— पांच हजार पांच सौ सोलह —
Holy shit, did I have an eventful weekend.
I had so much shit going on that I didn't even get the living room decorated for Christmas until last night. Under normal circumstances I would do that the day after Thanksgiving, typically the Saturday after Thanksgiving at the latest.
But, of course, Friday was spent flying home from LAX after driving there from Palm Springs—we left Faith's house at about a quarter till 8 a.m., and were at our condo in Seattle shortly after 6 p.m. I managed to get
the travelogue of the entire trip finished, and even posted to this blog, while we were still at LAX. This was now my second major trip bringing the MacBook Pro laptop along, and holy shit what a difference that makes. I can be so much more efficient with my time with it, that laptop is easily the best investment I have made in years.
I had actually contemplated posting very brief, daily blog updates while we were in Palm Springs. I would have liked to. But, I just never thought about it. I mean, I
also brought along a library book I was convinced I would finish on the trip, and the only times I ever even picked it up to read was on the plane down there and on the plane back.
Still, I might have managed some more personal details of the trip than just the broad overview of the travelogue. For example: our first time outside the car in Joshua Tree National Park, Shivy said,
"I feel like I'm in a movie. The landscape is so different here." She's from Delhi (like Shobhit), a concrete jungle to such an extent that it makes
Los Angeles look like a natural environment. She had actually been to L.A. before, visiting friends—and indeed had to stay with them a few extra days last year when her flight on Christmas Eve got canceled due to our ice storm—but, evidently, she had never been out in the middle of a desert, let alone in the American Southwest.
I would have had a great time last week regardless, but having Shivy with us really enhanced the trip. It was so clear that she was having a ton of fun. That was especially the case
at WildLights, but it was clear no matter what we did. She was never bored and never not interested in whatever was going on.
Her flight departed LAX for D.C. about an hour before our flight to Seattle departed. By the time we got home, I spent time unpacking, and although I had done a lot of photo editing, and even most photos had been uploaded to Flickr, I still had a few more to do. There just wasn't any time for decorating on Friday—which was also the day of the Lighting of the Tree Ceremony at Westlake Center, which I always attend if I am home. Our Light Rail train reached Westlake Station in the middle of the event, and I even saw the crowd briefly from a block away as we made our way over to Pike to catch the #11 bus. Theoretically we could have walked over to watch some of it, but we had bags and suitcases and that was a thick crowd, and we were eager to get home. I'll see the event again next year, probably.
— पांच हजार पांच सौ सोलह —
On Saturday, I saw not one, not two, but
three movies. Again: I might have found the time to finish decorating on Saturday night, but that turned out to be the only certain time I could schedule to take myself to see the Nicolas Cage I really wanted to see,
Dream Scenario. It was good enough, but once I saw it, I discovered that had I missed it, I wouldn't have missed out on much.
And before that, Laney and I had a Braeburn Condos double feature scheduled. Back when she still lived in Renton, we tended to start these at 1:00. Now that she only has to walk from six blocks away, we tend to start at 12:30. I had already brought the boxes of Christmas decorations up from the storage unit in the garage downstairs the week before last, the same day I brought up the suitcases. I had pulled them out to the living room and gotten just a few of the strands of Christmas lights up in the morning. But, Shobhit also wanted to go do some grocery shopping at QFC, so that took up a good portion of the morning Saturday instead. I got back just in time to make myself some spiked hot apple cider and meet Laney downstairs.
We watched
Repo Man and
The Nice Guys. Laney wanted me to see the former; I wanted her to see the latter—we've had this double feature planned for two or three months now, since before
The Nice Guys was coincidentally chosen for our Action Movie Night on October 18. When I told Laney about that she suggested we watch something different at our November 25 double feature, and I was like, no! I don't care if I just watched it a month before, I really wanted her to see this movie.
And she did really enjoy it. As did I, even having seen it again so recently. I've now seen that movie at least four times.
Laney and I didn't waste much time getting from one movie to the next, which allowed us to finish well in time for me to get back upstairs and have a quick dinner, which Shobhit had prepared, before heading back out to Light Rail to go see
Dream Scenario at 6:30 in the U District.
Shobhit and I usually watch the two episodes of
As Time Goes By that airs on PBS every Saturday night, but, annoyingly but probably due to the holiday weekend, they didn't air them this weekend. However, we still hadn't watched the episodes from
last Saturday, as I keep the show DVRed so we don't miss anything, so we made it more like a typical Saturday evening after all.
I was up quite unusually late Saturday night. My Health app says I was in bed at 12:25. What was I even doing that late? I can't quite remember. The movie was at 6:30, 100 minute run time, I would have been home around 8:45, probably spent the next hour or so on my review, it must have been around 11:00 when we finished watching
As Time Goes By. I didn't even get to any more of the decorating that night, as I recall. I must have been working on my budget or something. I had a cup of tea to finish.
— पांच हजार पांच सौ सोलह —
Sunday, yesterday, wound up no less packed with activity, for a multitude of reasons.
