switcheroo 1:31
My mid-summer has shaped up to be so cram packed with activity, it practically feels like the holiday season. It's just also way too fucking hot all the time.
July was comparatively low key. Independence Day was the one Big Event. But, two and a half weeks later we had Lynn and Zephyr over for dinner; six days after that we hosted Morgan's birthday dinner. Not one of these events involved leaving town though.
And then came August. First weekend: traveling with my bike on city buses down to Olympia on Friday the 3rd; bike ride with Dad, Gina and Beth in Chehalis on Saturday the 4th; Third Annual Family & Friends Picnic at Mason Lake on Sunday the 5th. Second weekend: Ivan arrives for weekend stay on Thursday the 9th; Shobhit leaves for weekend camping and Ivan and I go to the "Lusio: A Night to Awaken" light fixture art show at Volunteer Park on Friday the 10th; Ivan and I visit the Space Needle on Saturday the 11th; Store-to-Farm Bike Ride from PCC Redmond to Oxbow Farm with Melissa and Jamie from work, followed by mid-afternoon "Happy Hour" with Laney on Sunday the 12th. And then the third weekend is coming up this weekend, when I visit Vancouver both to explore the city a bit on my own and to hang out with Ivan. It's a little ironic that this coming weekend I'm literally leaving the country and comparatively it feels like it'll be more relaxing.
Also I just discovered last night that the USD to CAD exchange rate is currently 1 : 1.31 in favor of US currency. Well, isn't that convenient! I got quite the pleasant surprise when I was checking against my credit card transactions last night and the hostel room I had booked for $56.84 actually showed up on my statement as $43.86. That hardly makes the $1.31 foreign transaction fee (something that used to get waived by my Delta SkyMiles Platinum card, but then American Express fucked me over with their customer service in a truly unconscionable way and I washed my hands of the company completely) mean much of anything at all. Basically, whatever I spend in Canada this weekend, even if you factor in foreign transaction fees, I can basically cut that back by 20% to get a sense of what I'm really spending in the value of American currency.
. . . Okay, scratch that on the hostel! Fuck the hostel! I'm glad I've kept checking back on AirBnB.com for any new listings coming up, because this morning I just found a new one, only 10 short blocks north of Ivan's place (that's about three quarters of a mile), that is a bit more expensive but is still reasonable. The thing is, keeping the exchange rate in mind changes things a little -- although at a list price of $91, I would have still gone for this had it been available when I first started looking at possible bookings last week. With the cleaning fee and the service fee the total comes to $103.98 -- CAD. So in American currency that should come to around $80. Plus whatever the foreign transaction fee will be (if it's 3%, I guess that adds $2.40). $82.40 for a private room in the Kitsilano neighborhood rather than $45 for a room in Gastown that I have to share with a stranger? Adding $37 is totally worth it to me. (Shobhit won't be thrilled about it but whatever. He should frankly just be grateful I'm still managing this weekend trip without dipping at all into my savings -- something I don't believe I've ever managed before, certainly not when going to Vancouver.)
It turns out this AirBnB room has a cancelation policy of at least 5 days in advance; Saturday is 4 days from now -- so, unlike the last room I tried to book where the lady wrote back to me to say she would be out of town, this time I got an actual confirmation receipt from AirBnB instantly. Since I'm stuck with that now, I already wrote to the Cambie Hostel to cancel that reservation (they've already emailed me directly to let me know the room has been canceled and will be refunded, and sent a separate receipt email of the cancelation and refund). Even with an extra $37, I'm rather relieved, honestly. I kept thinking about the lack of privacy in shared spaces with strangers -- and one particular stranger in the room I slept in -- and no place to do things like put on makeup with no one else potentially around me, and no idea what kind of culture the other guy would be coming from and how he would feel about it. Probably it would be fine, but I do prefer not having to worry about it.
Now, I exchanged a few messages with the host of the AirBnB this morning, and it sounds like he does not live on the premises and actually rents out all the rooms in a 4-bedroom house to AirBnB guests (I wonder how cost effective a racket that is?), all of whom share the 1.5 bathrooms in the house. It sounds like only one shower -- so, there are still shared bathrooms just like in a hostel, but the facilities are clearly nicer. This host gets 90% 5-star ratings on AirBnB, apparently, which seems like a good sign. And having the bedroom itself to myself still makes it worth it to me, as well as the location being far better suited to my purposes for this visit.
The guy told me there have been up to 10 guests there at one time, but on this night I will be with 6 others -- so, for the 4 rooms, 7 total guests, probably because I'm the only one renting a room for a single person. So I think that should be fine. Oh, wait -- reading through the reviews it looks like maybe the host does live in the house. He still told me there will be 6 others in the house that night so maybe that includes him, and the woman with him in his photo who is presumably his wife or girlfriend. Whatever the case, I feel far better now about my lodging on Saturday night. It will make getting to Steamworks more complicated, but I'll probably still manage it.
Soooo anyway. Yesterday right after work I took myself right over to the SIFF Cinema at the Uptown to see the 4:45 showing of The Miseducation of Cameron Post. It was quite good, if often supremely uncomfortable for me, as someone who also went through a form of "reparative therapy" as a teenager. I don't like to use the word "triggering," but if any movie were like that for me, it would be that one. There was just so much bullshit, and infuriating ways of treating queer kids, that I recognized all too well.
Shobhit had a Braeburn Condos board meeting last night, which apparently was quick and efficient! That was never my experience on the board I was once on (Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus). He came back to the condo just as I sat down to write my movie review. Once I was done with that, we watched this week's episode of Real Time with Bill Maher before I went back to the bedroom to update my budgeting after all the shopping we did Sunday evening.
Oh, I almost forgot -- there was a tentative plan for Jamie and Alicia and me to do another hike at Discovery Park last week, but Alicia had other plans so it was postponed to today. But today Alicia bailed again, albeit quite understandably, citing the temperature (forecast high of 81°, not terrible but . . .) combined with today's truly terrible weather, awful air quality with the city once again getting choked with wildfire smoke. Nobody particularly wants to hike while breathing smoke filled air, so I'm down with aiming now for Tuesday next week -- and also with just having a quiet evening at home, which I haven't had in several days. That is something Shobhit will actually be happy with.
But! The thing that made me think of this to begin with -- even though there was no Tuesday Discovery Park either last week or this week, I did go on a "loop walk" with Jamie and Alicia yesterday afternoon at 3:00. Alicia really likes to book with her walking, I've noticed. Apparently Sara found a bit of a back way when going up Elliott Avenue so you can avoid walking right next to the traffic on that street, and instead walk between the backs of the buildings and the fencing that separates the railroad tracks. Then we took the stairway up to the W Thomas St Overpass that lets us cross over the railroad tracks into Myrtle Edwards Park, walk south through that park (where lots of stuff was already being set up for HempFest this coming weekend) until crossing the railroad tracks again via the Olympic Sculpture Park and back to our building again. I suppose we were out maybe 20 minutes. Still counts! Jamie and Alicia both get a Social Review point for that.
[posted 12:30 pm]