to just cover his mouth, but he's got this insistence that he should be able to do what he wants, which is very "individual rights" Republican of him.
In any case, after this exchange, once we reached Bar Vacilando, Shobhit decided to keep on walking and did not join us after all. He had also already suggested doing some extra walking to get some steps in, which Laney (quite understandably) did not want to do. She carries around a cane, for fuck's sake—she doesn't always need it, but she has to be a bit more limited in how much she walks, which she otherwise does enough to actually impress her doctor. She had already done the walking she needed to here, though.
It was kind of a win-win in the end, though. Shobhit got to go do the extra steps he wanted to do, and I was able to come in significantly under budget, having only myself to pay for—and the dish we ordered, a pear and gorgonzola flatbread, was something we shared. I always budget $50 for Happy Hour but don't always spend that much; here I only spent $33.55. And Shobhit spent so much time walking, when I got home a couple of hours later, Shobhit was checking the mail upon his own return when I walked into the lobby of our building.
— पांच हजार सात सौ चौवन —
Shobhit and I went for another walk together yesterday morning, and even walked with Laney and me downtown afterward on our way to a movie, but Shobhit did not join for the movie. But, he did manage another Social Review point by taking a walk together. Pretty slick!
We walked north on 15th all the way to Louisa Boren Lookout, then cut through Volunteer Park where we even walked
up the water tower, went to get a croissand sandwich we shared from The French Guys Bakery, then walked Broadway up to the Sunday Farmers Market at the Light Rail Station. We spent a bit of time there, and then barely had enough time to walk home so we could use the bathroom and Shobhit could drop off the loaf of bread he'd also bought at the bakery. I actually used the bathroom on the ground floor of the West Building of The Braeburn in order to save time; I told Shobhit I might need to leave before he could in order to meet Laney at the prescribed time of 12:30 at Broadway and Pine. It turned out I wasn't factoring in the time it usually takes to get out of the condo and down to street level, where I already was, so I actually got to Broadway like five minutes early. I could have waited. Oh well. Laney and I still waited a minute, and Shobhit caught up with us right at 12:30 and we walked the rest of the way downtown together.
Shobhit went on to Pike Place Market and wherever else he walked to get his steps in, while Laney and I went into Pacific Place to see
I'm Still Here. Finally! This made the last of the ten Best Picture Oscar nominees that I had finally managed to see. It was excellent, but shortly after I texted Gabriel how I would do the list as "ranked choice voting," and I actually ranked it higher than I might have expected before seeing it: I ranked it #4. Above it were
Anora,
The Brutalist, and
Nickel Boys—and yes, even though I gave
Nickel Boys a lower grade. That doesn't mean I wouldn't be happy to see it win an Oscar, for which there are different standards applied than just a straightforward review. I suppose you could argue that there shouldn't be, but I'm not going to pretend these differences don't exist.
Laney and I walked home afterward, I wrote my review, I made sandwiches for dinner, Shobhit and I watched more episodes of
Being Human. I headed for bed a bit earlier than I might have otherwise, but I was developing a headache. I had already taken Aleve in the morning after waking up to a developing headache, which I had to do again this morning. I feel fine as I write this. So please excuse me while I go knock on some wood.
— पांच हजार सात सौ चौवन —
[posted 12:34pm]
