— पाँच हजार चार सौ छियालीस —
Well: Shobhit did an about-face over the weekend, and suddenly decided, after all, that he wanted to come and join me in Minneapolis next weekend. He booked the flights yesterday afternoon, which he researched and selected and booked, and then I Zelled him the value so I paid for them.
I fly out to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul (MSP) Airport tomorrow morning; I need to be there by about a quarter after 6. Shobhit's going to drive me. I land at MSP at 1:43 in the afternoon local time, which will be 11:43 here. I'm really hoping I can make the last tour of the day at the Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul at 4:00, but that'll be cutting it really close. I may cut out of the afternoon "Vendor Showcase" on Friday at the conference that's scheduled for like five hours and do it then instead, or maybe even do it in the morning on Saturday, but that's less likely.
Shobhit actually booked a red eye flight, leaving at 11:57 late Friday night. It'll be 3:09 a.m. when he lands at MSP Saturday morning, but 5:09 local (Central) time. He used Orbitz to book a direct flight there on Sun Country Airlines, which is the bargain basement, no frills equivalent of Southwest that is actually based in Minneapolis; any luggage is at an extra cost so he's just going to bring his backpack as a carry-on. He had to book a two-leg flight home on Tuesday next week, on different flights than the one I'm on; I'm flying Delta direct both ways but he'll be flying back, via layover in Denver, on Frontier. For this itinerary it cost me $407.38. My budget line for travel expenses is now down to about $125, but that's okay. I'm just happy he's coming out to spend the weekend with me there now. Even visiting the Mall of America is going to be far more fun with him to do it with.
Anyway, landing so early on Saturday, but at least with nothing but a backpack, Shobhit's going to take a bus from the airport into downtown Saint Paul and meet up at my hotel before I check out. We'll then take their Metro light rail together to downtown Minneapolis, where we can't check int othat hotel until about 4:00 anyway. Shobhit explored doing a river cruise and thus going between the cities by boat, but that proved impossible: the 90-minute tour for $21 each only goes half the distance before turning back, and the 20-hour tour is far too expensive, covers a meal that is very meat heavy, and doesn't actually dock anywhere in Minneapolis before turning back.
This was kind of nuts to me. Brisbane is similarly set up, long stretches of city center along the Brisbane River, and not only did they have river cruises that docked at either end, but they even had smaller boats all along the river as part of their public transit. Mind you, this is a city with a metropolitan population of 2.6 million people. Minneapolis-Saint Paul has
3.7 million people and they can't be bothered to offer but a fraction of the river navigation options on the Mississippi. What the hell!
To be fair, a big part of this would be the stark difference in isolation: Australia has only five cities with metro populations of more than one million in the entire country, and the closest one to Brisbane is Sydney, 455 miles away. With MSP, although it's a bit more isolated than a lot of other major cities in the U.S., it's still 337 miles from Milwaukee, and 408 miles from Chicago. And if you go by region, people traveling to the Midwest for vacations have a
lot more cities to choose from, including Detriot, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Indianapolis, and a whole bunch more. This stretches a lot of both tourism resources and urban resources comparatively thin when kind of unfairly comparing to a place like Brisbane.
Still! Minneapolis seems like it should have more to offer on this front. Even their metro transit has been unusually difficult to navigate and figure out ahead of time online, a lot of it quite unduly complicated. (Why does a 7-day pass only have the option of being valid for non-rush hour fares, and excluding express buses? That's bizarre.) In their defense, they do have more light rail lines than we do (two!—although we are working on both a second and a third, their opening dates constantly
getting postponed).
I'm glad we looked all this stuff up ahead of time, at least. This way we know what to expect and can come prepared. For instance, I had earlier looked up transit between downtown Saint Paul and downtown Minneapolis and discovered there is an express bus that travels in half the time as light rail. I only discofered yesterday that, fuck, the express bus only runs on weekdays! So, when Shobhit and I go between the cities on Saturday, we'll have to take light rail which will take like 50 minutes. Oh well. At least we know!
