productive and cozy

— पाँच हजार चार सौ अठहत्तर — The rain continues. I'm into it. When I was walking the mile to the office from the bus stop at 3rd & Pike, I flipped my podcast over to my "Rain" playlist. Of course those songs are all metaphorical rather than literal but whatever. When I was on my lunch break yesterday, I sat in the staff lounge area over by the windows to the patio, through which I could see suddenly huge gusts of wind. Then it rained really hard. I really lucked out with the timing yesterday, though, because the rain had paused while I was on my way to work, and did again on my way home. I had my umbrella and never needed to use it. And so I walked home, and read The House in the Cerulean Sea the whole way. I'm a little more than halfway through it, and I must say, I am loving it more the more I get through it. At this rate, this may be a rare solid-A book read. I had also read while walking from the bus to the office yesterday morning, but could not do that this morning, as this time it was steadily raining. We still have rain in the forecast every day through Friday morning. I suppose it's lucky we've got sun in the forecast again for the weekend. Laney and I may do another outdoor happy hour after the movie we're scheduled to see on Sunday. — पाँच हजार चार सौ अठहत्तर — Speaking of Laney, she texted me while I was walking home from work. I can't remember if I mentioned already that they pushed her move-in date at Pride Place up from mid-November, to late October: Thursday the 26th. I'm actually taking the afternoon off to help unload the truck. She got her first chance to come inside and see the unit yesterday, and she texted four photos she took. I already had a "Pride Place 2023: Laney Moves In" photo album started, with some exterior photos I had already taken (plus a couple she already took and shared), so I added these to it. The unit is very small, which we both already knew; the studios range between 330 and 450 square feet, and Laney's is in between those numbers. I can't remember exactly, but I want to say 380? She measured the main living area and texted me that's 11 ft by 13 ft. Presumably the rest is the limited closet and bathroom space, although she said for an apartment so tiny the bathroom is surprisingly spacious. Like the unit she's in currently in Renton, that may have to do with it being senior housing. — पाँच हजार चार सौ अठहत्तर — — पाँच हजार चार सौ अठहत्तर — Anyway. The rest of my evening was fairly uneventful. I watched this week's episode of Ahsoka—which was super action packed—in the bedroom, during which Shobhit watched an on-demand recording of The Silence of the Lambs. Since he was occupied with that, I spent some time working on the 2024 calendars. I'm a little disappointed by Costco outsourcing their calendars to Shutterfly since last year. They no longer have 11.5 x 14" options, and any other calendar service I can find offering that size charges $10 more per calendar. I can't abide by that, so I'm stuck having to construct 12 x 12" calendars now, as that's the largest Shutterfly offers, and is the only place I can still get a Costco discount so the calendars are priced at "only" about $20 each. I'm not thrilled about having to make all the photos square in shape either. But, whatever. We'll all make do, I guess. I went through to mark up month photos with small bits of text about what the photos are of. I spent at least an hour on it, and had already done an hour of work at least on other days so far. I just need to find all the grid photos for birthdays and anniversaries from the past year now, add the years to those, and construct the calendars. I've been doing these calendars now since 2006, when I made 2007 calendars. This will make the 18th year of doing them. I think the first year I used, maybe Bartell Drugs photo service. Several years after that I ordered direct from Apple, but then they discontinued the service. So then I switched to Costco where I discovered they had a member discount. Now even they're outsourcing. I still get the Costco discount, but this will make the fourth service I've had to use. I might have watched Only Murders in the Building with Shobhit after his movie, but we ran out of time. I had music playing, and he eventually came to the bathroom and told me he'd been calling me for a while. Of course, he was doing so from the living room at the other end of the condo. He loves to do that, when I often can't hear him whether I have AirPods in (as he assumed last night) or not. God forbid he just get up and walk into the room to talk to me. By then it was late enough, and Shobhit doesn't work today either, I figured we'd just catch up on our TV tonight. That'll do fine. — पाँच हजार चार सौ अठहत्तर — [posted 12:35 pm]

