— पाँच हजार चार सौ तिरासी —
I rode my bike to work today, for the first time in about two weeks. Sometimes it's striking what a difference that small amount of time can make: the sun was only beginning to rise when I left, so even though I could see fine, I turned on the light on my bike helmet to make myself more visible to others. It was mostly light out by the time I got work, but with it also being somewhat cloudy, it was fairly dim the whole way.
I sure enjoyed it, though. And it's kind of amazing how often cycling is easily the fastest way to get somewhere in the city, depending on the distance. Traffic slows down cars. Buses make frequent stops, and too many start and end points within the geography of Seattle require transfers. I even bypassed a kid (okay, he was probably in his twenties) on a ride share scooter, who was coasting down Pine Street with an unusual amount of caution. He then bypassed me again going north on Fourth Avenue.
We've got sun in the forecast through Saturday, temperatures headed back into the seventies on both Friday and Saturday, Sunday getting right close with a forecast high of 69°. Back to rain and 61° on Monday, which I'm fine with. In the meantime, I'll probably be back to the bike commute for the rest of the week. It may be the last of it for the year.
I might have stuck with busing today, as I
finished a book I loved on the way home from work yesterday and started another book I can already tell I'm at least really going to like, and it's nice having a bit of bus time to read. But, I dilly dallied about three minutes too long this morning and was not ready in time to catch the 6:59 bus at my building this morning. The weather was decent enough, so I thought, all right, I'll get back on the bike again. And sometimes I forget how much faster that is. Taking the bus, and then walking the last mile, is a solid half-hour commute. Riding my bike takes me like 17 minutes.
I missed out on half an hour of reading, but I gained 17 minutes of riding. A fair trade.
— पाँच हजार चार सौ तिरासी —
— पाँच हजार चार सौ तिरासी —
I actually bused part of the way after work yesterday, as I had the Book Club book ready to return to the library (I actually finished
Packing for Mars on Tuesday, then finished
The House in the Cerulean Sea yesterday, a rare thing indeed) and also another book and a DVD to pick up. I then walked home from the Central Library, reading
The House in the Cerulean Sea on the way. I was on the last page when I reached Broadway.
I had leftover pizza I had intended to have for dinner last night, which I truly and completely forgot about. Shobhit had made couscous and that was on the stove, so I figured, okay, I guess I'll have that for dinner. Not my favorite, but I don't hate it; I put peanut sauce on it and it was fine. It clearly would be a healthy thing to eat more often: my weight was surprisingly down this morning.
I did kind of lose track of time, though, and at one point Shobhit called to ask me if I was walking yet, to the event we were going to. Oh, shit. I hung up, but dishes in the sink, grabbed the new novel I was reading and headed out.
We went to the Seattle City Council Districts 2, 3 and 5 "
Cultural Candidate Forum," which I hadn't even realized was
focused on cultivating and preserving local arts and culture, a theme that arguably would be more my jam than anything else the candidates could ever be summoned to talk about. So, I was indeed really glad I went.
Not a whole lot of people did. Pandemic notwithstanding, I kind of wish more people came to these things. Apparently it was livestreamed. God knows how many people actually watched at home. There was a medium-sized audience worth of chairs set up, maybe enough for, I don't know 150 people? Attendance might have been at one-quarter capacity. There were signs saying "masks encouraged" but I was one of predictably few people who wore one. Two of the candidates wore one until they got onstage, where they kept them off for the duration of the event, in which case it really nullified any time they spent in there with one on. It perhaps made certain people more comfortable during mingling time, I suppose.
District 3 is our district, and the top two from the primary election—Joy Hollingsworth and Alex Hudson—were there. Among all the primary City Council races, those two came in at
the tightest finish, Hollingsworth receiving 9,690 and 36.87% of the votes, and Hudson getting 9,601 and 36.53%. Even though Hollingsworth eeked out the #1 spot, Shobhit is convinced a majority of the voters who went with any of the other six candidates will go for Hudson in the primary and give her the win. It's easy to assume Hollingsworth will when if you attend any of these forums, because she tends to get reliably the most enthusiastic responses from the crowd to her answers to questions. That said, the crowd tends to include her vocally enthusiastic brother, and often other supporters. That's not necessarily reflective of the electorate overall.
Even beyond those two though, it was cool to get a sense of the candidates for two other districts, even though I can't vote for either of them—I can still decide which ones I
hope will win, given that they'll still be making collective decisions that affect the entire city. I sort of assumed I'd be going to a lot less of events like these once the primary was over, and that is indeed the case, but I actually wouldn't mind going to a few more events like this in the month between now and the general election in November.
Shobhit had gone to yet another forum before this one, an event that went from 4:30 to 6:30—this one had been from 7:00 to 9:00. He drove us home afterward, and that was when he reminded me of my leftover pizza. Oh, shit! I can't eat it for dinner tonight as I'm already going to be making a batch of pasta for Action Movie Night. So we split those last two (small-ish but heavily topped) slices of pizza before I went to bed—where I read my lovely new library book a bit,
Aristotle and Dante Dicover the Secrets of the Universe (on which the
very moving movie I saw a month ago was based), before finally going to sleep.
— पाँच हजार चार सौ तिरासी —
[posted 12:27 pm]
