narcoleptor

— पांच हजार छह सौ पच्चीस — Last night was Action Movie Night, but Shobhit has evening work shifts every night this week between Wednesday and Saturday—oh no, a Social Review point opportunity lost! After seeing a movie with Laney on Tuesday, she and Laney are tied at 17 points each for spring thus far. Laney will get another point on Saturday (18), another potentially on Tuesday (19) but that one's iffy because it doesn't look like that movie has been released locally yet; and another (20) for Happy Hour on Saturday the 8th. But! Then Shobhit and I leave for Toronto on the 11th, and for that trip he'll get six points, taking him up to 23. Laney might get another point on the 20th, which means by the 21st when I post the next Social Review, they will likely have 23 points for Shobhit and 21 for Laney. It'll be close but Shobhit should still come out ahead. What a relief! Anyway, let's talk about who was at Action Movie Night last night. There were eight of us: Tony, Jake, Ben, Ryan, Chris G, Derek, Daniel, and myself. I ate a ridiculous amount of food. Sometimes the food Shobhit and I bring is the only vegetarian option, but not often. Most of the others are conscious enough of our vegetarianism that there are usually one or more other vegetarian options available for us. This time, there was even more than usual—and when that happens, and especially when they go out of their way to let me know it's vegetarian, I feel obligated to eat some of it. Ben brought two to-go dishes from some restaurant, one of them a stir fried rice. Chris brought a pizza with kalamata olives that was fantastic. Daniel brought a veggie lasagna that he baked partly in the Community Kitchen oven and then microwaved to get heated through the center before too much time was passed. All this was in addition to the kind of Indian-spiced stir fried rice with deep fried tofu and black beans and corn and other sauteed vegetables that Shobhit had made before he left for work. At least three other people had some of Shobhit's rice, but it did not get eaten to nearly the degree that the pastas we more typically bring do. We have a lot of that rice left at home, it'll cover our meals for another couple of days at least. I took the smaller covered ceramic dish filled with it to the kitchen, and not even half of it got consumed. When I poured what was left of that back into the large pot on the stove in our condo, it still looked like a full pot. I particularly like the dish just because of the tofu in it, and tonight I'll be able to make it even tastier with some of the peanut sauce I have at home. — पांच हजार छह सौ पच्चीस — — पांच हजार छह सौ पच्चीस — It was Jake's turn to choose a movie, and he has a lot of horror movies in his choice history, so I wasn't that surprised to find it was a movie called Possessor. Rather than being about demon possession, however, it turned out to be a Brandon Cronenberg (son of David) movie about assassins taking over the consciousness of other people to carry out their kills. I was relieved it wasn't another movie about demon possession, but I still didn't really like it. I spent a lot of time looking at my phone, honestly. The next Action Movie Night, two weeks from now, will be one of very few that both Shobhit and I will miss. This hasn't happened since it landed on our anniversary last year and we went out for dinner instead. This one will be two days removed from our anniversary, but we'll still be on our anniversary trip that day, in Toronto. — पांच हजार छह सौ पच्चीस — [posted 12:32 pm]

"IF" only that movie had been better

— पांच हजार छह सौ चौबीस — Last night I left work half an hour early to meet Laney for a 4:50 on showing of IF at Pacific Place. The movie really kind of sucked. We both agreed it was a total mess. I gave it a solid C, which for me is quite low. It's definitely the lowest grade I've given any theatrical release so far this year, after having given five other movies a C-plus. Laney and I walked back up the hill together after the movie. When we got to her building on Broadway between Pike and Pine, there were the now-usual open-air drug users lining the sidewalk. These people frequently hang out in the entry pathway to her building's entrance, where vulnerable seniors live. It's become such a problem that Laney has emailed our City Council representative, Joy Hollingsworth (the one who beat Shobhit in the primary and then beat Alex Hudson in the general last November), who has actually responded personally and directly. That alone is impressive, but it'll be more impressive if something can actually be done about this. In a similar vein, I got sort of verbally accosted by a homeless man on 3rd and Pine when I was walking from work to Pacific Place before the movie. He launched into a spiel by saying, "This city isn't very nice to homeless people." This was both fair and true. I knew where he was going, of course, and I had nothing to give him. I had to say, "I'm sorry, I don't have anything" four times, with increasing volume, while he just ignored me and continued talking about how he would take even a single penny. A single penny is worthless, of course, even to a homeless man. But this guy could easily have been in his twenties, he had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and there was an air of desperation about him. But what could I do? I literally didn't even have a penny on me. Was I supposed to offer him an Apple Card payment, or what? I never give change to homeless people anyway (whether I am justified in that being a hard rule is, I suppose, debatable). This didn't mean I didn't sympathize with him. But, after my fourth time repeating myself, in response to my "I'm sorry," he abruptly turned and said as he stepped away, "No, you're not!" My internal response to this was an unusual one, because it was equal parts sympathy with him as one of the embarrassingly huge number of homeless people we have in this city, and being acutely annoyed with him. When the light changed and I could finally cross the street away from him, I had to make an effort to let go of my irritation. I don't know that guy's story. The same applies to the drug users around Laney's building on Capitol Hill. That corner has gotten definitively more sketchy even just sice Pride Place (where Laney lives) opened last fall. There's only so much we can do as individuals, we all deserve to feel safe in our city, and whatever the solution is, this is definitely the responsibility of city leadership. This was the sort of thing all the candidates ran on last year, after all. — पांच हजार छह सौ चौबीस — — पांच हजार छह सौ चौबीस — I have little more to report about the past 24 hours, which I'm good with. My work load at work remains tight and I remain behind on certain things but I'm not quite yet at feeling any need to panic. Whether I'll feel that way next week depends on how much I can get done between now and Friday. I have a lot of new items to enter. Laney and I parted ways at her building, I walked home, and I set about writing my movie review. Shobhit had a Costco lasagna baking in the oven, so that's what we had for dinner. It was very cheesy and tasty. I then discovered we never kept up on the current season of Abbott Elementary, which is now finished, but the six episodes we did not keep up on were still available on Hulu. So, at about 9:00, I came out into the living room to watch three of those episodes. Shobhit kept nodding off. He likes that show but it's of a type that still can't keep him awake if he's at all tired. I keep thinking about how much better Guru seems to be doing now that Shanti isn't around. It's not like they ever really fought over anything while Shanti was still alive, and yet, Guru seems to be eating more since she passed away. And this might very well just be an incredible coincidence, because I can't logically see how they are correlated, but Guru has also not had any notable vomiting episode—hairball or otherwise—since Shanti died. It's kind of odd. Guru continues to come to bed with me every time I go to bed, which was the case all along. He goes to Shobhit for attention sometimes, but not at all the way Shanti did; Guru always tended to stay by my side, or in my lap, more often, and is still doing that. I kind of wish he'd go snuggle with Shobhit more often. It might help Shobhit while he clearly still really misses Shanti. As do I. — पांच हजार छह सौ चौबीस — [posted 12:38 pm]