The Rest of the Weekend
I already posted about Gina's 50th birthday party, which happened on Saturday, on Sunday. So now I'll tell you about the rest of the weekend today, which included a good amount of other stuff, quite a bit of other socializing.
First would be moving backward from Saturday, to Friday, when Shobhit and I met up with Laney for our first of two September Happy Hours. We had dinner and drinks at "Patio Cielo," the rooftop deck of Mercado Luna, on Pine and Summit. It finally happened! Hooray! I had reservations for three; Laney was well enough to make it; no adverse weather closed them down. It was about time. And: I would eagerly go back. Shobhit and I shared both an order of nachos which used high quality tortilla chips and were delicious, plus an order of their mushroom tacos which are worth going there for just on their own.
They did still have some restrictions, though. Being reserved seating, they said we had a ninety minute limit at our table. When the guy escorted us up to the roof, he said they'd be giving us a five-minute heads up before our 90 minutes were up. Except, they did not appear to have been booked at capacity, so even though we still left not long after our 90 minutes were up, no one ever did come and tell us we would be need to be leaving soon.
The other thing was what is now extremely common: contactless ordering, where you bring up the menu on your phone using a QR code posted at your table. This was the most sophisticated use of it I had seen to date, however, as it even had QR codes specific to each table, which meant that it wasn't just to prevent us from handling actual menus, but to order and pay online, with a code to indicate to servers which table to bring the orders to. I wound up ordering a second drink because the first one was overwhelmed with bitters. Shobhit had insisted I get one of their specialty drinks because they specialize in mezcal drinks. I even did this with the margarita I ordered as my second drink, only for us to discover that the mezcal itself was what gave both drinks an incredibly strong smoky flavor. Note to self! I actually usually really like smoked flavoring (Shobhit hates it under all circumstances), but . . . in a watermelon martini? Who the fuck wants smoked watermelon? Or smoked lime margarita, for that matter? I absolutely intend to go back there sometime, but I will never get another mezcal drink.
Anyway, it was great fun having Happy Hour with Laney on Friday evening, and sitting up on that rooftop deck was the best. They did seat us at one of the long tables under the covered area at first, and even in an otherwise open-air space, Laney was not comfortable with that, and asked that we be sat in one of the outer tables closer to the open air. We all would have totally preferred the completely uncovered area on the west side of the deck, where there is also lovely views of the tops of downtown skyscrapers, but the table they did move us to, over by the wall, was technically still covered yet close enough.
Laney and I still have one more September Happy Hour scheduled, originally set for Friday this week but she had a conflict and asked some time ago to move it to Thursday, which makes it all of six days after our last one. Fine by me! For this one we'll go back to La Cocina Oaxaqueña yet again, our second time this summer but also our last one before she goes back to traveling the country again. They don't do reservations and they have no time limit so we should have time to hang out longer if we so choose. Shobhit already said he might sit that one out (he's not sure yet if his last Project Management class is tonight or Thursday) just so that Laney and I can hang out as long as we want without him pressuring me to leave after an hour, which I genuinely appreciate.
Beyond Friday, we skip Saturday—which, as I said, I already posted about—and move to Sunday, which was when Shobhit and I drove up to Tulalip to see Karen and Dave's new property on which they are to have a second house built over the next few years. Currently it's just a plot of land, with only a bit of work done on it thus far (tamping down the gravel to make it easier for Karen and Anita to push their wheelchairs over; bringing in a shed to hold supplies that currently mostly include lawn chairs and a table for just the purposes of things like this visit).
Shobhit had made a pretty large number of samosas for Gina's birthday party on Saturday, and at my suggestion, he made another, smaller batch for Karen, Dave and Anita on Sunday; we brought a total of 8. Shobhit decided not to eat any this time, but I had one, which left 7 for the three of them to share. I also brought a nice batch of chai to drink. For their part, Karen brought tortilla chips and mango salsa; feta orzo pasta salad; deviled eggs; and chocolate cake. It was quite the tasty spread, everything available something I liked a lot.
It was just under an hour drive up there, but later turned into just over an hour because we stopped for gas at the Costco in Everett. When we arrived, using a code Karen provided to get us through the gate into the small community (which Dave later explained was installed because some kids had caught wind of the easy access to an open, common space near the water where they were going down to get high), Dave was in the process of laying temporary water piping to get fresh water up to the spot where their house will eventually be. He actually got that done in the middle of our visit, even bringing the hose up to near our table and demonstrating the running water. Both Karen and Anita talked about how Dave had initially been hesitant to the idea of buying new property on which to build a new house, but he loves being busy with work like this, and evidently he's happy as a clam with it now.
Speaking of Anita, I wasn't sure how long it had been since we had actually seen her, but it felt like it had bee a while. At first I tried to say I had not seen Karen in person since before the pandemic, and even Anita was like "Yes you have!" and reminded me of our meeting at Saint Edward State Park for my Birth Week—uh, duh. But! I was still certain that I had not seen Anita since before the pandemic (or Dave, for that matter, come to think of it, aside from occasional greetings while on FaceTime with Karen), and on that count she agreed. I even went to see when was the last time I took any pictures with Anita in them: that had been in 2018—again, during my Birth Week. She would have been about 3/4 of the way through college then; she just recently landed a job on the Eastside teaching elementary school children. Anyway, I'm not 100% certain of this, but close: that probably was indeed the last time we saw Anita. She's so grown up now, even at age 24, she has a shocking amount of gray in her hair. I even brought it up. Hey in my defense, I prefaced it by saying, "I'm going to say something really rude now." She was just like, "Go for it!" Apparently she's had noticeable gray since high school (!) but she used to dye it.
