Damn, did I have an eventful day yesterday. It was already planned to be eventful, with at least three things planned: a movie with Laney; Happy Hour picnic lunch with Laney afterward; and meeting up with Lynn and Zephyr for dinner, as they are staying in town for PAX West all weekend. In the end, I added two more things just with Lynn and/or Zephyr, both of which proved to be wildly photogenic. In addition to the few photos I took with Laney, I added 92 shots to my library on Flickr from yesterday alone.

But, I need to back up a little first. I didn't even meet up with Laney for the movie until 1:30. I spent a lot of time before that, actually getting everything I wanted done on the photo album for Saturday's architecture tour with Alexia. After quite a lot of work, now every one of the 66 shots in that album are fully tagged, notes added to the images where appropriate (usually to identify specific buildings with a link to their Wikipedia or SkyscraperCenter pages), and for once, this album also has captions written for all the photos. I even emailed the link to Alexia, noting that she's in about nine of the shots but in most cases it's like playing "Where's Waldo?" to find her. She wrote back kind of amused that in some cases she was found in window reflections.

Then, I made myself hot chocolate with three shots of peanut butter whiskey—a bit too much in the long run, I think; I didn't get much in the way of a buzz but I did get a predictable headache by the evening. Thankfully I had Aleve with me, because I had my backpack with me, as I packed my tumbler of spiked hot chocolate in it, along with leftover Smoked Mozzarella Pasta from my lunch at PCC from Friday. I took all that with me, knowing there was a good chance I would be going to meet with Lynn and Zephyr directly after the post-movie Happy Hour picnic with Laney, for dinner. She also invited me to a "Queer Cosplay Runway" event at 8:30 at PAX, so I knew I would not likely get home until about 10:00. And I left at 12:50ish to meet up with Laney at the AMC Pacific Place for the movie at 1:30.

The movie we saw was Bottoms, which I would say now was very good. As soon as it was over, it felt like Laney liked it more than I did, and I kind of explain why in the review. But, I didn't have time to write the review until I was home about seven hours later, giving me a lot more time than usual to think about it. And the more I thought about the movie, the more I decided I liked it. I had been leaning toward a solid B, but I later decided it did deserve a B+.

Laney had suggested the post-movie Happy Hour, which is increasingly becoming something we just do after a weekend afternoon movie. Her thought at first was Westlake Park, as we had done the previous two times. But, after discovering the newly renovated public terrace at Rainier Square with Alexia on our architecture tour on Saturday, I asked if she'd mind walking a few extra blocks to go to a new place. She was good with that, and she was also sufficiently impressed with it—so much so that, she herself suggested we come back there for a Happy Hour sometime. It may be a while though, as we'd prefer to go when it's not raining.

I did a kind of boneheaded thing on Saturday when I was there fore the architecture tour, and I took photos almost exclusively of the surrounding buildings, because i was so focused on the tour itself and the surrounding buildings discussed on it. I didn't take any photos that really showed the terrace space itself. I aimed to correct that yesterday with Laney, and in fact decided to put them into their own dedicated photo album, combined with several that were taken on the tour on Saturday, focused on just that new public terrace. At present it combines 11 of the shots I took on Saturday with the 5 new shots I took with Laney yesterday, including the video clip above, illustrating the three or so times it started raining—rain had not been in the forecast.

There's an "Upper Terrace" and a "Lower Terrace," and the latter has the really great padded patio furniture, next to a couple of ping pong tables that I'd really like to come back and use sometime. I keep not doing that; I should actually just make a plan for it one of these days. Shobhit actually gave me a ping pong paddles and balls set for Christmas 2020, at my request, when I discovered there was a public picnic table a block away from home over by the Bullitt Center, and I still haven't opened and used it. I need to do that! Anyway, we went to sit in the Lower Terrace, and that means, again it slipped my mind to get photos of the Upper Terrace space. So, I still need to go back and do that. I'm going to want to show it to Shobhit sooner than later anyway.

