— पांच हजार दो सौ सत्तानवे —
So yesterday I left work at 1:00, took transit so I could read while heading home and thus finished my library book along the way (but without having to walk the whole way in
that god awful air), and parked the car out on the street so Danielle could use our spot in the garage. I even got a spectacular spot, on my building's side of the street only two spaces down from the garage door.
The only real effort was parallel parking inside a right space. Shobhit never would have even attempted it. But I made it! Even that effort was for naught, though, because I had told her we needed to catch a bus downtown at 2:39, and she called to tell me "I'm doing that Danielle thing again, and I'm running late. My GPS says I'll get there at 2:50." Uh. No, that won't work.
Granted, the boat we needed didn't leave until 3:20, and it's entirely possible a #12 bus still could have gotten us there on time. But by then we'd have only one possible bus to make it on, and we'd then be running the risk of a delayed bus, which happens frequently.
I wound up taking the bus myself and just meeting her down there. She just paid for street parking. It was in a spot with a two hour limit, and it wouldn't even let her add money to it after two hours while we were in Kingston, but whatever. She decided to risk it and she was fine. She didn't get a ticket.
One of these days I'm just going to give her a time we need to meet that's, like, half an hour earlier than the time we really need to meet. Then she'll inevitably be half an hour late and then just make it on time. Of course, I'd only get away with this once; if she catches wind that I'm giving her a bogus time then she won't take it seriously and will just be late anyway.
She told me more than once she thinks there's something "seriously wrong" with her brain. It's not that she deliberately waited until the last minute; I do believe that. She had a hike with another friend planned for earlier in the day, which she canceled because of the air quality. And then, taking advantage of unexpectedly free time at home, she simply lost track of the time before she realized she needed to leave, and also didn't properly factor in traffic. All honest mistakes.
In the end, we made it to Pier 50 with plenty of time. Even taking a few extra minutes for her to figure out the admittedly very non-intuitive ticket kiosk was fine.
The only disappointment, honestly, was that I had long expected this to be a lovely scenic boat ride up the middle of Puget Sound from downtown Seattle to Kingston—the longest passenger-only ferry route in the region—and instead, it was still a nice time hanging out with one of my best friends, but scenic? The smoke was so thick that it was like boating through a heavy fog.
The view to the west from the Seattle ferry terminal was legitimately eerie, because Puget Sound isn't
that wide—about ten miles at its maximum width—and usually you can easily see the Olympic Peninsula and the Olympic Mountains across the water, but now you could see nothing but water and smoke. It felt like we were literally staring out at the ocean.
— पांच हजार दो सौ सत्तानवे —
— पांच हजार दो सौ सत्तानवे —
We still had a good time, though. We met when we did so that we could take the earliest ferry after I worked at least half a day, but the latest ferry that would give us sufficient time to hang out in Kingston: just under two hours. The 3:20 ferry out of Seattle arrives in Kingston at 3:59; the last ferry out of Kingston left at 5:55.
We walked off the ferry, and just meandered through the very small downtown of this very small town of about 2,000 people—it clearly exists mostly as a stopping point for people on ferries ultimately traveling to some other place. This is also the western end of the Edmonds-Kingston ferry, where people largely commute between the northern end of metropolitan Seattle and the northern half of the Olympic Peninsula.
Still, it was a charming town; I got more photos out of the visit than I expected—
a dedicated photo album of 25 shots. Granted, seven of those shots (nearly a third) were at The Grub Hut alone, that being the place we settled on for dinner. I had pulled up Yelp to see what places had high ratings; this was a burger place with an average of four out of five stars, and they offered a veggie patty for any of their burgers. They also had several hilarious small posters in their bathroom, and I love their website name: peaceloveandgrub.com. Also, the burgers were very good.
Danielle wound up committing to some extra hours at work later in the evening, so once the ferry returned to Seattle's Pier 50 at 6:34, she just went back to her car parked nearby and drove back to Renton. This worked out better for her as she didn't have to bus back to my place and then drive home from another couple of miles further away. All told, we must have hung out all of about three and a half hours. Whatever works! I've gotten to hang out with her very seldom this year; I did see her last just last month, on September 11, but I hadn't hung out with her before that since May.
She's lost a lot of weight, close to 30 lbs. All she's done is eat less at each meal, and eat less overall. This was exactly how I did it back in 2010, right after peaking at 170 lbs . . . which is exactly what I weighed in at this morning. But, unlike Danielle who split her dinner in half to put into a to-go box, I ate my entire burger and most of my onion rings. I've made it this far today without having any snacks though, so there's that I guess!
Anyway, I barely made it on the #12 bus that was pulling up just as I got to that stop—I had to sprint halfway up the hill on that block to make it—and then I came home, where I watched this week's episode of
Andor on Disney+. Oddly, after episode 6 last year was truly spectacular, I found this week's episode 7 kind of confusing. Oh well. I still love the show.
I got on Skype with Shobhit in Delhi for a little while, as I edited and processed the day's photos.
As of this morning, it is finally raining here for the first time in four months—and our AQI is down to 18 today from 247 just yesterday. Delhi was the third-worst major city in the world for air quality yesterday, after Seattle and Portland; it's back to #1 today. And that's where Shobhit is. He was coughing a lot last night although he didn't really sound sick. He's pretty sure it's the pollution. Yuck. I'm kind of amazed his mother doesn't have more respiratory issues.
— पांच हजार दो सौ सत्तानवे —
I just had the
briefest FaceTime lunch with Karen: even though it was on my calendar, I totally spaced it; Karen did email me around 10 a.m. to confirm but it was about 12:05 before I saw the email.
I called her back, and she had to decline due to being on another call. And then she FaceTimed me back again, and was only about to chat for about fifteen minutes, if that. It may have even been closer to ten minutes. I'm still counting it! It was a scheduled social event—cut very short, but social nonetheless; it's counting as a point on the next Social Review.
Had we had more time, I would have told her about the boat ride to Kingston. As it was, since I had not replied to her email this morning, she just set about doing other things and now needs to head out to UW for a class of some kind. (Did she sign up for that between the 10 a.m. email and now? I have no idea.)
I did barely have time to tell her, though, that Shobhit's mom is very likely not coming to visit after all, because Shobhit is finding her too easily exhausted—even when she accompanies him to these legal appointments he's there for, to get shares transferred from his late father's name (he's been dead since 1990) into her name. Alternatively, he will likely go back to India for furthering this process as soon as December. It seems it's still up in the air right now whether he'll have to go before or after the holidays. I'll be relieved once it’s all settled and I no longer have to think about all this shit being up in the (smoky) air.
— पांच हजार दो सौ सत्तानवे —
[posted 12:36 pm]
