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Great news! Shobhit and I finalized plans for our anniversary trip over the weekend last night. And it's going to cost us
way less than anticipated—in fact this will likely be a record-low cost for anything we have ever left town for.
Why? Because Valerie and Scott have a second house in Port Townsend, and they offered to let us stay there.
This really kind of made our week. Shobhit and I had decided to go get some shopping done, going to Costco and then to PCC, and I finally decided to bring up again, what we would be doing over the weekend. He confirmed he wasn't into the Portland idea, I think more than anything because of how much driving it would entail. So, I'll just have to see if Danielle wants to go maybe sometime over the summer.
We had kind of settled on Port Townsend, which Shobhit had already proposed earlier as an alternate idea. Or, maybe Whidbey Island. I was quite happy with this as another idea, actually. And, at Shobhit's suggestion, I texted Valerie to see if there was any chance she and Scott would be in Port Townsend over the weekend. Maybe we could get brunch or something.
Valerie took a few hours to respond. In the meantime, after Shobhit and I were home and had groceries put away, we spent quite a lot of time looking up hotel options on Hotels.com. A lot of places around the Olympic Peninsula and Puget Sound seemed to have decent per-night list prices, as low as around $100 per night. But it took us a while to realize we needed to be looking at the "total" for two nights that was in smaller print: a really cool place I found on Camano Island for $101 a night, for example, had a "total $375" for two nights. What the hell?
We went around and around on ideas. Shobhit even thought about maybe finding a hotel to stay at here in Seattle, something I had actually already considered, and even considered again last night, as I would love to get inside the
Hyatt Regency, now both the tallest and the largest hotel in the Pacific Northwest. But, although it would be overall cheaper, that would just entail one night away.
I got kind of stuck on getting out of town. And then, in a bid to save some of the too-much money it would take to book two nights on this short of notice, we agreed to just leave early Sunday morning for a place we would stay just one night at before coming back home on Monday. Shobhit gave up on searching earlier than I did, but then I settled on a place in Langley, closer to the southern end of Whidbet Island—and thus less time to drive to—and Shobhit agreed to it.
I wanted to add my new Apple Card to the purchase options. I only saw that Valerie finally responded to me because I had gone to where my phone was, charging in the bathroom, to get a screenshot of the card number from the Apple Wallet app, because annoyingly, none of the numbers are actually printed on the card. And that was when I saw the text from Valerie, sent all of ten minutes before:
Well darn. I'm in Bellevue this weekend. If you need a place to stay, you are welcome to stay at my place in Port Townsend.
Whaaat! I was so glad I saw that, as it was literally about two minutes before I was about to book a hotel in Langley.
And, okay, full disclosure: I won't lie, the idea of staying at Valerie's place up there had crossed both our minds. But, I told Shobhit I didn't want to ask, because I've never even been at this house before, and don't feel close enough to Valerie for it not to feel like possibly overstepping a boundary. I still texted her because I really did think we could get together for brunch or something if by chance they were going to be there. I know they go there frequently, because Uncle Imre still lives in the house two houses over (that house I have been to, although I haven't been in about twenty years).
I didn't even know how getting into the house would work, and then asked about exactly that. Turns out there's an easy way, which I won't detail here, for obvious reasons. (I don't even intend to state on my socials that we're borrowing the house; I'll just make clear we're going to Port Townsend for our anniversary trip this year. I want to be as deferential as possible. Maybe even find some kind of gift to leave behind in the house for them.)
I was pretty quick to accept the generosity, though, because I do not have a problem doing that, as a rule. Shobhit often does have a hard time accepting generosity, though, but in this case he was all about it—probably because it's going to save us around $300-$350 we'd otherwise have had to spend to stay two nights up there. Even compared to the
one night we were otherwise going to stay in Langley, that's $200 we're going to save, as that's what the night in Langley would have come to.
This is a huge help to us under our current circumstances, wanting a very scaled-back trip for our anniversary compared to other years, having just gone to Australia only three months ago; having Shobhit on sabbatical from his job for campaigning; and having less time for travel in between his other campaign commitments (of which, thankfully, he currently has none on Sunday or Monday). Last year we had an unexpectedly grand,
three-night, four-day trip to Victoria, and had already done a two-night stay in Portland
the year before. Given all the current mitigating factors, this is not only a great, workable compromise, but a true delight that we got this cost-saving favor plopped right into our laps.
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I'm just so, so much happier about it all now: we have a plan set, it's a plan I'm very happy with and really looking forward to, and it works well for both of us.
Shobhit has a
District 3 Mobility Forum tomorrow from 2 to 3:30. I will also attend. My hope is to get laundry done and packing done before we go to that, so we can head out shortly after the event.
We'll then have all day Sunday in Port Townsend, that being, I think, what Shobhit was hoping for: not to have to drive somewhere one day and drive back the very next day. Even though we'll get there in the evening tomorrow, this way we have one full day to relax on our little getaway.
I guess my boss, Gabby, and her husband regularly go to stay in Port Towsend, and she keeps raving about a movie theater they go to regularly there and which I have never been to:
The Rose Theater, and specifically
The Starlight Room, where people watch from couches. It looks magnificent. Unfortunately, a) Shobhit probably will have little interest in going to a movie; and b) I've already seen the movie playing in the Starlight Room. I actually think it's a movie Shobhit might enjoy, but we probably don't want to spend our one day out of town at a movie theater. Maybe we can get inside just to look around or something, which Gabby also suggested.
Anyway. We had no time to watch any TV last night, because the rest of our time was taken up talking about things related to Shobhit's campaign, or booking a trip for the weekend, or going shopping. It's all good, though. I'm just so happy we have some finalized plans, I'm elated, even after several irritants this morning (missing my bus; later missing my stop on the bus; a vendor website I really need somehow being blocked at work). I'm just riding the wave, going with the flow. Here's to a lovely weekend to come.
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[posted 12:32 pm]