First: yet another movie. This one was
Napoleon, was at 11:45 a.m. at Pacific Place downtown, again with Laney, and this time Shobhit joined us. This movie was an even bigger disappointment than
Dream Scenario had been, and was nearly three hours long. All three of us agreed that the movie wasn't great. And that sucked up most of all of our afternoon.
Before the movie, though, Shobhit wanted to go buy a lottery ticket. He usually likes to go to the QFC at Broadway Market, but he compromised and went to the QFC at Broadway and Pike instead, because I wanted to go to Bartell Drugs and look for some Christmas lights—too many of the bulbs on some of my strands had burnt out.
I had forgotten that
a bunch of Bartell Drug stores are closing down, thanks to Rite-Aid, which had bought Bartells, going bankrupt. Way to fuck over a longstanding local institution, assholes! This is going to leave only Walgreens on Broadway and Pine, a chain of pharmacy stores that has always been reliable only in never stocking what I want or need, as a pharmacy near me.
What I didn't realize is that the Bartell Drugs on Union, in the complex right above the QFC, is not only also closing, but they close
on Tuesday—tomorrow! Tons of merchandise was half off, and although it truly bums me out that the store is closing, we got some amazing deals out of it. One-time amazing deals, of course, but it was nice for a day. Shobhit was downright giddy, wanting to buy way too many things just because they were practically giving them away. Shobhit, who complains about having too much "stuff" in our home. That conviction goes out the window in the face of a good deal.
I got two rolls of gift wrap for a few bucks each. Best of all, I got
three tubes of the mascara I like, which has a regular shelf price of $12.19, for $3.02 each. Damn.
We met at Laney's to walk with her to the movie together, but she invited Shobhit up to see her apartment now that she's all unpacked. He was duly impressed with it. We also took the opportunity to leave our Bartell Drugs shopping bags at her apartment so we could just pick them up again on our way back home.
— पांच हजार पांच सौ सोलह —
— पांच हजार पांच सौ सोलह —
We did even more after the movie, though. Shobhit suggested we all go stroll through Pike Place Market, which he often likes to do if we're close by. I kind of expected Laney to decline the extra walking, but somewhat to my surprise, she was happy to do it. I think part of it might be that she's lately been kind of bummed that Shobhit keeps thinking he isn't welcome to join us, so she wants to make him feel welcome again.
Laney wanted to find the wind-up toy store she knew about at the Market. She even found it on Google, and we were going through the Market looking for it. We stopped in front of a nut shop, and Laney asked the guy there. He was like, "That closed about a decade ago." Oh. Jesus. Well, so much for that!
We walked to the north end of the market, where Shobhit got a turkish coffee, and then we walked back looking for the store that didn't actually exist. We did buy a quarter pound of delicious warm cashews from that nut vendor though. Damn, they were good. We should have saved some for the stir fry Shobhit and I later had for dinner, but we ate them all.
We were headed back to the bus, and discussing the plan to return downtown for the Seattle Festival of Trees at the Fairmont Hotel with Alexia after work today—I had already had plans to go the opening day on Saturday November 18, which I wound up canceling due to my cold. Laney had been planning to join then as well, but was contemplating now coming with Alexia and me. But, Laney was thinking after all her walking today, she would skip the walk today. And when we realized we were only a couple of blocks away, so we all decided to go ahead and walk down there right then.
That alone yielded 43 shots for this year's
Seattle Festival of Trees photo album—already more than
I got last year, and I'll likely take a few more this evening. Had we gone on the 18th as planned, I still would have been coming back with Alexia tonight anyway. I figure she might find some photogenic details I missed yesterday. We were only there about half an hour.
We actually tried to find a bus back, but the schedules didn't align. Laney decided she was fine walking back to her place, so that's what we did. Shobhit and I grabbed our Bartell Drugs bags, and although he really wanted to use his transfer to ride a #11 the rest of the way up Pine to our building, it was clear we could get home faster just walking, and so that's what we did.
Shobhit added more things to do in our day by going to Pike Place and then the Festival of Trees after the movie, but I can't really complain because I was the one who wanted to go to Costco, which we then got into the car and did next. We were out anyway so we also stopped by the Columbia City PCC on the way back. I found myself thinking about when Gabriel and Lea lived in an apartment about half a block from there, for a year or so. They moved from there to their current house in Federal Way in 2020.
Anyway. I wanted to go to Costco so I could
finally replace my shot-to-shit Apple AirPods. Shobhit insisted I wait until Black Friday. The best "deal" I could find was that the 2 years of Apple Care was $6 cheaper at Costco than anywhere else. The base price of 3rd-generation AirPods, $139.99, was the same no matter where I looked: Apple Store; Best Buy; Amazon; Costco. (I see them listed online at Apple.com today for $169, so maybe I did get a deal across the board yesterday??) I nearly ordered them from Amazon, but when I saw I could get the two years of Apple Care from Costco at $22.99 rather than the $29.99 I saw it listed as everywhere else, I decided every dollar counts and so we went to Costco. We also got a few groceries while I was there.
