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I had no social engagements and no movies planned last night—the first day with neither thing since Tuesday October 24, a solid two weeks prior! Shobhit got off work at 5:00, so he suggested I walk up Elliott and then 15th Avenue to meet him after work instead of heading straight home, so we could then drive directly down to Costco.
I got a call from Gabriel in the car on the way there, and Shobhit was suddenly obsessed with whether Gabriel knew the price of Costco gas down in Federal Way. He wouldn't shut up about it. As I suspected, Gabriel had no idea. Furthermore, he went out of his way to note that he has never once in his life even thought about comparative gas prices, and just gets gas at whatever is the nearest station. "I'm okay paying ten cents more," he said, like a
president being asked about the price of milk. Later when we were on our way home, we passed by a Shell station charging $5.17 per gallon. Shobhit had paid $4.19 at Costco. I'd call that more than worth going out of our way for. I guess Gabriel just isn't interested in saving money.
Gabriel also went on and on about how insanley long the lines of cars are at Costco gas stations. We arrived and drove right up to a pump.
Anyway! Then we did a bit of shopping. We didn't buy a lot, but Shobhit sure was a good mood in there. "You're just like your mother," I said. "Having a blast just browsing through grocery aisle." Shobhit then tried to say it was one of the few ways we ever get to spend quality time together, aside from just watching TV at home, which I don't really buy. We do other things too, and this Saturday we'll be doing the Diwali Featival at Seattle Center, the second cultural festival we'll have gone to there in as many months. Sometimes I think Shobhit's biggest issue is just a lack of imagination. That and he wants to convince himself his entire life is just him being put upon—something he clearly forgets when he's, say, grocery shopping at Costco, having a grand old time.
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— पांच हजार पांच सौ आठ —
We drove home and then made frozen pizza for dinner. Or, I did. I chopped the vegetables to add as toppings. While the pizza was baking, I finalized my calendar templates at Shutterfly, and placed the final order for the year: $391.77 was the damage. Combine that with the order I had already previously placed to ship one to Uncle David and Mary Ann, and we have a total calendar cost this year of $449.01. That's a total of 16 calendars, which thus cost me an average of $28.06 each. That includes shipping, which varied depending on the size of the shipment or the destination, but $28.06 is the average.
It should be noted, though, that for once that's the end of it—no additional costs of taking calendars shipped to my address first, to the post office to mail again to my brother and his children. Back in 2021, my total order of 15 calendars came to $417.57, but when I added the post office costs to ship to Uncle David and Mary Ann—the last time I did so—the total combined cost went up to $500.66. Last year was cheaper ($389.43 combined cost) but I am deeply grateful that Shutterfly this year made it so much easier to place the orders than Costco ever did: I didn't even have to make the order in separate transactions, and could select separate shipping addresses by calendar after they were placed in the cart. I'm still disappointed that Shutterfly doesn't make calendars quite as large in size as Costco (and before them, Apple) did, but with that one exception, absolutely everything else about the shopping experience at Shutterfly was far better and smoother than any of these orders have been in years past.
I'm glad it's done, anyway. We stopped at the Bartell Drugs on Broadway and Pike on the way home, where they had some beautiful gift wrap on sale. So, I got two tubes of that. All I have left to do now with Calendars is gift wrap the ones that get sent to me. The ones getting shipped direct will apparently come to them by the end of this week or the beginning of the next, which is going to result in some people getting them far earlier than ever, but I can live with that. I don't want to wait until Christmas rushes night delay orders or something.
Ever since we were told at work last year that we would no longer have the option of cashing out PTO, which is what I had been using to cover the cost of these Christmas costs (mostly calendars) for years and years, I now have a budgeted line item for each paycheck throughout the year to that by November, I'll have budgeted $500 for calendars and Christmas shopping, and a separate $300 for Christmas events. I've already gotten tickets to a Dina Martina show with Laney and to an Argosy Christmas cruise with Alexia, so now that the calendars were ordered, I spent a fair amount of time updating my budget spreadsheet. Shobhit wanted to look at it, couldn't understand the system I used, and then we wound up screaming at each other. Fun! Wait, the screaming happened after we go to talking about my order from Amazon not getting delivered for a week because their new driver is apparently an idiot. It doesn't matter. Although I do still need to figure out how the hell to get those morons at UPS to get the delivery to me.
We never did watch anything together, which was hardly surprising as it was Election Day. As usual it was generally all Shobhit wanted to talk about. I'm certainly happy to see Ohio voted for constitutional abortion protection. Too bad we can't seem to get our shit together on that nationally.
Anyway, this was what filled up my evening last night. Let's just say it had its ups and downs.
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[posted 12:21 pm]
