Look at this shit! Even the view from the roof of our building, of the Space Needle, is now getting obscured by new construction. Consider how completely unobstructed this view from our building was when we last watched the New Year's fireworks from there, when Gina and then-boyfriend Eric, and Brandi and then-boyfriend Nick, all came up from Olympia to ring in 2008 with us. That's a pretty stark contrast there, and as you can see from the above photo, that tower on the left isn't even topped out yet—when it's done, probably all we'll be able to see anymore is just that bit of the north side of the Space Needle peeking around the corner of that building to the right.

Not that there were any fireworks to watch last night. Ater last year's disappointment with a pretty lame light show being all we got thanks to high winds canceling the annual fireworks show on the day itself, I remember feeling hopeful about this year, because what are the odds that high winds would cancel them two years in a row? Well, it wasn't high winds this year . . . it was a global pandemic. We've actually known for months there was little to no chance of a fireworks show this year, or even any kind of in-person event. And indeed, they did nothing to give anyone a show in person at the Space Needle (a smart move, truly, and in contrst to far too many other places around the world). I am on a Space Needle mailing list and I was notified through that several weeks ago that this year's "New Year's at the Space Needle" would be entirely virtual, viewable only on our screens at home.

Still, knowing that we have a legit view of the Space Needle from our rooftop—barely, and so far—I wanted to go up and get at least a couple of photos that were not just screenshots or pictures of my television set. And I have been seeing construction creeping up on our view of the Space Needle for some time, but I guess I naively found myself thinking the Space Needle appeared to be still positioned as viewable between the new towers standing between it and us. So much for that! Progress marches on, I guess, and sometimes it marches across your beloved views. At least we still have a great view of the skyline overall from our roof.

Shobhit had met me at the Central District PCC right after he got off work on Thursday—New Year's Eve—and after we got home and put groceries away, he immediately changed into his pajama pants. So, I just went up to the roof by myself. I thought maybe I could get a picture of the two of us together from up there, but that ship sailed quickly. I ususally get a New Year's selfie of us that works well for the next year's calendar I make him, but the one shot I got, from inside the condo, is really not calendar-worthy. Oh well.

Once I came back downstairs, I also changed into pajamas, and we spent the rest of the evening in our living room. I literally can't remember the last time I did that; it's been well over two decades. My history of New Year's Eves indicates that, ever since I moved to Seattle in 1998, of the 23 New Year's I've rung in since, 19 of those have been run in with an in-person view of the Space Needle fireworks; the exceptions being New York City ringing in 2011; West Hollywood ringing in 2012; and now both 2020 and 2021, still in Seattle but in both cases with the fireworks canceled. So, I've still watched some kind of Space Needle show 21 of those 23 years. Only thirteen—fewer than I thought—were rung in inside Seattle Center proper, although last year is quite close—Shobhit and I watched from KOMO Plaza which is right across the street, so that's sort-of 14. 1999 through 2007 were all rung in at Seattle Center; 2008 at the roof of the Braeburn Condos; 2014 from the roof of Sachin's then-apartment building in Belltown; 2016 (by myself) from Melrose Avenue on Capitol Hill; and 2017, 2018 and 2019 all from the dry warmth of the PCC offices, the first of those with Dad and Sherri and Danielle all joining us but the latter two just Shobhit and me. We moved back to being closer to it outside last year just because watching from the office was starting to get stale.

Anyway, I have long though of being at Seattle Center such a staple for this . . . and yet, in the past 10 years, I only rang in the New Year literally inside Seattle Center twice! (2014 and 2015.) Interesting.

Moving on!

We watched the Ball Drop on Times Square in New York City live their time, which means it happened 9 p.m. Pacific Time, which felt sort of weird. It was very weird to see live images of the rather small crowd, all of them masked, apparently made up almost exclusively of frontline workers and their guests. I didn't get a shot of this, but they had little fanced "boxes" of small groups of people, distanced apart, much of the street visible the crowd was so thin, something I'm not sure Times Square has ever seen before on New Year's Eve. It was a surreal contrast to the crowds Shobhit and I experienced when we rang in 2011 there. They did have the standard CNN show with Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen, the duo they've had for four years now, ever since they fired Kathy Griffin over that stupid Trump-head photo. I'll admit Cohen and Cooper have a certain charm together, especially being two gay men, but I still feel that firing Kathy Griffin was completely unfair; Anderson Cooper was especially unfair to her; and the show was far better with her on it. But, whatever, everything changes eventually I guess.

Once it was time to countdown on the West Coast, Shobhit and I had been watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show and I paused it to switch over to the live coverage on King 5 with about eight minutes left to go. The local coverage wasn't even a fraction as interesting as the Times Square stuff, even with the pandemic weirdness—until midnight itself, when the virtual show with the Space Needle began. And you know what? As much as I absolutely prefer being able to see a fireworks show in person, much to my surprise, this yielded some far better pictures than I've gotten for New Year's Eve in years. You can't exactly get very original photos of fireworks, after all, and we're talking about a history of two decades of that–compared to this year, when I got a good 22 very cool shots of the roving patterns swirling around the Space Needle.

