on to the next
Now I'm in my third and final work day of the week . . . Monday was off for the anniversary trip to Portland with Shobhit; we came home that day. Tomorrow—and also Monday next week—are off for the annual trip to visit Wallace, Idaho, this time along with Dad and Sherri.
I'm a little curious about this coming trip and what it'll be like, for several reasons actually. First, of course, is that it's the first time ever that I will have visited there along with Dad and Sherri. It's sort of like, Mom died last year, and in her absence as a parent to visit there, now Dad and Sherri will come along to fill in the void. To be perfectly frank, hanging out with Dad and Sherri was always a million times more fun than hanging out with Mom anyway. Not that I don't miss Mom, don't get me wrong; she was still my mom after all.
There's also the fact that Bill is still there. When Shobhit and I last visited, it was August of last year, with most stay-home orders still in place; we were very conscientious about only seeing them outside. It was a month after Mom's passing, and we just had pizza for dinner out on the grass outside Mom and Bill's house; then the next day Christopher and Tristen came over to our hotel for a picnic lunch, but even that was had socially distanced outside a table outside our hotel door. None of us went inside each other's house or hotel room. That will be different this time, with most of us vaccinated, and I will probably go on inside the house for at least a few minutes at some point this weekend and say hi to Bill. I intend to get enough food to be able to share some with him as well, even though he won't come out to the Hercules Inn (and not because Dad and Sherri will be there—he just never did, as he doesn’t like to leave the house). We only saw him briefly during the pizza dinner outside the house last year, and I kind of doubt I'll see much more of him this weekend either. But I do plan to see him.
In addition to all of that, I'm curious to find out where Christopher is at right now, both emotionally and intellectually. He basically abandoned Facebook some months ago, the account I had been "friends" with apparently no longer existing at all. I don't know where he's at regarding vaccinations specifically, except that I know that according to Tristen he doesn't want one. I don't especially want to get sucked into a conversation about it. Dad told me a while back that Christopher is apparently buying into this insane rumor that vaccinations are implanting microchips into people, and knowing that my brother is not a complete moron, I do wonder how seriously he really thinks that, or if maybe Dad misinterpreted some kind of side comment during a phone call. Honestly, it could plausibly go either way when it comes to that.
I did get a phone call from Dad, and we hammered out a bit more of planning for the weekend, regarding both travel and meals. I'll just wait to hear from him as to when they are leaving Olympia, and then I will time out when I should head out so that I arrive around Ellensburg close to the same time they do. We may be meeting at Olmstead State Park for a picnic lunch together.
I had highly recommended to Dad that he go to Mount Spokane State Park sometime, as I was so impressed with it when Shobhit and I went there last year on our way home from Wallace, but that's a significant detour so it's still pretty iffy as a stop tomorrow, I think. Either way, I plan to stop at the Costco in Coeur d'Alene to pick up pizzas for the first-night dinner as always.
I guess Sherri has said to Dad that "I don't want to cook all weekend" (a perfectly reasonable think not to want), which he took to mean "I want to go out." That basically applies to Saturday, so it sounds like in all likelihood a big bunch of us will go out for both lunch and dinner that day. Sunday is a different story as it is Father's Day and Dad quite understandably has no desire to deal with Father's Day crowds at restaurants. He proposed making a large batch of French Toast for breakfast, and then for dinner Sunday he's trying to decide between making burgers or buying fried chicken from somewhere. I can deal with that easily; either way I can just bring veggie burger patties to make for myself.
Becca and Tyler won't make it, so she'll be the only one of Christopher's five kids that won't be there. I just got confirmation from Tristen that the younger boys (Christian, who amazingly is now 18; and Braeden, 15) are already there now. Nikki and TJ will come down with Cheyanna on Sunday for Father's Day. So Saturday will be the day Dad and I take our bike ride—and, I hope, also hike the Pulaski Tunnel Trail, which Shobhit and I were unable to walk all of last year and I really want to cover more of and find the watering hole I previously saw pretty pictures of.
In any event, I've got a lot to look forward to this weekend.
As for last night? Shobhit worked all evening, didn't get home until around 10:00. I made tacos for dinner. I also watched a VOD movie for review: Holler, which was pretty good; solid B. I have a virtual advanced screening tonight, which will allow me to have knocked out two movie reviews in the three days between weekend trips this week. I'm hoping to do the same next week, in between the weekend trip and then Pride Weekend. I've already got kind of a surprising amount planned even for that weekend.
After taking the time to write that review last night, I spent a little time captioning some of the photos from last weekend's trip to Portland. I have a lot still to go, but at least I made a dent.
[posted 12:31 pm]