— पञ्चसहस्राणि पञ्चशतानि अष्टनवति च —
I kind of missed the boat on this one, and this will make the
third post in which I write about last weeken's trip to Lopez Island, the
first having been posted on Monday and by far the longest, as it's the standard transfer of my requisite post-trip email travelogue to this blog; and the
second having been posted the next day, Tuesday, being the requisite follow-up "additional notes" post, with some added details I would never be comfortable including in the email. (For example, the reference to "Four Bros and a Faggot.")
Most of the time it just gets left at that. But! Here's something I should have included in the Tuesday post and totally spaced: direct links to full photo albums on Flickr!
I created five different photo albums for this trip, some combination of which went into quite the unusual number of photo album "collections." Let's go through them!
Lopez Island 2024 is the single, combined album representing the entire weekend: 190 shots total; 167 photos and 3 vidoes
Then, I also created separate photo albums by day:
Lopez Island 2024: Day One: 56 shots total; 48 photos and 8 videos
Lopez Island 2024, Day Two: 77 shots total; 67 photos and 10 vidoes
Lopez Island 2024, Day Three: 56 shots total, 51 photos and 5 videos
Obviously, all the photos in those three sets separated by day overlap with the one album combining them all.
I created just one more album, this one specific to the visit to
Spencer Spit State Park: 28 shots total, 24 photos and 4 videos. I did this so I could put this album in collections related to State Parks without all the other non-state-park photos included.
So here's where all the albums are being put into album "collections" on my Flickr account:
The combined, all-weekend "Lopez Island 2024" album is already in seven different collections: "
Travels, 2024," "Weekend Getaways in the Northwest," "
All Washington Islands," the more specific "
San Juan Islands," "
Gabriel and Lea's Wedding" (eventually this will include albums for Lopez Island, the rehearsal dinner, and then of course the wedding itself), and two that Gabriel will find particularly ridiculous: "
Birth Week 2024: Washington State Islands," and "
Birth Week: with Gabriel. In the latter two cases, even though last weekend was fully three weeks earlier than my Birth Week, I am including them in the Birth Week photo albums because the Rehearsal Dinner and the wedding itself are happening during my Birth Week, but I am categorizing them wholly separately, as their own thing and not as "Birth Week events." But, since Lopez Island fits with this year's theme of Washington State islands, I am regarding it as a substitute for a so-called "Birth Week activity" with Gabriel.
The three albums separated by day are actually in two different collections that include just those three albums: "
Lopez Islands as organized under "
Washington State Islands" under "
Local Points of Interest"; and "
Lopez Island 2024" under "
San Juan Islands: Separated Sets" as organized under "
Vacations." (Given that these are both collections as part of two tiers of heirarchy of collections above them, does that mean these by-day albums are in two different collections, or are they each in three? You be the judge!)
The Spencer Spit State Park album, for now at least, is just in one collection: "
Washington State Parks (All)". Or three, if you want to count the fact that this also falls under "
Washinhton State Parks" which also falls under "
Local Points of Interest." That said, if I go back to Lopez Island—and I'd really like to—then a whole new collection will get created, specific to only that single State Park. We'll see how that pans out.
Anyway. As you can see, there's a hell of a lot going on with the organization of my photos from last weekend. San Juan Islands! Lopez Island! State Park! Gabriel and Lea's wedding! Weekend getaways generally! This is all just for the purpose of easing access when looking for these photos again in the future, depending on the specific context of the discussion or throught process. ("How mamy times have I been to Spencer Spit State Park?" for example, or "What were all the photo albums related to Gabriel and Lea's wedding?") I take my job as a personal Historian of Self very seriously. God knows I can't remember all this shit without such systems in place!
— पञ्चसहस्राणि पञ्चशतानि अष्टनवति च —
— पञ्चसहस्राणि पञ्चशतानि अष्टनवति च —
Anyway, I guess I can tell you about last night now. I took myself to another movie, thus gettig me up to two (so far) in April in just two evenings:
Wicked Little Letters. I quite enjoyed watching it, much as a lot of my review might suggest otherwise—I had a lot of nitpicks with the way it was cast.
