— पांच हजार सात सौ आठ —
So here we are, slipping back into business as usual . . .
for some of us, anyway.
It's where Laney and I are, anyway: we went to a movie last night, our first movie together in six days (longer than usual, for us). We saw
Anora, and it was as spectacular as promised—a rare thing. We both absolutely loved it. It's easy top five of the year for me so far, although at the very least I think I will still rank
All of Us Strangers (technically a 2023 movie but I can't control limited release schedules),
Sing Sing and
National Anthem (the only movie I've given an A+ this year) above it. So, as of right now, I suppose I'll likely place
Anora as the fourth-best movie I saw.
As I said in my review,
Anora is certainly Sean Baker's best film since
Tangerine. Both of them feature sex workers as characters, and it's unfortunate that
Tangerine being about trans people is a big part of what makes
Anora widely regarded as "more accessible." But, it's also representative of Baker's growth and greater assurance as a mainstream filmmaker. This film is actually in the Oscar conversation in multiple categories, and rightly so.
The showtime was at 6:00 at Pacific Place. Laney suggested we meet at the corner of Broadway & Pine at 5:30 before walking the rest of the way down there. I meant to leave work at 4:25 and did not leave until 4:27, and even two minutes can make all the difference in terms of transit. I don't know if I'd have made an earlier Monorail train had I left two minutes earlier or not, but I can tell you that when I time it right, I can get home this way in 35 minutes. Yesterday it took me 45.
This mostly had to do with the Light Rail delays when I tranferred to that at Westlake Center. Why they would run a three-car train at peak commute time is beyond me, but that's what arrived. We had to pack into that train truly sardine-style. The traib waited several minutes to leave just to wait for people to pack far enough inside the cars for the doors to close.
This gave me all of five minutes, once I got home, to turn around and walk back down to meet Laney. I still managed to eat some crackers with cream cheese. There was no time to make any dinner, although Shobhit had made a beet dish. He hoped I would at least try it, and I will admit it did not smell bad. But there really wasn't time to dish myself up a legit serving and eat dinner either.
So, I did something very rare indeed: I burned through rewards credits on my AMC A-list accoubt to buy something to eat at concessions. They sell Impossible Nuggets that are delicious, and I had only to activate two of my
six available $5 rewards to cover it. I also learned something new last night: they do not add tax when you use rewards points to buy concessions, so the $9.99 price stayed at exactly that amount, and I had only to activate $10 in rewards—leaving me still with $20.01, which can easily be used someday to cover a movie Shobhit might want to join us for.
— पांच हजार सात सौ आठ —
— पांच हजार सात सौ आठ —
I learned something else about the rewards points, which the cashier very helpfully looked up for me: unactivated rewards points never expire, but any balance from
activated rewards points will expire after ninety days. This was my concern had I needed to activate $15 work in order to cover tax had it been added to that $9.99 price. I actually activated only $10 thinking I'd have to use my card to cover the tax, but then the cashier discovered tax was not applied. So now I just have this one single cent that will expire if it doesn't get used in ninety days. Nice!
Laney asked to take the bus after the movie, so we walked over to Pike Street at the Convention Center. She needed only to get as far as Broadway, so we hopped on the #49 that arrived within a couple of minutes, and I just walked the rest of the way home from the stop at Pine and Broadway.
I took somewhere around an hour to write the review, actually a bit more. The runtime of
Anora is 139 minutes—all of them justified, I must assert—which meant that, combined with trailers and the time it took to get home, it was around 8:45 before I was actually sitting down at my computer. It was closer to 10:15 before I was actually posting the review and then sharing the link on my socials.
I spent a little time with Shobhit, who got home from work at about 9:30, in the living room. I finished off the last of our box of crackers, which I bought at PCC just to have something to eat with the free cashew cheese we got from broker coupons I'd been given. It was about 10:30 when I finished and went to bed.
So: another day just like most. Arguably better than a lot of days, considering how great that movie was. Something to be grateful for. We take it day by day.
I remember saying to Laney back in 2016, soon after the first election of President Fuckwit, that I wasn't going to let anything prevent me from enjoying the holiday season, even as we counted down the last days of Obama before that monster took office. Same deal now. I should note, though, that I did the same again the three years after that: holidays in 2017, 2018, 2019. I noted in a recent email exchange with Laney that even though I cannot forget the political horrors of that era, when I look back on the many fond memories of my own life at the time, I don't tend to think about who was the president. In all likelihood, the same will be the same when looking back on the four years we have to come.
Of course, President Fuckwit is far better positioned now to basically dismantle the structure of our government. Only time will tell how successful he is. At least I can take comfort in the fact that this is his last chance, and any idea of repealing Presidential term limits is practically impossible. There will come a day when that man will either drop dead or he will have no chance of ever bein President again. That will be a great day indeed.
— पांच हजार सात सौ आठ —
I just finished my biweekly Zoom lunch with Karen, which she had to reschedule for 1:00 due to a conflict. That's the only reason I'm posting later than usual today.
It was a lovely hour of conversation as always. We talked a lot about the Office Relocation Project Team site visit at the downtown store / new office space last week. We didn't even get to the election until about ten minutes from the end of the hour.
I'm in the middle of this week's Teams meeting with the Office Relocation Project Team as I write this, though, so now I'm going to post this so I can get back to focusing on that!
— पांच हजार सात सौ आठ —
[posted 2:18 pm]
