definite plans
Shobhit picked me up at the end of my work day yesterday, and we went straight up to Total Wine & More, because they were having some huge deal for employees, half of all foods and glassware, and 30% off other stuff. We got way too much crap, none of it even any booze! I paid for it and wound up spending $149. Too much of it was snacks that we absolutely don't need, but, whatever. We packed our new pantry cabinet even more full when we got home.
They're selling a novelty wine glass that's braded with Schitt's Creek that did crack me up, because on the glass itself it reads, "EW, DAVID." We didn't buy that, though. Shobhit did get a bit too excited, as he always does, when a huge sale of any kind is going on anywhere—all remnants of his supposed conviction that he "doesn’t like stuff" that clutters up the house goes right out the window. He even asked if I wanted this gigantic novelty copper mug—it holds 3 liters—and I was like, "You know I would never actually make a drink in that." Besides, where the fuck would I even put it?
Still, we did buy a set of champagne classes and another set of wine glasses; I think that was all the non-food stuff we got. We did buy a few mixers; I actually put both Sweet and Sour Mix and Piña Colada Mix in the cart when Shobhit wasn't looking. The rest was just a huge amount of snack foods, including an ungodly number of Walker's Shortbread Cookies, which Shobhit likes having with chai. I think he snagged four boxes of the Vanilla Shortbread and seven boxes of the Shortbread Fingers. I checked the best-buy dates; we're good until late 2022. We still have bunches of the Biscoff Cookies we got at Costco, and a few still of the cashew cookies from Mayuri Foods. I think we're good on things to dunk into chai for a while.
Once we got home, put the groceries away (ha! "groceries"—from Total Wine), and I made some chai, we didn't even bother eating anything to dunk in them! Maybe because we had it with our leftover magi for dinner.
And then, something amazing happened: we spent the vast majority of the rest of the evening together in the living room—but without ever turning the TV on. Or at least, until it was finally time for me to start getting ready for bed, as it approached 10:00. Shobhit did turn on his news programs then. I honestly don't know how he never gets tired of those shows, but I suppose that's a separate conversation.
Most of the evening up to that point was spent researching, discussing, and even partly booking the travel plans I already brought up yesterday: Las Vegas for Shobhit's birthday weekend; and Palm Springs for Thanksgiving week. In both cases, it looks like the trips are going to be a bit longer than I ever anticipated—which, honestly, I am all about.
We did take a bit of a social detour, though, when I got Danielle on the phone. All the way back in March, we booked tickets for this thing coming to Seattle called "Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience." The date we had settled on was October 8, which is Friday next week. But, I got an email yesterday that they are experiencing some delays and their opening date is now postponed to October 19. So, we had to reschedule our tickets, which I started discussing with her over text, until she asked if we could get on the phone and I said of course. We settled on Monday, October 25 as our new date. Still at 4:30, so I'll have to leave work early, but that's fine.
And then we got to talking quite a bit about all of the "a lot of life has happened since we last talked" that she told me about. She wasn't kidding, either. Stuff about her mom, far more important stuff about her daughter that I have no business getting into here. We were on the phone for a good forty minutes or so.
Outside of that, though, we got onto Skype with Sachin a few times, to discuss the Las Vegas trip, and the challenges in finding the cheap airfare he kept insisting was out there—the problem is that truly cheap airfare is just on weekdays, but Shobhit understandably wants a birthday trip to actually fall on his birthday, and his birthday this year is on a Saturday. We kept looking at flight options and even on the cheapest airlines the total costs were coming up too high whether we left Seattle on Thursday or Friday. Finally though, Shobhit looked up itineraries where we left for Vegas on the morning of Saturday October 30, his birthday itself, and then came home three rather than two days later, and then the airfare became significantly cheaper. Still not "dirt cheap" (it totals over $600 for both of us together), but better than any of the other options. And after all the discussions, I was willing to go for that.
We still haven't booked it. We need to find out whether Sachin is correct in his assumption that he can get us a hotel room on the Strip with his WorldMark credits. So, after Shobhit gets home from work this afternoon, he's going to get back onto Skype with Sachin and find out; if the credits idea pans out, then we're set and he can book the flights. Sachin kept insisting we can find hotel rooms on the Strip for as cheap as fifty bucks, but I checked Hotels.com and found only two options for less than $100: The Strat Hotel (where Danielle and I stayed in 2019) for $71 a night and Circus Circus for $72. The latter is one of the older ones but I've never stayed there so I would be open to it if it came down to it, honestly. Hopefully we don't have to consider that option, though; Sachin says his credits should be able to get us a room at The Venetian. But, we'll see. So, for now Las Vegas is still slightly up in the air.
Palm Springs, however, is not: it's all booked! And, surprisingly this was Shobhit's idea—probably because we'll just stay at Faith's house—but we'll be staying there for four nights: Tuesday, November 23 through Saturday, November 27. I'm excited about this for multiple reasons, not least of which is my being out of the office on both Tuesday and Wednesday of Thanksgiving week, which means after two years of not getting out of it, once again I'll finally get out of working "volunteer shifts" at a store Thanksgiving week! So long, suckers!
The kind of funny thing about these two potential trips (well, one of them now definite) is their definitive contrast. I expect the Vegas trip to be comparatively chaotic, lots of activity and being out and about. Palm Springs, on the other hand, will just be a lot of hanging out at Faith's, having cocktails, and playing Yahtzee. And I'll be all about it. Palm Springs was always very chill and nice and relaxing to me, and it's been over five years now since we last went—and six year since we were last there for Thanksgiving, something we did every year from 2012 to 2015.
Speaking of holidays, Thanksgiving is clearly all set up for us this year, but Halloween is kind of another story: assuming our current plan for Shobhit's birthday pans out, it means I will be out of town for all of Halloween Day. (Halloween is the day after Shobhit's birthday.) However, Halloween landing on a Sunday and in this scenario actually works for me in one way, in that the observance of it at work will be on Friday, which I am now likely still to be working, so I can still come up with some kind of (hopefully) simple but clever costume to wear. I can do the requisite North Capitol Hill neighborhood walk with Alexia earlier that week and get plenty of photogenic sights in. And, I bet anything there will be plenty of fun things to get pictures of on Halloween in Las Vegas of all places, probably of a very kitschy and weird variety. I think I can work with that.
In any case, Palm Springs is definitely happening. The air fare is booked and paid for as of last night, and the rental car is reserved. Because it was by far the cheapest option, we're flying into LAX and then will have to drive another couple of hours out to Palm Springs, just like we used to from West Hollywood. Hell, since we'll be in L.A. briefly anyway, maybe we can find one or two points of interest to stop at along the way. In the Palm Springs area itself, I would love to revisit Joshua Tree National Park, or even go to WildLights Living Desert in Palm Springs again. The one other time we went there was now nine fucking years ago!
[posted 12:29 pm]