As can somewhat be seen in the video clip, Laney and I scooted two of the wicker chairs with padded seats over to the covered area right by the elevator so we could stay outside but get out of the rain. That spot right by the elevator door is the only place anywhere on that whole terrace space that has any kind of shelter covering from rain. I was a little bit self-conscious about being in the way of someone who might come up the elevator, and Laney said we could just let them know they're welcome to just walk past us in the narrow space between our chairs. But then, some other guy was wandering around, probably having come out of the elevator on the Upper Terrace level, and he was asking about it being a public space. Laney was chatting with him when the elevator door opened behind us, unnoticed by her, and a guy poked his head out, got a little startled by how close we were in our chairs, and immediately closed the door and disappeared again. I could have interrupted Laney to let the guy know he could still come out, but I wasn't quick enough.

Laney and I took the chairs over there two different times, taking them back after the rain stopped the first time. But then it began to rain again several minutes later, and so we scooted the chairs back to the elevator shelter again. That time we stayed until I got the text from Lynn that they were in line for dinner at Dough Zone. So, we packed up, put the hairs back in their original spots (by now the rain had stopped again), and went down to the Rainier Square Tower lobby where we could use the bathrooms. It was literally the third time I had to pee again, cocktails being a thing that runs through my bladder like nothing else: for every drink I have, I have to pee at least twice, usually within about 10 minutes of each other. What a pain in the ass. Or the dick, I suppose.

By the way, even before the unexpected rain happened, it was clear the weather has turned, for now at least: we got to 80° on Saturday, likely for the last time of the year; it was forecast to get a few degrees above 70° yesterday and it only reached 69°; the forecast high today is 68°. Normally, that's well below the minimum it is or me to wear shorts, and yet, I've continued wearing shorts all weekend anyway. I just love the shorts I bought at the Mall of America so much (I hate how fat I look in that picture, but, whatever), they are the perfect length I want, and I love the slightly stretchy fabric they're made of, and they now make the third pair of shorts I have with a drawstring elastic waistband. All three pairs of shorts (the others are a pink pair I got here in Seattle a few years ago; and a blue pair I bought in Australia earlier this year) are so incredibly comfortable to wear, they're making me reconsider my insanely brand-loyal commitment to Levi's 501 button-fly jeans for the past thirty years. Surely there are regular pants also made the same way? I may have to start doing some shopping.

Conveniently or Laney, Rainier Square is literally half a block from the bus stop she needed to go to for the #101 back to Renton. We hugged goodbye, even though we're seeing each other again today, and I was at Dough Zone for dinner with Lynn and Zephyr shortly after 5:30. She had texted me just a few minutes before that they were 14th in line for a table, but by the time I got there, I don't think it was more than five minutes before we were seated.

They have several other friends also attending PAX West this weekend, but only one of them joined us for dinner, a slightly socially awkward but very nice man named David—who, as it happens, lives on the 30th floor of Premiere on Pine, the very building in which Dough Zone is one of the ground-floor business tenants.

I had never eaten there before, although of course being on Pine I have walked past it a zillion times. I was happy to try it; it's a dumpling place, and so long as they are vegetarian, I do like dumplings. I kind of assumed I'd just be ordering for myself, but David got right into filling out an order card ordering several things, with the idea of sharing. Both Lynn (for my sake) and I noted that we'd need vegetarian options, and David ordered both a vegetarian potstickers dish and the chive dumplings I thought sounded good, which in the end they inadvertently gave us two orders of. The chive dumplings were the best, I liked them a lot, so I got plenty.

And then, David offered his own credit card to pay before anyone else could, and when Zephyr asked, "What do we owe you?" David replied, "Nothing." So I said, "Well, what do I owe you?" Still David said, "Nothing." I was like, "Why? You don't even know me!" But he kind of just waved it off. Well, that's $30 budgeted that I'm getting back. Which is actually quite nice, since I had an unexpected extra $45 expense when I took my bike to 20/20 Cycle on Saturday to repair the flat on my front tire: I had to replace the tire in addition to the tube, as it was too old and full of cracks with tiny bits of glass embedded in them. It had to happen sometime, I guess.

