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I was supposed to meet with Alexia, along with Shobhit who happened to have the night off, downtown after work last night so I could go with her and she could see the Festival of Trees at the Fairmont Hotel, then check out the light displays at Westlake Park. But, Alexia was transferring her mom to a new home in Bellevue, and although she had really hoped to be done and back in time to get together as planned, it just took her too long and it was not meant to be. Not yesterday, anyway. For now we're aiming for tonight, which hopefully we can make work as it's the last night of the Festival of Trees. Here's hoping she doesn't have so many hectic family issues going on next year and we can more easily get together for these things.
My initial plan was to do that yesterday, and take time tonight to work on this year's calendars. So, I spent almost all evening last night working on them. I don't know how I forget how much work goes into those things. It's pretty annoying that I have to put in so much work on these things that I then have to pay to have printed. I'm not complaining though! You are all worth it! (I'm also not complaining that I'm paying slightly less this year since Bill died. He doesn't need a calendar anymore. Oh wait, I forgot, I decided to make a separate one this year for Ivan for the first time. Dammit, I'm paying the same!)
Anyway, to be fair, I kind of shot myself in the foot a little with how I recreated the templates on Costco's website, and I'm going to take notes for reference next year on how not to make the same mistake again. I put a photo from the past year (if I can) of everyone whose birthday or anniversary it is in the calendar grid on their respective dates, and this means separate templates depending on who is receiving it—Dad doesn't want to see his ex-wife's siblings on his calendar, for instance. So, depending on different calendar grids and differing overall calendar themes, I've got seven different templates to assemble this year. Had I done this right, I would have done one with all of this year's grid photos in it and duplicated from that; instead, I duplicated before adding photos, which means I'm having to add the photos manually (and we're talking a library of roughly eighty birthday or anniversary photos) to each of the seven templates. It's very time consuming and tedious, and I do a lot of double checking as I'm terrified of adding someone's birthday wrong or misspelling a name or something. People keep having babies, it's a pain in the ass!
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— पांच हजार अस्सी-आठ —
Anyway. I was home around 5:30 after walking from work, and I worked on the calendars until around 10:00, although there was a couple of breaks in there for phone calls, one of them lasting about forty minutes—Dad had called last night and I missed the call so I called him back. We discussed the holiday gatherings that are planned, and yes I intend to go. I dutifully skipped them last year when I was unvaccinated; barring any huge crisis turn of events over the next month, I'm not doing that again.
Apparently Christmas dinner is being hosted at Gina and Beth's new house. I'm down with this idea. Dad said Gina was a little worried that some people might not like it getting shifted from Dad and Sherri's house to there, but I actually think this is a very pragmatic and good move. In the immediate effect, it takes hosting pressures off of Dad and especially Sherri who has long been kind of over it; they put in their time when it comes to that and it's a perfectly appropriate time to give them a beak. Possible for the rest of their lives. At least when it comes to Christmas, anyway. In the long run I like it because it will set a precedent, well before Dad and Sherri eventually pass away, of traditional gatherings at a new centralized location, which will already have been long established by the time Dad and Sherri are indeed gone. There's something I find very comforting about that.
My intention is still to go down and stay the night Christmas Eve the night before, because Christmas Eve has long traditionally been a part of the family holiday and I still want to be a part of it. Shobhit, as always, is actively resisting it; he always hates the idea of sleeping in Dad and Sherri's guest room which is always freezing—although Dad pointed out last night that we can always just leave the door open to let the circulated, heated air in, which we have never tried. We can just bring pajamas and it'll be fine. Or at least, I will. The other thing is that there's a good chance Shobhit will work that night, not because he necessarily has to but because he'll get paid more (I think) and he can still use all the extra wages he can get. And then, depending on when he gets off, he's more and more resistant to driving in the dark, because he has already turned into my grandparents. He'll just drive down Christmas morning, which we've done multiple times in the past. I'll just take buses down on Christmas Eve, it's not a big deal. I'll bring a book.
That was precisely how we did it in 2019. I also forgot my Apple AirPods on the express bus from Tacoma to Olympia. I should take extra care not to make an idiotic mistake like that again.
The other call I had was much briefer, but did result in another detour from my work on calendars: Gabriel called to ask if I had a digitized copy of the parody song I recorded for him when we were in college, a parody of The Beatles's "Eleanor Rigby" that I called "Everyone's Ugly" which he thought was hilarious—and which I had not even though about in ages. As it happens, I did a quick search in my Apple Music app and I did have a digitized copy of it handy—in fact I had passed out a burned CD retrospective of songs I recorded over the previous couple of decades as a Christmas gift in 2008, called
I Enjoy Being Gay. In fact, Gabriel would have been given a copy, although god knows where his copy is now; it might even be landfill by this point. I don't resent that possibility either; it was 13 years ago and it's not like he would ever pull out that CD and casually listen to it in the intervening time—besides, who has been listening to actual CDs in the past decade or so anyway?
I went to my old account at Audioboom to see if I could upload the track there. Turns out I had not uploaded any audio clips since 2017, and apparently now I can't do anything with it unless I "upgrade" to a "podcast account" for ten bucks a month. Uh, no thanks. Squarespace.com to the rescue! 2017 was also the year I moved my blog to this very site you are reading right now, and they have a quick and easy "block" for blog posts where you can upload audio clips. So, I did just that—and simply texted Gabriel
the link.
I was 21 when I recorded that. Gabriel would have been 20; the song was my gift to him that year. It was 24 years ago. Gabriel tells me that every time he hears the original "Eleanor Rigby" he hears me singing the line "Why don't they all just die?" which is pretty fucking hilarious.
— पांच हजार अस्सी-आठ —
[posted 12:35 pm]
