I've already written so much today (part one of my "Christmastime in the Northwest" email; a review to the movie I took myself to see today,
The Iron Claw), I'm a little burnt out on it and hoping I can write up this post as quickly as possible, even though I need to cover three different outings yesterday.
The first: lunch with Karen. Shobhit had Thursday and Friday off this week, so he joined for everything I did yesterday, including my first in-person lunch with Kare since my Birth Week in April.
We were twenty minutes late. I kept saying it was my fault, but in retrospect, it was really both Shobhit's and my fault: we both heard one thing when the other of us said something else. For instance, I absolutely did tell him we were meeting Karen at Saffron Grill at noon. But, Shobhit heard 1:00, so he asked if we should leave at 12:30. All I heard was the "thirty" part of "12:30," when really we should have planned to leave at 11:30. Thinking he therefore had time to, he took a solo trip to Home Depot, while I was working on the aforementioned email, apparently because there was something he still needed to get for me for Christmas. What the hell kind of Christmas gift he got for me at Home Depot, I have no idea, but I'll find out tomorrow!
Shortly after he got back, it finally registered to me that it was, like, 11:55. Fuck! We were supposed to be
there at 12:00. I got a text from Karen that she got a table, and I immediately apologized profusely, said we were leaving right now, and that the ETA was 12:23 but hopefully a bit earlier because Shobhit drives like a bat out of hell. (He actually drove slower than I expected much of the time.) I later texted her,
Lunch is on us, Merry Christmas, don't argue! She replied with crying laughing emoji and said "ok!" (For the record, we planned to cover lunch even before the timing misap became clear.)
We did arrive right at about 12:20. Karen said she had a client call anyway, and was totally understanding and utterly unperturbed about it. Shobhit mentioned in the car how I'm so reliable and punctual with all my friends except, seemingly, with Karen—I somewhat regularly forget about our scheduled virtual lunches at work. He was right, and I even mentioned this to Karen shortly after we sat down. She actually said, "I tend to think of you as early." I'll take it!
We then had a fantastic lunch, one of the two dishes we all three shared being my favorite: shahi paneer. Karen let Shobhit just order for all of us, and we otherwise got vegetable kofta and garlic naan with rice. The veggie kofta was fine, the shahi paneer was delicious. I even deliberately skipped breakfast knowing I'd be eating a lot at lunch. I skipped dinner later as well, unless you want to count the hot chocolate I made.
Shobhit even asked for Prospero, the manager who is often not there when we eat at Saffron Grill, but he was there yesterday. He even posed with us when I asked to get a photo in front of the Christmas Tree on the way out. Prospero had led the catering effort when we had Saffron Grill cater our wedding in 2013. I stupidly made the mistake of telling him that was twenty years ago next year, confusing how long ago we got married with how long ago Shobhit and I had our first date. Both Shobhit and Karen immediately corrected me on that.
The lunch itself was otherwise lovely, in that it was a great visit. Karen had newer photos of the construction progress on the house she's having built in Tulalip, and we even made a tentative plan to go up to the property for another picnic sometime next summer, when the house will be more done than not. (Karen did say that whenever we go, hopefully it will be after working toilets have been installed.)
Anyway, it was great to get to see her in person, and nice to get more than just an hour to spend with her for lunch. We arrived a 12:20 and we left right after 2:00, once the photos were taken at the Saffron Grill Christmas Tree.
The evening outings were two holiday light display tours, long planned with Alexia—and Shobhit came along. When Alexia and I drove to Standwood on the day after Christmas last year, for "The Lights of Christmas," we noticed what I later figured out is called "
Tulalip Lights & Ice" at the Tulalip Casino, all these incredibly lit trees in the parking lot, seen from the freeway as we drove by—Stanwood was another 18 miles northwest of there. When I made my list of all the holiday things I wanted to do this year, I researched the Tulalip attraction, and was delighted to find it's free to go see—you just park in the parking lot, and walk around. (Only the ice skating rink has any fees, hence the "Ice" part of the event name.) They probably figure a ton of people coming will be blowing money inside the casino anyway. (We did not.)
Alexia and I agreed we would all leave at 4:30, she would drive us, and she accepted my offer of making her some hot chocolate in addition to what I made for Shobhit and for myself. We did indeed leave at 4:30, and it was an hour and 15 minutes before we actually arrived, largely due to massive backup on the freeway due to a horrible accident. Traffic was already heavy and the GPS said it was going take us an hour, so really the accident, which conveniently occurred not very far ahead of where we already were, only delayed us a further 15 minutes or so.
Once we got there, we all discovered that Tulalip Lights & Ice was absolutely worth going to. I got a solid
53-shot photo album out of it. It might very well be the most spectacular holiday lights display I have ever seen, so many deciduous trees with strings of lights along what appeared to be every single branch. It was incredibly vivid, and delightful. Alexia openly marveled at it all, multiple times, shortly after we arrived. Based on the time stamps of my photos, we spent a solid hour there. Alexia was really hungry and she ordered a taco from one of the several Native American booths at a small sort of outdoor food court that was in one spot of the parking lot.
Our next stop, then, was Olympic Manor—which Alexia and I also went to last year, except then it was
in the middle of the ice storm that hit us two days before Christmas, and was a largely harrowing experience. (It also yielded a lot of great photos of displays and lights in ice and snow, however.) Being able to return this year on a chilly but, thankfully,
dry night allowed us to explore a lot more of the neighborhood than we had managed to last year.
In all honesty, doing both Tulalip Lights & Ice and Olympic Manor in one evening was a bit much, but Alexia and I were still both really glad we did it. (Shobhit was kind of indifferent, clearly just preferring to be along for the ride to staying at home without us.) Tulalip Lights are clearly the same every year, so I don't see any need to go back to that every year. Olympic Manor, while not holding a candle to the elaborate work that goes into the Tulalip Lights, covers a far greater area of neighborhood, so I figure we can just return next year to explore further by starting where we left off.
We entered Olympic Manor at 7:40, and decided we'd seen enough for the evening at about 8:30. There is a great anecdote from our time exploring Olympic Manor last night, though, when Alexia offered to take a photo of Shobhit and me in front of a couple of lit-up candycanes.
There was a brief moment of confusion with another group who also wanted to take a photo in the same spot, while Alexia was struggling with my phone because the flash would not go off, even though I had it turned on. This would be because the candycane lights were backlighting us too much, so the phone detected no need for a flash—but then would take a photo of us as basically silhouettes because we were backlit. Then, the guy who nearly walked to pose in front of the candycanes because he thought we were done, offered to turn on the flashlight app on his phone to help light us for her. Another guy in their group, standing on the other side of Alexia, then did the same, and as a result we got two mini-spotlights flanking her as she finally was able to take a workable photo.
As I wrote when I included the photo in my
post to socials, it was a great moment of teamwork and holiday spirit.
Side note: before that shot was even taken, Alexia also got
this candid shot of Shobhit and me moving in to pose, which I love almost as much.
In the end, somewhat surprisingly, my
Olympic Manor 2023 photo album has even more shots, albeit only slightly, than the Tulalip Lights one, this one with 56.
We then drove home, thankfully with Olympic Manor being actually back in Seattle, with not very long left to drive, maybe twenty minutes. It was around 9:30 by the time I had all the to-go tumblers previously full of hot chocolate ready to be washed in the sink.
[posted 6:02 pm]