(Just a brief review of their family makeup: Anita was born in India and was adopted as a little girl by Karen and Dave. She was quite little when I first met her, in the late aughts. I met Karen in 2005 in Hindi class, and we used to meet frequently in an attempt to practice our Hindi, which really didn't stick on either of our parts. But we both had taken the class for similar reasons: to connect with the cultural background of a family member—Anita in her case; Shobhit in my case. Karen and I became such good friends that by 2013 she volunteered to be the wedding planner when Shobhit and I got married.)
Anyway, a good chunk of our visit up there, which lasted a solid three hours, was Dave giving us a property tour and also a tour of the small neighborhood, which includes about 11 houses (Karen and Dave's will be the 12th, I think). Apparently one of these neighbors once owned the property they purchased, and had plans to build on it themselves, but life circumstances changed in some way that prompted them to sell the property instead.
I took 11 photos while we were there, including the panorama shot in the middle of this post (just above), and the shot of everyone else around the table below. I also took a couple of shots from the freeway on the way up there, of the Lynnwood extension Light Rail track (set to open 2023) still under construction; plus three screenshots of Google Maps satellite views of the property. With the inclusion of a collage I made of all three screenshots put together, I then had a full photo album for the day on Flickr, with a good 17 shots in it.
The most interesting of the satellite shots, to me, is the one showing the property lines, which I screenshot off the Zillow page for the property. Curiously, Arcadia Road, which runs into the neighborhood and to all of its houses, technically passes through their property at both its southwest and southeast corners. Dave quipped about how they could put up a barrier of they wanted and charge people for entry, but they won't do that because they're nice people.
He took us down to the neighborhood's common area by the shrubbery that is quite close to the waterline, where the view (see in the above panorama shot) is spectacular. On the way back, we said hi to one of their new neighbors, a guy in a house with a fantastic view of both the common space and the Puget Sound beyond it. He was super tall, but also somewhat elderly, so when he brought up how hard it is to fit in tight spaces on airplanes and that being the reason he didn't take an opportunity he once had to attend a funeral in India, I asked how tall he was: 6'4" he said. But, when he was younger, he said he was just shy of 6'7"! Holy shit.
None of us asked him if he played basketball. When that came up with Karen and Anita later, we all agreed that was probably for the best, because we can bet the guy has gotten that question constantly all his life.
Anyway. The view from Karen and Dave's property itself is quite lovely, from up on a hill overlooking the semi-open space with just a few trees and then the Puget Sound beyond. I also found it interesting that three different land masses are seen across the water from that view, all of them islands: Hat Island to the southwest; Camano Island to the northwest; and Whidbey Island due west in the distance beyond them.
Not long after Shobhit and I got back home after that visit Sunday afternoon, we spent the evening over FaceTime with Gabriel and Lea watching The Fate of the Furious. This one was as ridiculous as ever, once again turning former villains into heroes—Shobhit joked that by the next one Charlize Theron's character will be working with Dom and the gang just like Hobbs does this time. I mean, whatever. I know Gabriel doesn't want to watch the Hobbs & Shaw movie but I fully intend to now. This movie did have a fun sequence with Hobbs in a gunfight while holding a baby in a car set with headphones on its head, although I had to note that there was an entire movie of that already once, the 2007 movie Shoot 'Em Up with Clive Owen.
It was still a fun sequence, though. Although my favorite was when Charlize Theron says "Make it rain!" and they hack all the electric cars on the top floor of a tall parking garage and make them all run right through the windows and out onto the street. It wasn't quite as great as the ridiculous skyscraper-jump sequence in Furious 7 but it was kind of close.
As for yesterday . . . it was Labor Day; I had the day off; but there was no socializing really. Shobhit and I watched both of the DVD movies I had checked out of the library, even though he had recently watched most of both of them airing on TV, apparently. The first was San Andreas, which was as utterly ridiculous as I expected; the second was Spider-Man: Far From Home, which I quite enjoyed, in spite of its own fair share of CGI busy-ness—although the plotting made an unusually good excuse for it. I had been thinking about how Spider-Man movies typically have the worst, dumbest supervillains, and then this movie but a fresh, much more satisfying spin on that.
The only time Shobhit and I left home yesterday was to do some walking errands, from QFC to Bartell Drugs to Pacific Supply. We got outside a little bit, I guess.
And! That brings us to this morning. I had my every-three-months doctor follow-up with Dr. Brandon, necessary in order to maintain my Descovy prescription. But, I did bring up some pressure I had been feeling in my chest for several weeks, never severe or painful but certainly new. Dr. Brandon was kind of alarmed at first, telling me this could be an early sign of heart disease, which, ironically, just about gave me a heart attack. But, then when I gave him more detail, he told me that, especially considering how very healthy I am otherwise, it's more likely acid reflux! Really? What a pain in the ass, and who knew there were so many ways acid reflux can manifest? It's so much more than just heartburn. Shobhit is on an OTC medication for the same thing but which otherwise makes him cough a lot; we're going to have me try taking it for a few weeks, and if the pressure in my chest goes away, we'll know that's what it was. If not, I suppose there will be other steps to take. But it's probably this, he says.
Still, just to be sure, he had me take an EKG test before I left. I had never had that done before. This lady came in and affixed 12 different sticky things to my chest, arms and legs, affixed cords from a machine to all of them, and then as she put it, "took a picture." Dr. Brandon said he'd only call me about it if he finds something of concern in the results, which he doesn't expect. Still, it made for an unusually involved visit to the doctor, as I then went down to the 6th floor for my requisite blood draw for STI screening; then across the skybridge on the 5th floor to the building across the street and down to the first floor at the Athsma/Allergy Injection Room for my second of three HPV vaccine shots. That one kind of hurt going in. The same guy who had given me the first shot gave it to me this time.
And then I rode my bike the rest of the way to work, and here I am.
[posted 12:14 pm]