— पांच हजार चार सौ उन्नीस —
As of today, Shobhit and I have been legally married for ten years.
It feels important to note that, given a choice, multiple people currently on the United States Supreme Court would overturn the landmark decisions—in 2012 in Washington State; in 2015 at the federal level—that made that possible. The published opinion on the case that overturned
Roe v. Wade makes this explicitly clear.
Which is to say: unlike straight couples in this country, this is not something I have the privilege of taking for granted. (Neither is it, honestly, for intreractial marriages, even straight ones. That may seem far fetched, but it's literally the direction in which our current Supreme Court has leaned. And there was a time when we all basically assumed abortion would be a legal right forever. That was a mistake.) I think about this a lot more now than I used to, because frankly, I have to. And that part really sucks.
Also: as of today, Shobhit and I have been together for
nineteen years. Although "together" is a relative term; maybe it would be more accurate to say we've been fully and officially
together since August 28, 2004—when we
first moved in together. We had our first date 19 years ago today, though, and until the wedding we had on this same date in 2013, that was always the anniversary date we celebrated. So, we retroactively say we've been "together" since then. God knows I haven't been in a relationship with anyone else.
It's strange how getting older skews your perception of time. I was reading some of that old 2004 blog post about the move in with Shobhit, which was when I switched my email account from Earthlink to Comcast (the latter still being my primary personal account, although I use Gmail relatively extensively as well, being the account from which I send my photo travelogues). In it I wrote about how attached I had been to the Earthlink account, which I'd had "for years"—technically true, even two is plural, but it was from 1998 through 2004: six years. These days, six years can fly by. I've had the Comcast email address (and thus been a Comcast / Xfinity customer) now for as long as I have been with Shobhit: nineteen years.
Can you believe this shit?
— पांच हजार चार सौ उन्नीस —
— पांच हजार चार सौ उन्नीस —
Yesterday Shobhit had a candidate forum at KEXP by Seattle Center, which was very conveniently located for me to walk to.
Yesterday was also the
twenty-fifth anniversary of my move from Pullman to Seattle, and I made the spur-of-the-moment decision to edit together
a video of Danielle helping me move across the state that day, truncating about 18 minutes of total video footage down to about seven.
I did it all on my phone. This was the first time I did a project like this kind of on the go, not at home. I didn't even have access to the original files on my external hard drive, but could download copies to my phone from my Flickr account (two separate files). I had to wait several minutes at KEXP before the event started, and I finished up the video while I was there. I'm quite happy with it, actually.
The event itself went okay, although Shobhit did provide one answer I thought was bonkers, the most bonkers he's given to any answer so far: the moderator asked, "If your campaign had a them song, what would it be?" Shobhit replied, "If not the song from 'Titanic,' then maybe, 'Like a Virgin.'"
Like a Virgin? For a
political campaign?
When I brought this up with Shobhit later, and he said he was kind of broadsided by the question and it was what he could come up with quickly. He said the first songs that came to mind. I suppose, actually, you could do some mental gynmastics to make "Like a Virgin" relevant to a political campaign, but it would be a stretch. Right now I'm remembering Bill Clinton's use of Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" for his 1992 presidential campaign. That choice was perfect: "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow / Don't stop, it'll soon be here / It'll be better than before." Those lyrics make sense.
Anyway. The forum started at 5:30 and lasted a couple of hours. Shobhit did a combination of walking and bussing to the event, which gave him a few points when the panel was all asked how they got to the event. Also, after this forum, the candidate who is my least favorite has become my least-favorite by a mile, and the candidate I like the best (besides Shobhit, of course) has gotten even better in my estimation, being the one I feel consistently can answer questions with authority from learned knowledge as well as both lived and professional experience. Neither of them are front-runners. I suppose that's just typically the way it goes.
We got home around 8:00. Had some leftovers for dinner, and watched a few episodes of
Platonic on Apple TV+. Now we're all caught up.
— पांच हजार चार सौ उन्नीस —
[posted 12:33 pm]
