the other stuff
I still have things about last weekend I haven't told you about! In what little time I managed to carve out to write about the sailing excursion with the Merchandising Department at work on Friday afternoon and the annual McQuilkin Family & Friends Picnic on Sunday, there were still things that happened on both Friday evening and Saturday morning and afternoon that I have yet to get to.
So let's start with Friday evening, when I went out for happy hour with Laney and her friend Julie from the Seattle Women's Chorus -- and the "B Naturals" small ensemble they were both part of -- at a place called Jude's Old Town, in the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle.
That place was chosen really only because it is so close to where Julie and her longtime partner (but not husband, apparently) live, but not for long; I guess they are in the midst of packing for a move to Federal Way in pursuit of saving housing costs. This is one of two "bonus" Happy Hours planned for August with Laney, in addition to the regular one we had playing ping pong at SPIN on August 2 -- but, this one in particular I had not initially expected to be much in the way of an expense, as Julie had invited us to come over to her place. I thought Laney and I were just going to bring our own booze and hang out at Julie's place, as that had been the original stated plan. But, then Laney emailed me late last week to tell me Julie's house was not presentable due to all their packing and she wanted to go to a nearby Happy Hour instead.
She had mentioned the place had $5 Happy Hour food items, so even though I was already over budget, I figured I could get something from that menu and maybe just one drink and make it work. I did not want to break the plans with Laney, although in retrospect maybe I should have -- it would not have been the end of the world to postpone it until September. Well, except that maybe by then Julie would have been living in Federal Way, making it more difficult to make it happen. Not that that should be my problem. In any case, once there, I was reminded that this place was said to have very good veggie burgers, so I wound up ordering one of those, as the Happy Hour food menu's best vegetarian option was merely a hummus plate. Compared to most Happy Hour spending I do, my total of about $29 for the burger and one cocktail (a dollar off for Happy Hour) is actually pretty low -- like, 40% lower than usual -- but, it did still leave me now $60 over budget. And then yesterday I had to buy another bottle of Resolve from Amazon, as the one I have at home now is depleting rapidly with the countless hairballs Guru has horked up in the past three days, and I need Alexia to have it handy for when she looks after the cats this weekend.
Anyway! I suppose it could be argued I am being way too nitpicky about my budgeting, as broadly speaking, I can totally afford these things here and there. Except! I am strictly budgeting with the intent of saving money for my many travel expenses over the coming months, also with the aim of never having to dip into my savings account for it -- something Shobhit has annoyed the shit out of me insisting I avoid at all costs, and I must begrudgingly admit that, now that I've been doing this a while, I actually really appreciate managing to leave the savings account untapped. In order to maintain this, though, I have to be very careful about how far over budget I get. I still have Denver this coming weekend to consider; Las Vegas with Danielle in late September (the status of which is currently on slightly shaky ground, and there's a moderate chance that will transform into a weekend trip to Portland as an alternative); visiting Mom and Bill in Wallace this December; and of course the granddaddy of all trips, Australia in February, which we still need to get our asses in gear to book. In any case, I set at least $100 aside for all these travel expenses every paycheck, and after hopefully coming in under budget with each trip, I fold the balance over to savings for the next trip. It's actually a pretty good system, as it turns out.
But, having unexpected Happy Hour expenses don't really help it. I can't blame anyone but myself for spending that money, though; it was still my own decision. And at least it was a relatively isolated extra expense of only thirty bucks, and I should still be fine. I just have to stay conscientious and careful about these things.
In any case, apparently Julie has seen my many posts sharing when Laney and I were out for Happy Hour, and she wanted to have one with us, even though she doesn't drink herself. I never did get a photo from this particular Happy Hour outing, mostly because it never felt like a regular, "official" monthly Happy Hour with Laney. I might have still, had I known much earlier that we'd be going out instead of just hanging out at her house as originally stated, and then I could have budgeted appropriately from a more comfortably early point on the calendar. And Julie certainly seems nice enough and she was pleasant to be around and talk to, but I also did not feel like we connected in any particularly meaningful way. My guess is she will move to Federal Way and that'll be that.
The veggie burger was good, though, incidentally. Just not as good as the one I can get at Rhine Haus, which remains my favorite restaurant veggie burger in Seattle.
So that brings us to Saturday, when I went to see AMC Pacific Place's 11 a.m. showing of Where'd You Go, Burnadette with Karen, which was well-timed since our regularly scheduled lunch on Thursday had to be canceled due to her heavy meeting schedule at work that day. I had suggested to her months ago that we see this movie together, as we had both read the Maria Semple novel back in 2013 when it was a much more recent memory as a runaway literary hit. That was back when I wrote much shorter mini-reviews for my annual Book Log than I tend to now, so I can pretty easily just repeat what I said about it then in its entirety here:
It took me a while to get my hands on this novel from the library, as it was so hugely popular -- particularly in Seattle, which this novel specifically pokes fun at. (In 2012, there were hundreds of holds on it at the Seattle Public Library. Now, ten months later, there are a mere 89 holds -- on 259 library copies.) This is the story of a woman who lives in Seattle, and hates it, making for a sort of Seattle version of Portlandia but in book form. The spot-on send-ups of local culture and attitudes kind of dry up when the setting moves to Antarctica, of all places, but that doesn't change the fact that any local who knows not to take it too seriously is going to eat this book right up. I certainly did.
I even gave the book an A-minus, which I totally forgot! Now, six years later, the strongest memory I have associated with it is having it with me at JFK Airport when Shobhit and I met there for a Valentine's Day weekend visit while he was living in Los Angeles -- he flew in from there and I flew in from Seattle, and I remember having this book in hand as I waited for him at baggage claim. That was the last time I was in New York and I miss it and would really love to go back. But, an idea for another day! I have to many other places to visit at the moment.
In any case, the movie was . . . meh. It was barely worth the $7 matinee price, which was really only relevant to Karen since I used my AMC A-List Plus monthly membership.
Beyond all that, I had a really quite packed schedule on Saturday, having headed out quite unusually early for grocery shopping with Shobhit, getting to the Greenlake Village PCC at 8:30 a.m. and then to the Shoreline Costco just before they opened at 9:30, getting back barely in enough time to put the groceries away and then ride my bike down to Pacific Place to meet Karen. I had budgeted $100 for PCC and $50 for Costco, and guess how much I spent? $100.13 and $50.18! Nice. I'm not sure I have ever gotten so close to my budgeted amounts before. It's the little things . . .
Anyway, after the movie, I biked back home, then wrote the movie review, and then made myself a semi-heavy late lunch so Jennifer would not have to worry about dinner once I got to Shelton. I left Seattle around 4:00 and was in Shelton somewhere in the vicinity of 6:00, and the rest of my weekend worth telling about was already shared in yesterday's post.
[posted 12:51 pm]