— पाँच हजार चार सौ छियालीस —
— पाँच हजार चार सौ छियालीस —
As for the weekend, Shobhit did not do nearly as much campaigning as he had been assuming he would. He did a couple of hours on Saturday and found that most of the people he was targeting, the voters most likely to go for him, had already mailed in their ballots. That dampened his motivation. Somewhat bizarrely, he still had a pretty good attitude over the weekend, which is certainly the only reason two things happened: 1) I still met up with Laney for Happy Hour in West Seattle as planned, even though last week I texted her to be prepared for my canceling because Shobhit may need me on the last weekend before the primary election, which is Tuesday; and 2) Shobhit took the initiative himself yesterday afternoon to look up flight possibilities as he considered coming out to spend the weekend with me in Minneapolis after all.
I was delighted in both cases. Shobhit said he would likely be feeling depressed and thought a getaway might help. "That's what I was thinking all along," I told him. "I was just mad," he said (about what happened over Pride Weekend, something I still haven't published an account of, although I will later). I guess he finally kind of got over it. A full month later. I didn't believe him when he first told me he changed his mind about coming, which I think was part of what made him dig in his heels—what a healthy relationship we have, huh? I even spoke to two different friends about the possibility of them coming out to spend the weekend with me instead. I'm actually happy it will be Shobhit, as had been the intent at the start. He lived in Minneapolis briefly in the early 2000s, and there will be some memories for him to relive and share.
So anyway, Shobhit campaigned for a couple of hours on Saturday, and I left at 10:50 to catch Light Rail down to Pioneer Square Station, walk to Pier 70, and then take the Water Taxi across Elliott Bay to West Seattle. (Seattle also has far better water-based public transit than Minneapolis.) Laney and I met at our regular spot in Don Armeni park, a short walk north along the esat-facing coast of West Seattle. This is now our fourth Happy Hour at that park, having done three of them there last summer. We'll do at least one more there this summer as well.
We met at noon, and as I basically predicted, we hung out for roughly four hours. We went back to the dock for me to catch the 4:00 ferry back, getting me home roughly around 5:00. Shobhit had long been back from his campaigning by then.
I made the mistake of putting too much tequila in the margarita I brought. I had a splitting headache within a couple of hours of getting home. Hell, I even nodded off on Light Rail and missed the stop at Capitol Hill, having to get off at the next stop at University of Washington Station and get on the next train southbound. I was like I got hungover immediately, and I even worried I might be getting sick. I went to bed and zonked out at about 9:30 that night. Thankfully I felt fine yesterday.
— पाँच हजार चार सौ छियालीस —
I did not go see any movies over the weekend. There was no major release this week anyway, and I had deliberately made myself available for Shobhit as this was the last weekend before the primary election—only keeping the plan with Laney once I found out he would be door knocking and I made sure it was okay with him. I spent all evening Friday, all evening Saturday, and all day yesterday with him. We binged all five episodes of season 5 of
Black Mirror which, on the whole, was just okay.
We did some shopping at Costco late yesterday morning. It was the only time I went out anywhere.
In the afternoon, I did a completely out of character thing and spent some time on work stuff. Gabby had forwarded me some "new Promotions Liaison" training materials from NCG, because that is her position at PCC as it relates to NCG but I am basically going to the conference in her stead, just so I'd be a bit more familiarized. It was over two hours of video trainings, a lot of it dealing with a pricing portal I could not log into. Whatever, I got the videos watched. I'd had it on my to-do list for a month and have not found time during office hours to get it done. They also finally released their "packet" with a full conference schedule so I multitasked and filled out my Google Calendar with all the sessions and such. Wednesday through Friday is nuts-packed with shit to do.
So is today at work. I've got a lot to get done, even after a Teams call for a demo on one of my tasks that was scheduled for between noon and 1:00 got postponed, thanks to our partners portal system, which is critical to the task, being down. This may be creating more work later, I don't know. We're doing Teams demos of several of my tasks for the people involved in an upcoming system upgrade, this one being a critical tasks only done at a certain time once a month, so now it's been rescheduled for August 30. In the meantime, I'm happy to take the half hour of extra time to get other stuff done. This week is already starting off in a hectic way, but, whatever. I'm still looking forward to this trip, which is going to be unlike any other I have ever taken!
— पाँच हजार चार सौ छियालीस —
[posted 12:20 pm]
