— पांच हजार सात —
What can I tell you today? There's actually way more I could have told you about my weekend trip to Idaho with Dad and Sherri to see Christopher and the kids, but for now
last night's post—again a recreation of my requisite travelogue email; I'm beginning to think that will just be standard practice going forward—will have to suffice. Hopefully eventually I will get
all 139 photos plus 10 videos captioned on Flickr, but at the moment all I've got is the same content copied from the email/post pasted into the caption fields of the relevant shots. All the others do have tags on them, at least.
In any event, I had a busy day at work yesterday after two days off, with a peculiar request from IT that needed to get done quickly and thus pushed back a bunch of the other shit I still needed to catch up on, an issue I am still dealing with today. I'll be glad, again, when this week is over.
I
was looking forward to this weekend, but now the Capitol Hill Pride events, planned to be in-person, are something I have mixed feelings about at best. Do I want to go support an event whose organizers
complained to the Seattle Huma Rights Commission about a Black Pride event they have nothing to do with? People are up in arms about the "Take B(l)ack Pride" event charging a "reparations fee" to white attendees. I suppose it could be argued that it was bad marketing or bad optics to phrase it that way instead of, say, stating that it's free for Black people—except that White people have no cause to give a shit since the event
is not for them. It’s a fucking Black pride event! I am so irritated with my own city over this.
There has been pretty widespread backlash, at least, in that a bunch of vendors and speakers slated for Capitol Hill Pride have canceled because they won't want to support organizers claiming "reverse racism" (which, if you have the slightest ability to do actual research rather than relying on emotional reactions, you'll learn literally does not exist). I honestly don't blame them. And now I'm kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place: I so looked forward to some kind of in-person Pride events this weekend, but am no longer sure I want to be part of these ones. Plenty of queer businesses on the hill have their own events anyway.
It should be noted that Capitol Hill Pride is a distinct and separate organization from the much bigger Seattle Pride organization, which puts on the annual parade but, due to the need for months of advance planning and there being no way to know several months ago where we would be with COVID right now, Seattle Pride events are all virtual again this year. So, whatever happens, my Pride experience this year will surely be a kind of hybrid between online and in-person events—as opposed to last year, which was entirely virtual, or previous years which were all in-person.
The Trans Pride events, which used to be Friday of Pride Weekend every year, have been
indefinitely postponed this year, with no plans for virtual events like they had last year. I have other plans Friday anyway, as we're having a Merchandising Department party on the patio at work in the mid- to late-afternoon. I return to the office permanently on Monday (thank god!) and intend to just take all my stuff back to my desk on Friday when I come for the party.
I have plans with Alexia to go to the remodeled Seattle Asian Art Museum on Saturday, just by chance during the Capitol Hill Pride events that are usually of most interest. Shobhit gets off work at 5 that day though, so maybe he and I can make something of Pride weekend that evening ourselves. I'm still not sure what I'll do on Sunday, usually the day of the parade. I'm actually thinking about making it my final return to the bathhouse, for the first time since February of last year. I really miss it, and am feeling like I am ready to go back.
Anyway! When I finished work yesterday, I rode my bike to work and back to exchange paperwork. Tomorrow I'll do it again, and that should be the last time I do it before the permanent return to the office next week, when I can
finally keep up with receiving paperwork on a daily basis again instead of twice a week. That will make such a huge difference in my work load. Also, for reasons that escape me, riding my bike back up the hill yesterday was easier than it had been in ages. It was like my body turned a corner with ease of exercise.
After that, writing up the travelogue email, then transferring it to last night's post in this blog, took up the entire rest of the evening.
— पांच हजार सात —
— पांच हजार सात —
I just finished with the
forty-seventh—and final!—virtual Office Lunch Meetup over Microsoft Teams, with Rebecca, and . . . no one else. People must be kind of over it, or just not thinking much about it, knowing that as of next week so many of us will be back in the office. This is an Outlook calendar item weekly every Wednesday for those of us who had expressed interest when this started last year (the very first one was on August 7, 2020; we're stopping just about six weeks short of a full year); Rebecca said she'll go ahead and just cancel it going forward.
She intends to be one of the people who very much eases back into office work going forward—and even then, she wants to work from home at least three days a week, indefinitely. It may be a while before I see her at the office again.
It'll be nice to get to see other people I rarely or never saw over the past year and a half, anyway. It's a seismic shift coming, pendulum swinging back in the direction from whence it came, in March 2020.
I do love how 2021 has been the inverse of 2020 when it comes to this shit. We have a long way to go in a lot of senses, but generally speaking we had a 2020 that was systematically worse and dispiriting; 2021 has instead been increasingly better and hopeful. The data bears that out, which is a very good thing.
Oh! I didn't even mention my phone call with Gabriel on Sunday evening, while I was in bed in my room at the Hercules Inn in Wallace. To my genuine surprise, he has officially shifted his position on visitors already. I really thought he wouldn't welcome anyone not in his immediate family into his house until closer to the end of the year, but apparently officially, like
right now, I'm finally welcome to come and check out the house. Like, actually walk around inside! I still have no clue when we'll actually make it happen—he still lives down in Federal Way, after all—but at least now I know it won't be another six months before it happens. Now, it'll more likely be a matter of weeks at most. (He extended the invitation to Shobhit as well, for the record. I almost said "I appreciate your diplomacy" but decided to leave it alone.)
Gabriel's rationale makes sense, anyway: he's back to in-person teaching in the fall. He might as well allow for visitors now. He's still refusing visitation by anyone, even family, who is not vaccinated, and to me that's perfectly reasonable. Thankfully I'm one of those increasingly rare Americans with a working brain and I got vaccinated the moment I was able to. I did ask him when he said I was welcome to come and visit, "Even though I just visited with family who aren't vaccinated?" (Dad and Sherri are vaccinated and
big proponents of it, but literally the only other one there who was vaccinated was TJ, Nikki's husband. Nikki surprised me by saying she won't get vaccinated while she's pregnant, a stance that is not supported by data, but whatever.) Gabriel isn't as concerned about degrees of separation with the unvaccinated; he and Lea and, most importantly Tess, have been; so have Shobhit and I. We know perfectly well from months of information now that we'll be fine.
— पांच हजार सात —
[posted 1:18 pm]
