— पांच हजार सात सौ चालीस —
Shobhit returned from his trip to India yesterday. Just going to pick him up took a larger chunk of the day than I anticipated; I waited in the "cell phone parking lot" for upwards of an hour, as Shobhit texted me the play-by-play of waiting for his luggage and then going through customs.
I didn't even leave home until he had touched down. Shobhit suggested I wait to leave until his plane reached the gate, which was actually wise; I'd have waited a long time even if I had done that. Instead, I left right after he texted that they had touched down—and I brought my library book with me. It's seriously overdue and I figured if I were stuck in the car for a while, I'd have nothing else to do but burn through a good number of pages. That's exactly what I did, and by last night, while Shobhit was predictably fast asleep,
I finished it. I even started the next book that is just as overdue, but it's a kids' book (the one last year's animated feature
The Wild Robot was based on, same title) so I think I can get that one read quickly.
Shobhit had landed from a slightly more than 14-hour flight, direct from Doha, Qatar, which was his layover on his way over when he left here on Christmas Day as well. His sister lives there, and he saw her going both directions. It sounds like he tried to sleep at her place this time, but he has a cold and he said he would wake himself up every 15 minutes coughing. He slept through last night more consistently, though he did still cough. (He told me this cold began a week ago, so I am just hoping he's not contagious now.)
His layover coming back was 13 hours, though of course he'd still have needed to be back to the airport a couple of hours early. His flight out of Doha was at 9:05 Saturday night my time; that was 8:05 a.m. local time in Doha. He basically had the night to spend with his sister. His flight out of Delhi to Doha took off at 3:10 a.m. my time and 4:40 p.m. local time in India on Saturday; it landed in Doha 7:50 a.m. my time and 6:50 p.m. local time in Doha. He would have had at least a couple of hours to visit with his sister and her family before presumably they all went to bed.
At the moment, whatever time it is here, you swap the a.m. to p.m. or vise versa, and add another hour and a half to figure the time in India. When it's noon here in Seattle, it's 1:30 a.m. in India (at that time the next calendar date). Much like when we visited Australia, that takes some time to reacclimate to, because your body's day/night rhythims have been inverted. I asked Shobhit in the car on the way home yesterday whether he'd slept on the plane. "About half an hour," he said. Aside from that, he'd have to have been up for quite a long time, and by the time we were home, around 2:00 or so, his body would still have been acclimated to it being about 3:30 in the morning. No wonder he zonked out so quickly after I had helped him unpack and put the groceries away.
We did stop at Hau Hau Market, the Asian grocery store in the International District, on the way home. We had no vegetables to speak of at home, aside from onions. Shobhit selected a bunch, and I paid for them as usual. After he fell asleep, I made pasta for dinner, sauteeing a bunch of them chopped fine in the cast iron skillet, my new favorite pan. Food tastes so much better from that than a regular pan!
Shobhit had hoped we would go for a walk sometime yesterday, to start getting him to gain on Laney's 10 points (so far) for the Winter Social Review, when Shobhit currently has just one. I keep telling him he has another two months. And that flew out the window once he zonked out anyway.
— पांच हजार सात सौ चालीस —
— पांच हजार सात सौ चालीस —
The rest of the weekend was indeed a lot of time spent with Laney; between Friday and Saturday we watched three movies together.
I left work 20 minutes early on Friday, to meet Laney at the AMC Pacific Place for the 4:40 p.m. showing of
One of Them Days. We both found it
amusing enough but not quite as hilarious as we hoped it to be. It was more of a movie of regular chuckles than anything especially hysterical.
By the time I was posting the link to that review to my socials, it was 8:30 in the evening, so that pretty much sucked up the entire evening. I did call Shobhit on FaceTime just a few minutes after that, and we were on that call, while he was still in Delhi, for another half hour or so.
Then there was Saturday, when Laney and I effectively did a "Mike Leigh & Marianne Jean-Baptiste Double Feature." Because they had re-teamed as director and actor for
Hard Truths, which was the second movie we saw on Saturday, Laney came over to the Braeburn Condos theater at 11:30 a.m. to watch their first collaboration,
Secrets & Lies. That movie had come out in 1996 and was a major Oscar contender in 1997—although it was the only Best Picture nominee that year not to win any Oscars at all—and I actually remember watching it on video during college with Gabriel and Suzy. That must have been in 1997, although I suppose it's possible it was early 1998 before I graduated. I don't think it was that late, though; I remember that year being unusual for Best Picture nominees being largely independent films and I was very interested in watching them all. It was probably the first time ver that I took that kind of interest in Oscar nominated movies.
I hadn't watched it since then, and both Laney and I were deeply impressed with it.
Secrets & Lies is a truly great movie.
So, once that was over, first we went up to the condo so we could use the bathroom and I could drop off my laptop and the cup I had used for chai that I brought. Then, we walked to her building and up to Laney's apartment, so
she could drop off the cup she had brought for the first movie. And then we walked downtown and again to AMC Pacific Place, this time to see
Hard Truths. We both felt that
Secrets & Lies was a better movie, but
Hard Truths had amazing performances, particularly on the part of Marianne Jean-Baptiste. I really hope she gets an Oscar nomination, but right now she's right on the cusp in terms of odds at Goldderby.com; last I checked she was in 6th place, which would put her just outside the five possible nominations. She was way better than multiple of the other contenders, but but that's just how the Academy Awards go.
We walked back to her block, parted ways, and joked about how much we'll miss each other as we don't have plans again until Friday. By the time I was posting
that review link to my socials, it was 7:20 p.m. on Saturday.
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I had my biweekly Zoom lunch with Karen scheduled for Friday, but she wasn't up for it because of the procedure she'd had earlier last week and we bumped it to today. I just finished that hour with her, and we had a pretty standard hour of catching up.
The two key differences today from other times were a) her telling me about how exhausted she still is, and disappointed she hasn't bounced back fully after last week's procedure (she seemed totally normal and full of energy to me, though; plus the people who tell her she just needs to be patient are correct); and b) what she called "the elephant in the room"—the fact that President Fuckwit was sworn in today.
It's funny how wild the inaugration felt in 2017, how unbelievable it still was, how much dread I had about it. There's a weird disconnect by comparison this time, because this second term of his is guaranteed to be markedly worse, and yet I am spending far less time and energy worrying about it. Because really, how is worrying or fretting or desparing (or doing all three at once) in any way productive? As always no matter the circumstance, we do the best we can with what we have to work with, and thats remains as true right now as it's ever been.
— पांच हजार सात सौ चालीस —
[posted 1:10pm]