Lynn had also invited me to a PAX event she planned to go to later in the evening, at 8:30, a "Queer Cosplay Runway" which I thought sounded fun even though I would never recognize most of the cosplay characters. We had a good amount of time to kill, and Lynn knew I would be thrilled by this suggestion, and so she asked David if he'd take us all up to the building's 40th-floor rooftop deck so I could see it. Yes, please!

I love it when I get chance opportunities like this. Lea's best friend Josh, and his husband Darren, lived in the Premiere for several months before they bought their current house they have in, I believe, West Seattle. They occasionally posted photos, including from the building's roof, and I was so jealous—but, I've never gotten to know them well enough to ask to come and see the building. In this case, I didn't know David at all, but Lynn and Zephyr know him well (Zephyr met him online as a gamer when he was still in rural Quebec, where he's from—he has a detectable French-Canadian accent), and we were all right there. And, Lynn was the one who made the suggestion.

It basically made my month. It's like getting to visit an observatory for free. It's too bad it didn't happen on a sunny rather than cloudy day, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth! We spent roughly half an hour up there, judging by the time stamps on my photos, of which I took more than enough to create a dedicated photo album—which contains 36 shots (that I kept). After dinner David led us around the corner to the residents' entrance, through the lobby with a hired desk attendant, and the kind of elevator pad where you just key in the floor you're going to and the elevator takes you there. There are no floor buttons inside the elevator.

I was in heaven. I never tire of views like this, especially when it's from an angle I've never gotten to see before. David said he's lived in the building long enough now that it no longer means much to him, but that is not something that happens to me. My seven-story condo building is near the top of Capitol Hill, we've lived here nearly sixteen years now, and I never tire of the view from here, particularly from the roof.

David was really conscientious about all he showed me, too, not just going out on the main deck, but showing me other sections on other sides of the building: a "private dining" deck, and a reservable conference room, in different corners. Between them all, I really got 360° views from 40 floors up. (The building is 440 feet tall, matching the height restriction of the neighborhood just like way too many other buildings, but floor 40 would be about 420 feet up.)

I have to be quick about this last section as now I'm running out of time, I need to get ready for the day so I can have Laney meet me downstairs at the theatre by noon.

But lastly, Zephyr decided not to go to this PAX West event called "The Lavender Catwalk: A Queer Cosplay Runway!" So, I got his pass, and Lynn and I walked the block over to the Seattle Convention Center Summit building, where she wanted to get in line about an hour early—which was fine by me; I'm well versed in waiting long amounts of time in line. Plus, this put us about 10th or so in line, and we got seats right in front.

While we waited, Lynn suggested we play a boardgame app on her phone, which had to do with superheroes and villains and I had kind of a hard time following along. Then a lady came out saying she was going to entertain all of us, waiting in a zigzagging line in a separate holding room or the line, next door to the theater where the show happened. She played music on a mobile speaker, and someone quipped, "Play 'Bohemian Rhapsody!" and so she did, and it became a sing-along, which was actually really fun.

There were also little craft supplies passed around, which Lynn took and turned it into a butterfly for me.

Closer to 8:30, they finally filed us into the room next door, and before long the show, which didn't last much longer than half an hour actually, was underway. This was pointedly not a competition, just a space for support of queer cosplayers and their allies, and we just watched a few dozen character costumes walk across the stage. I didn't take photos of all of them, but I did take photos of probably three quarters of them, winding up with a 50-shot photo album, notably larger even than my rooftop terrace photo album.

It actually was a lot of fun. Lynn had other friends at the event who she couldn't introduce me to until after the show, and we stood around or several minutes after. before taking the elevators down from the 5th floor of the convention center to the ground floor. And there I said by goodbyes and walked back home, where I then set about writing my movie review. As I said, a busy day!

[posted 11:00 am]