Thankfully there was no
fire alarm this time. The film was also 20 minutes shorter than Tuesday's movie, so this means that although the showtime was 15 minutes later, I got out of the movie a lot easier, walked home and had plenty of time to write my review.
The metro bus schedule seriously sucks ass these days, and too often I get out of a movie and there's not another eastbound #11 for like, 20 minutes. I walked home, but I killed most of that twenty minutes or so looking up web pages I needed to find for minor research for my review—again, having to do with the casting of the movie. (It makes the very weird choice of casting people of color to play real-life people in a film based on a true story, which wouldn't always be an issue, except in this case the story is set in small-town 1920s England and the real life people were all White. And casting people of color in this story set at that time but without ever once actually acknowledging their race is odd and distracting, not to mention a problematic revisionism of a history that was surely deeply racist.)
I made the wise choice of leaving work ten minutes early so I could get home by 5:00, heat up some leftovers for dinner, and then take the food with me back to the theater to eat there. The only issue there is that, although there were only like three other people in the theater, one was sitting only three seats from me in my row, and he had a runny nose that he was sniffing all the time. I wasn't so much annoyed by the sound of sniffing as I was paranoid about what germs he might be spewing into the air. He was not wearing a mask.
I was, at least when I was not eating.
I got onto Skype with Shobhit in Delhi for a bit after I posted my review. Shobhit has run a fever twice while he was there, at least the first time while experiencing significant acid reflux. It happened again this week, but he said he felt better today, then took his temperature again while on Skype, and it was still above 99°, same as it was yesterday. We're now wondering if the themometer is not properly calibrated. He doesn't have any covid tests there but it's doubtful that's what it is. He's still not due back home until the Tuesday the week after next, but hopefully he'll stay feeling better until then. He plans to buy some duty free sake at the Tokyo airport layover on his way back.
— पञ्चसहस्राणि पञ्चशतानि अष्टनवति च —
Oh! I nearly forgot. I finally rode my bike to work today, first time since fall. When I get back on it in the spring can vary widely dependin on the year. There have been some years when I did it in late January, some in late April. It mostly has to do with how cold it still is in the mornings, and low- to mid-forties is real borderline. I don't like having super cold air whipping against me as I ride. And if it's raining, forget it—even riding in mist, I learned the hard way long ago, leaves me soaked. And I won't buy special gear just for bike riding, I think that would be a total waste of money.
Well, the high today is expected to be in the midfifties. The temperature this morning was 44°. I wore my lighter jacket only because I knew riding home at 55° in my pea coat would leave me too warm. I got a little uncomfortably chilly riding to work this morning, but I survived. It was interesting riding down Pine for the first time after the've made both Pine and Pike Streets one-way west of Bellevue and Melrose; the new bike lanes aren't finished so I still coasted down in the lane—something I have always done because on Pine they frustratingly put the bike lane on the left side and I turn right on Fourth Avenue on my way to work. But, once there is a dedicated bike lane the entire length of the one-way portion of the street, I'll have to switch to using it.
The thing that strikes me most, actually, is how they are also expanding the sidewalk for pedestrians
to be much wider, narrowing both streets to just two lanes one way. There isn't going to be any less traffic on either street just because it's one way, is is there? I don't know whether or not this will actually create thicker traffic, but it's surely going to piss off a lot of drivers. I guess only time will tell whether that was a wise idea.
I've started tracking my first bike commute on Google Calendar. In 2023 it was March 27, 2022 it was March 29. It actually would have also been in March this year, when we had an unusually warm week, but then I broke the tire pump valve and couldn't ride it, until I finally got it fixed last week. I then took the bike to Lopez Island and then never rode it.
— पञ्चसहस्राणि पञ्चशतानि अष्टनवति च —
[posted 2:21 pm due to having to attend an extended POS meeting]