someone left his penis out in the rain

— पाँच हजार चार सौ सत्तर-सात — I took myself to a movie last night, about a recently transitioned young trans man. It was called Mutt and it was pretty good. I'm in a period where the best options for a movie to see in theaters is at SIFF Cinemas rather than at the conventional multiplexes, so I saw this one at SIFF Cinema at the Uptown on Lower Queen Anne, a 4:30 showtime so I left work at 4:15 to walk over there—no bike ride this time, as yesterday was an almost shockingly rainy day. It was just a couple of weeks ago I was still coming to work in shorts. Sometimes the weather here can turn so quickly it's a bit jarring. It had been so long since I walked up there rather than biking, I noticed not one but two new residential structures under construction and near completion, which I had never noticed before. For a split second I thought to myself, How have I never noticed this? But then I realized it's been several months since weather has forced me to walk to a movie up there rather than taking my bike. I'll be seeing another movie at the same theater on Thursday. Yesterday's movie was the first I went to see in fully one week; last week's was the first in ten days. I plan to see three movies this week, actually, with a third on my calendar for Saturday. Once I get to that one, I still will have gone to see all of six movies in the month of September. That's still far more than the average person, but in a normal, non-pandemic, non-strike year, I'd be averaging around double that each month. If we just go by what I have on my calendar right now for movie releases through the end of the year, I'll round out 2023 having gone to the movies 77 times. If we go by the average number per month from January through September, I'll round out the year having gone to the movies 81 times. Either estimate would be a record low, at least for years in which movie theaters were open all year (and thus excluding 2020 and 2021). The previous record low had neen 2002, when I went to the movies 88 times. We'll see if I match or exceed that this year, but right now it's looking doubtful. And it's not even because of the pandemic this time. It's mostly because of the fucking WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. And as I've said all along, I'm fine with it. Whatever it takes, for all those workers to get fairly compensated. — पाँच हजार चार सौ सत्तर-सात — — पाँच हजार चार सौ सत्तर-सात — Anyway. The bus ride home after the movie was interesting. First, the rain: Seattle had its wettest September 25 on record, with 0.82" of rain measured at SeaTac Airport. A lot of it seemed to fall during the fifteen minutes or so I waited to catch the #8 bus, thankfully with an awning to stand under. I left the movie and One Bus Away said the bus was 10 minutes away, which alone was a disappointingly long time to wait (it was fine). Then the bus was several minutes late. During which time, the steady, light rain really turned into a heavy downpour for a few minutes. There was also some guy with some real mental health issues going on, ranting and raving down the sidewalk across the street. He would walk a few steps, crouching a bit, yelling something unintelligible and plugging his ears. He stopped in front of the entrance to the Mud Bay pet store, which has an old movie-style marquee above the door with movie titles turned into pet puns: today, it says NOW SHOWING - TWILIGHT - BARKING DAWN. Thankfully no one was coming or going in our out the store, and I did wonder whether the guy would burst inside and cause some kind of disruption. Instead, he threw his book and notebook he was holding onto the sidewalk, then pulled the elastic waistband of his pants down enough for his flaccid penis to pop out and then flip back inside his pants again. Maybe three or four minutes later, he did that exact same thing again. He finally started wandering down Queen Anne Avenue and I thought maybe that was the last of him. Nope! He crossed the street at the end of the block, made his way back up my side of the street, and continued with sporadic vocal outbursts. He stood in between several other people waiting for the bus, maybe fifty feet up the street from me. Everyone stood around basically pretending he just wasn't there. The #8 finally pulled around the corner, and I was much relieved. And then Shouty Penis Man walked up toward this bus. Oh, fuck. I started to sit in a seat near the front of the bus, and then realized I was right across the aisle from Shouty Penis Man. No, thank you. I moved further toward the back of the bus, just hoping my ride would not be marked by some wild disruption from this guy. You may be disappointed to find, anticlimactically, that the guy was comparatively well behaved on the bus. I think he did still sort of bounce around in his seat a bit, and I think two women did get up to move further away from him. At one point the bus took in an astonishing number of riders, and I was one of only a handful of people wearing a mask. I kept trying to see if I could see Shouty Penis Man, halfway up the length of the bus. There was a moment I thought I saw him putting on a mask, and I was like, holy shit! But then moments later I saw he wasn't wearing one. This was one area where he and the majority of the bus riders were on the same page. This guy rode for most of the same ride I did, getting on at Lower Queen Anne, and then he got off at Broadway & John, where the Capitol Hill Light Rail Station is. He shuffled off the bus, and literally hopped up to stand on a bench, his back against the wall. Still slightly hunched. I had three more stops before mine, in which I no longer had to worry about him. The five-block walk home from the bus stop on 15th wasn't as heavy in rainfall, but heavy enough. Even with an umbrella being used, I got home with the top of my backpack pretty wet, and the thighs of my pants surprisingly wet. I had leftovers for dinner, wrote my review, and later just hung out in the living room with my MacBook while Shobhit watched an Agatha Christie series on TV. — पाँच हजार चार सौ सत्तर-सात — [posted 12:31 pm]