"This is your night, and it's ending one minute at a time"

[dorchadas]

I've paid my first property tax installment, so now I truly am a member of the landed gentry. 🎩

On Friday night, lisekatevans had invited me to go see Voice of Good Hope with her and some other people, but I had done something every single night in the preceding week, so I needed a bit of time for myself. But she also invited me to drinks at My Buddy's afterwards, and I said I'd be happy to go to that. I got home and lit the Shabbat candles, ate dinner, and then relaxed for a few hours until just about the point where I thought that maybe the plans had changed. That was, of course, when lisekatevans texted me and said they were on their way to My Buddy's, and almost immediately afterward that My Buddy's was extremely overcrowded and they were all going back to her place instead. So I went there and sat in her living room, drinking cocktails with her and afschifler, worldbshiny, and hazel.flowersmccabe. A lot of their conversation was about theatre or Voice of Good Hope, so I could only minimally contribute to it, but I didn't care. It was hospitable, and the drinks were lovely, and the company was fantastic, and it was a wonderful way to end the week. I left around 1:30 a.m.

That proved a slight problem for my Saturday plans. Earlier in the week, thosesocks had asked if I could be a photography subject so she could get some more camera practice, but I woke up late, and she woke up late, and both of us had something in the afternoon that prevented us from pushing it back too far, and she suggested that we cancel, so we did. And soon after, I got an email from mutantur saying that board gaming was cancelled as well since it had been almost a month since we last met and no one had mentioned it the entire time. That left me with an entirely free day rather than the day full of activities I had originally expected, so I texted worldbshiny and asked her if she was free. We're planning to go to the followup to Super Richard World III, Picklerickicles, except I've never seen Rick and Morty nor Pericles. worldbshiny suggested a marathon beforehand to fix one of those issues, and I jumped on the chance. She came over around dinner time right as I was putting the finishing touches on dinner:

Rice, teriyaki chicken, sesame-blanced broccoli, mushroom salad, and dashimaki.

We ate dinner with Hiroshima sake I had found earlier when I was shopping and we kept conversation light, talking about food and fantasy naming schemes, steampunk and how Disney's Atlantis is a great movie other than the white savior narrative, and our weekend plans. When we were done, worldbshiny logged into Amazon and loaded up the first episode (good thing, too--I had 🏴‍☠️ acquired 🏴‍☠️ the first season elsewhere, but Amazon made the process a lot easier).

I admit that I was skeptical going in, mostly due to the fanbase. I'm sure that I don't need to talk about the antics of Rick and Morty fans, or the way that so many of them seem to have completely missed the satire and assume that when Rick is talking about how society is dumb, school is dumb, no one will ever understand their true genius, and being hated is just a sign of being misunderstand by plebeian swine, that it's talking about them and that it's a sign of their right to rule over everyone else. The actual show was better than I would have expected based on the internet discussion of it. We watched the first six episodes, up to the episode where Rick destroys the world by repeatedly mutating everyone that I had heard an episode of What a Cartoon (off the Talking Simpsons feed) about, and I was genuinely surprised the way the show dealt with some serious issues somewhat seriously, like Rick pointing out that a love potion is monstrous or that they legitimately pulled the "silent outro with a slow, poignant song playing over it" after an episode where everyone mutated into praying mantis monsters and then into "cronenbergs." worldbshiny said one of the reasons she liked it so much was the wide-ranging sci fi literacy displayed by the plots; how they'd reference all kinds of movies and books for either throw-away gags or major plot points. My movie literacy is, uh, lacking to say the least, but I still caught enough.

It's not the kind of show I'd watch on my own, but that's not saying anything--I barely watch anything on my own. If worldbshiny wanted to watch more, I'd be glad to. And now I have a basis for knowing what's going on in Picklerickicles!

Also, the song in the Listening section came on and when the lyrics kicked in, worldbshiny was like "what are we listening to? ", so that makes 💯 of the people who listened to "Moonlight Bubblebath" with me being caught out by it.

Sunday was AsherS's Sonic the Hedgehog party in celebration of, but without a viewing of, the movie. Well, "celebration" might be too strong a term--AsherS told me he wasn't a big fan of the movie, but when I arrived at the party, people were playing Sonic Forces. I sat down with a (sans-bun) chili dog and watched a couple runs through of Green Hill Zone before everyone got tired of playing Sonic--I had arrived about halfway through the party--and switched to Quiplash. I failed to join the first game in time because I kept trying to type a name in kanji or emoji and it kept getting rejected, and then sat out the second game, and then I left while the weather was still warm.

thosesocks and britshlez had both texted me before I went to the party. thosesocks asked me if I wanted to join her on a shopping trip to the Asian market near Argyle, and when I said I wouldn't be able to go until later due to said party, she said that it was fine and she'd go herself. britshlez asked me what was going on and declined my offer to ask if I could bring a friend to AsherS's party, but through a series of text messages said she might be up for something later once she had gotten home from work and cleaned up. Later turned out to be 8:30 p.m., after I had gotten home and done my chores, but I took her up on her offer to walk down to O'Shaughnessy's Public House for a drink. That became three drinks because she had the next day off, she told me about her Pesach vacation back to Seattle, we talked about cartoons and relationships:

Me: "You mean, is it more important to date someone who understands your memes, or someone who shares their memes with you?"

and then I walked her back to her apartment, called a Lyft, and went home.

---

I am proud of one thing, though. I always used to just fold in even friendly debates, because when schoolpsychnerd and I were debating anything, unless it was something where she knew she was more knowledgeable about the subject than me (psychology, comic books, cooking, etc.), if we ever disagreed she'd usually not only immediately acquiesce to my viewpoint, she'd do so while saying that she was stupid for disagreeing. Since it caused her genuine distress to the point of being triggering, I just...stopped asserting my viewpoint even when I knew I was right. And since perfect compartmentalization is impossible, it spilled over into my interactions with my friends and if there was ever a disagreement I'd just disengage completely. I used to argue with randos online all the time and it slowed down and stopped. I thought that it was because I realized the futility of it all, but I think it's actually because I absorbed the lesson that actual disagreement was terribly upsetting.

Well, not this time. I mentioned that it was forbidden to eat meat and fish together in the same dish, britshlez said that it wasn't forbidden, I insisted that it was, she said she had never heard of it, I stood my ground, and eventually she pulled out her phone and looked it up and I was right! That's a major step for me! Even if I had been wrong, being willing to argue in favor of what I thought and not just give up once it actually became an argument is important. I'll need to be able to do that in basically any future interaction with people where we disagree.

I'm tired at work today, but I'm really glad for the weekend I had. aaronhparker invited me to a magic show this evening, but I begged off--I'm pretty tired and I need to rest and do more chores tonight. A casualty of my weekend where I did so much and still didn't get to do everything I wanted.