I'm a little annoyed that the brief video I got of the first several seconds of the show recorded with no audio at all. It took me a while, but I think the reason why is because my phone is set to go in "downtime mode" between 9:15 pm and 5:15 am every night, and although you can click a thing that says "ignore for the day," it still creates wonky stuff when trying to do normal things during that time frame. Like, apparently, recording a video. So that part's disappointing, but whatever, it'll be overlaid by some other music track when I included it in my "2021 in Ten Minutes" video anyway.

Shobhit was very tired on Thursday night and kind of barely made it to midnight. He went to bed soon after. But, I had made chai earlier in the evening with the intent of helping me stay awake, and that seemed to have been incredibly effective. I was up another two hours quite easily, spending a lot of it on a long group text thread Gabriel had started to wish us all a Happy New Year, which had included his mom, his two brothers, his other friend Andy, Mandy, and myself. We all decided his mom Janine will henceforth be known as "J-Bur," in the tradition of J-Lo ("Bur" is the first syllable of Janine's last name).

Then, as is pretty typical anymore, I found myself unable to sleep much past 8:00 yesterday morning, giving me all of six hours of not-very-sound sleep; later in the afternoon I took a nap, which seems to be becoming a New Year's Day tradition for me. In contrast, last night I zonked out at 9:42, and I once again slept until nearly 8 am—okay, technically I got out of bed at 7:38, but still I slept for a whopping ten hours! That almost never happens, unless of course my body is apparently making up for a terrible night's sleep previous.

As for the entire day yesterday, I just watched some comedy on Netflix a bit, hung out by myself while Shobhit worked—but then I went out at 3 p.m. I took the bus to the office to swap out receiving paperwork, and from there I then bussed to Pioneer Square just in time for it to be dark, when I wanted to walk around and see the nine window exhibits of Lusio Lights Pioneer Square. I had initially suggested Shobhit and I got look at these exhibits on New Year's Eve, which would have garnered him a Social Review point, but he was so clearly not interested in going anywhwere once we got home from grocery shopping, I scratched the idea for Thursday.

It's too bad, because the weather was far better for it on Thursday; yesterday was wet with lots of wind gusts, barely stopping short of turning my umbrella inside out multiple times. At least the rain was more misty than outright rainy. Shobhit wouldn't have been that interested in the exhibits anyway, although he might have liked just getting out and taking a walk. The bus ride down Third Avenue was pretty annoying, as there was a guy on the bus not only with his mask pulled below his chin the entire time, but he kept surreptitiously lighting a cigarette he had in his hand as well. Jesus Christ. Once the thicker crowd of people at the back of the bus thinned out and it was more comfortably distanced betwen riders, I got up and moved back there.

Anyway, I'm still glad I did this; between the "Virtual New Year's at the Space Needle," at the end of which I had a good 41 shots for my New Year's photo album this year—already more than I've had since ringing in 2017, the 61 photos for which grew in number both because of it being the first one at the PCC office and because Dad and Sherri and Danielle had joined us (that's still the most recent year now that I was with more than just Shobhit at midnight). But, then I went and got another 18 photos of these art exhibits, and although I did also put them into their own dedicated photo album (so they could be part of the "Luminous Art Events" collection; three of the four to date now being Lusio exhibits), it was still part of New Year's, and so I added those to the New Year's 2021 photo album, taking the total number of shots to 59. I wound up adding just three more photos after that, taking the full photo album to 62 shots—now the biggest New Year's photo album I've had since . . . oh, wait: ever! Wow.

I think this is just a further byproduct of the past year being far more photogenic than expected under pandemic restrictions, precisely because I made so much more of an effort to find things to get pictures of in response. And New Year's this year yielded not one, but two highly photogenic things: the virtual show with the Space Needle (and I really love a lot of those screenshots), and then the Lusio Lights Pioneer Square exhibits. Shobhit won't get any Social Review points for any part of it, but really he only has himself to blame for that.

After Shobhit got home from work last night, we made dosas for dinner. He made mine easly twice the size I really needed it to be; I also made the mistake of making myself a drink on top of that, really just because Shobhit had also decided he wanted a drink. And this after I had insisted my weight would be down this morning after yesterday I weighed in at just above 161 lbs . . . only to weigh in at 162 lbs this morning. Fuck! I've got to get this shit under control. I was doing very well just before Christmas, but you know how it is: between Christmas and New Year's it just gets away from you. It's January now and time to buckle down. I really don't want to keep gaining weight, it's driving me crazy.

As for today, today I take down all the Christmas decorations. Maybe watch a movie. Finally make a plan for buying the new computer I desperately need because this one won't work for shit anymore. You'd think a computer should work with better performance than this after only five years, but I guess things just advance too quickly for the same hardware to handle it.

[posted 10:14 am]