valen-tf
I took myself to see Isn't It Romantic last night right after work, and it was . . . fine.
The showing was at 4:55 pm at Pacific Place, and I left work at 4:25 and got to the movie right on time. After trailers, it was done at about 6:45, and Shobhit had taken the bus down after driving home from work, and he was waiting for me on the ground floor.
Our initial plan was to use a coupon Veggie Grill had emailed us, for $5 off a minimum $20 online order, but once again we could not figure out how to redeem that coupon using money on a gift card. It's totally ridiculous: in the app, where the funds for my gift card are loaded, there is no place to enter a coupon code; on the web, where the manager at the 4th Avenue location told us we had to place the order, there was no way to enter the gift card number.
That manager guy was kind of annoyingly condescending, too. When we had issues the last time we were in, and had talked to him as well, there was an added issue with local servers not working so we couldn't even place an online order. I tried to explain to him how that perhaps made things different from this time, but still he was just basically like, "I remember you guys, we already talked about this." Hey, how about, fuck you?
He also told me I would be able to use the gift card for the online order. He was wrong. We sat at a table for probably fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to make this work, until giving up and just leaving. So, they didn't get their twenty bucks from us last night!
Shobhit had already considered abandoning the Veggie Grill plans and having dinner someplace else, and when he was waiting for me to get out of the movie at Pacific Place he went to inquire over at the rather nice Italian restaurant they have on the ground floor, Il Fornaio -- quite predictably, on Valentine's Day evening, it was reservation-only. I told him any place that ever takes reservations would be booked up at that time. He then suggested Chipotle, which I initially resisted, but then I was so annoyed with Veggie Grill and ready for something tasty and quick, so we walked the block over there, and had a burrito bowl with a side order of chips and queso, which honestly was way better than the nachos I had wanted at Veggie Grill ever would have been anyway. So really, it worked out.
Our romantic Valentine's Day dinner was a burrito bowl. Isn't love grand!
We did also have a quite rare early-morning fuck before work yesterday, at least. I don't think Shobhit even planned it out for that to happen on Valentine's Day; he just woke up horny. I think we only spent about ten minutes on that, but whatever works! I also rather liked how we had, by definition, followed Dan Savage's perennial advice for weddings, anniversaries and holidays of all kinds: "Fuck First." And I have to say this is very, very good advice. If we wanted to have sex in any successful way at all, attempting it at the end of the day was never going to work -- and the same could be said of most couples. Do it first thing! Yeah well, Shobhit and I did it at 5 a.m. You can't get much more "first thing" than that.
Anyway, by the time we were halfway through dinner at Chipotle, I was feeling much better -- a lot less "hangry." I still sent Veggie Grill a super bitchy tweet though, while we were taking the bus back up the hill to get home. And after I wrote my review, we shared a homemade banana split, which I ate most of.
Anything else? Not much else I can think of to report on since last night, or about this morning. Well, I guess I could mention Heather, from one of our brokerages, coming in for a meeting -- she brought me a bag of goodies, mostly Tony's Chocolonely Chocolate bars (two of them) with a bunch of YumButter nut butter products, because I mentioned to her recently how fantastic it is to spread some of those nut butters on pieces of that very chocolate. Also it turns out this was far from the first time this combo seriously brightened my day. This was the most nut butters she ever brought me, though -- like, five different squeeze packets and three small jars, of peanut butter, almond butter and (my favorite!) cashew butter.
Heather who is the one who once, as a bit of a joke, sent me a gift bag that included a superfood juice cook book and a roll of bamboo toilet paper. We chatted for longer than we probably ever have in person (outside of many email exchanges since starting to work with her brokerage, which I found out just today she is now the president of, six years ago) by the front desk until Scott and Noah were ready to start their meeting.
There was an amusingly, slightly awkward moment when I came up to her, and the woman now also working with her, Alexandra, as Kevin was talking to them when I walked up. Heather had a paper sack full of all this stuff for me, after apparently just giving Kevin one single chocolate bar. Ha!
Anyway, in searching for those old tweets, I also did a filtered search of both my user name and "broker," which shows a history of my not-so-humble brags about how much brokers love and spoil me. Interesting historical trend: these tweets go back a full decade, and the oldest ones include a lot more examples of me calling brokers morons. Luckily that was from before Heather came into the picture so she's safe!
Two weeks until Shobhit leaves for India. Lots of stuff planned between now and when he's set to return three and a half weeks later. Ivan arrives for his four-night stay Wednesday next week. Sunday of that weekend is the Academy Awards. Shobhit leaves the following Friday. I'm hoping to convince Danielle to go to Happy Hour at the new-ish bar atop the Smith Tower sometime while he's gone. I'm going to Olympia Saturday March 9 to a dinner to celebrate Dad and Sherry's 35th(!) anniversary. Jennifer will come stay overnight for a visit a week after that, Saturday March 16. Hopefully I'll be able to see Maria Bamford live at The Moore Theatre Saturday March 23, and get Gabriel to come with me. So, even though I was unable to manage timing Ivan's visit during Shobhit's absence, I think I'll still manage to keep myself plenty busy while Shobhit's gone.
[posted 12:30 pm]