It sure is nice to have AirPods again that actually last. That last pair was dying after only thirty to forty minutes of continuous play.
— पांच हजार पांच सौ सोलह —
We finally got back home, and I posted my review for
Napoleon—which, incidentally, I wrote in the Notes app on my phone while in the car, driving to and from Costco. This was one way to be efficient, and it really did save me some time. It also resulted in a review avout 450 words long—a good 200 words or so shorter than usual—but, when I reconsidered it on my actual computer later, I decided I really had nothing more to say about that movie. So, I didn't have the review to write once we got home. I just had to find the image to include, and post it to my blog.
Shobhit was well into making the aforementioned stir fry dinner when I was done, and I helped a bit from then on. Once it was done, I added peanut sauce from the bottle I just got at PCC, making it even more tasty. If only we had saved some of those warm cashews!
We sat down to eat while we watched this week's episode of
The Gilded Age on HBO Max.
While that was still playing,
finally, I had some time to get some real work finished on the Christmas decorations.
Shobhit has been in rare form for at least the past week, consistently chipper and engaged, in a kind of good mood not often seen with him. Maybe he's having a manic episode, I don't know. I even mentioned it to Laney when we were all out yesterday, and she had noticed it as well. Aside from the disappointment of the movie, as we were milling about downtown, he was clearly just having a good time. It was nice.
And: it extended to the Christmas decorating, which Shobhit has never taken such an active interest in before. To be fair, on more than one year in the past, while I was decorating the tree, he's asked, "Do you need any help?" His tone then would indicate he was just being polite though, and he didn't have any real interest, so I would say: nope.
Last night, though, when I was wrapping Christmas lights around the Christmas Tree, Shobhit just got up and started helping, without even asking if I needed it. I got a picture of him wrapping lights on the tree that instantly became a Christmas memory I think I will always cherish. I even got a
funny shot of him pretending to be electrocuted by a ball of lights, which amused me so much I saved the Live Photo as a
one-second video.
He sat back down once the lights were wrapped, and left me to hanging the ornaments, but that was fine. He'd already been far more actively engaged than he typically is with this, especially considering how much time he's spent in the past bitching about the lights being on at all.
I first got back to the Christmas decorating last night at around 9:00, and it was an hour later when I finished. With new white Christmas lights from Bartell Drugs, I now had exclusively white lights around the windows, the middle of which framed the Christmas Tree with the multicolored lights on it. I duplicated my new idea from last year of setting the tree atop a wooden board on a tall chair set behind the love seat, rather than rearranging the furniture as I have in years past. This will probably be what I continue to do for the foreseeale future.
I still have a full set of white lights, and a new set of multicolored lights, which I may yet find a new place to hang up—amazingly, that being something Shobhit suggested. I may consider the bay windows in the bedroom. I already also have two new outdoor strands of multicolored lights
draped across the balcony.
It was 10:00 by the time I was finally done with all of that last night, and I was still up another hour—because I suddenly realized I still hadn't processed and uploaded the photos from the Seattle Festival of Trees, and now also the photos of the Christmas decorations. I had a lot of tags to apply particularly to photos of the Festival of Trees, having made note of the name of each individual tree. So, that took me a while.
I was finally in bed
last night at 11:06—and then, for the first time in ten days, I was up at 5:15 this morning. That was harder than usual, but I got over it quickly. I have plenty of backlog at work, as predicted, but I'm not worried about it. I had a great week off, and I'm also happy to be back at work. Life is nice! I have to give Shobhit some credit here because he's really made it even nicer than usual the past several days.
— पांच हजार पांच सौ सोलह —
Karen texted me shortly before noon today to confirm our Zoom lunch—I had already seen that on my Google Calendar, and still I managed to space it, until she texted me. Oops!
Then, for some reason, all morning since about 7:08, I don't seem to be receiving any emails. Karen sent me the Zoom invite three times and I never got it until she forwarded it to my Gmail. I even sent a test email to myself. Nothing. What the hell, Xfinity?
Well, we got connected in due time anyway. We talked about how much fun I had last week. I never even mentioned the cold I had for most of the week, which I'm just about over now. (I did covid test both the Saturday before we left for California, and again this past Saturday. Both negative, thankfully.) We talked a lot about our respective Thanksgiving dinners—she had about 12 people for her dinner; there were 5 at ours. There were four different pie options at both dinners, which cracked me up. In Palm Springs, there was very nearly an entire pie for every single person.
We also established that we'll both be on PTO when we have a lunch scheduled on Friday, December 22. I had thought we would meet at a place near her office, now we can just go wherever the hell we want. Finally I threw out, "We could even go to Saffron Grill!" She gave a kind of delightfully surprised look and said, "Ooh, that could work!" So, now it's settled.
And now I need to get back to today's work.
— पांच हजार पांच सौ सोलह —
[posted 1:09 pm]
