This should make Shobhit happy: he didn't join for either of the official Birth Week activities I did yesterday—but, he did walk with me to meet up with Laney at her apartment building at 12:45, and then help carry her sitting chairs up to the traffic island at the far north end of the block the Braeburn Condos is on, at 14th and Olive. He wanted to get his steps in. This was a social engagement, though, however brief it may have been, and thus he'll get a point for it on the next Social Review. He kind of needs all the points he can get, after being gone to India for a month.

I was really happy to have him walk with us, actually, as I had been concerned about how I was going to get particularly good photos of Laney and me on the traffic island—I would otherwise have had to set my camera up somewhere at a non-ideal angle, and used the timer. As it was, when Laney and I set up our chairs, complete with prepared cocktails and even the orange vests Laney brought, Shobhit was able to stand out in the street and get the requested photo of us and the entire island (plus the large tree planted in its center) within the frame. I had had a vague idea of asking someone passing by to take the photo(s), but this worked out far better.

And I must say, side street though it may have been, a lot more traffic passed around us on this island than expected. In one direction or another, I'd say a vehicle passed us at least once every couple of minutes, maybe every two to five. At one point, well after Shobhit went back to our condo, a large recycling truck passed us. It made us glad to have been smart enough to pick a rather large traffic island (roughly 347 square feet), with a kind of half-sidewalk wrapped around it, allowing for plenty of space for us to set the chairs and sit in them without any part of us our our things sticking out into the street.

I had suggested we sit on the side of the island facing north, thus being less obvious to the arterial street one block to the south, Pine Street. Still, there is a residential complex under construction at 14th and Pine, across the street from the Braeburn and thus about half a block behind us. At one point a Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections car passed us, presumably on its way to the construction site, and this was the first person in any kind of official city capacity to pass by. He had his window down and he spoke to us.

I wish I could remember what he said at first. It wasn't "What are you guys doing?" but it might as well have been. Laney did exactly what she had already said she would do under such a circumstance, should one come up: she said, "We're conducting a social experiment, for a newspaper." The guy acted genuinely interested, so Laney embellished a little: "We're seeing what people say when they pass by with people sitting here. They tend to slow down more."

The guy even suggested maybe a bench should be installed there, in retrospect a maybe kind of crazy suggestion. Laney said, "Well maybe you could write to them and ask for one." The guy took a beat and then said: "Nah." I snapped a quick photo of the car continuing to pass by while Laney was tilting her head back in laughter, a pretty great shot.

We were both extensively amused by our antics here, the "traffic island" having long ago been Laney's suggestion for her "island" this week, which I always thought was hilarious. (I came up with a kitchen idea as an idea after that.) And I will say, the orange vests, which Laney says she often wears while riding her bike, were a stroke of genius. Even with us shooting the shit in collapsible chairs with drinks in our hands (for all anyone else knew, it was coffee—Laney had beer in hers and I had a Moscow Mule in mine, a canned one as a sample from work with two more shots of vodka added), people passing by generally left us alone, clearly assuming we were there as workers of some kind or in some sort of official capacity. A couple of people driving by did say hi to us.

One guy who may have had a developmental disability walked passed us, and then stopped to chat far longer than either of us wanted. He really mumbled, albeit loudly, but he was hard to understand—except he was clearly talking about crime. I heard the phrase "smash and grab," but that was about it. A couple of times Laney said to him, "Okay, we really need to get back to talking about work now, have a good afternoon." Hilariously, the conversation the guy had interrupted was actually about the movie Jaws, my choice for Action Movie Night on Wednesday. The guy finally moseyed away.

We hung out at the traffic island for about an hour. Laney's proposal was that, as soon as one of us inevitably needed to pee, we should go to the bathroom at the Braeburn, and then continue our Happy Hour up on the rooftop deck. She really thought I'd be the first to have to pee, but she did beat me to it. We had gotten to the traffic island at 1:00, and then headed into the condo complex at 2:00. But we got the island visit in!

I also peed, because I know better than not to pee proactively. We then spent the next couple of hours on the rooftop terrace, and it was so lovely, relatively warm and bright even with a thin cloud clover, we talked about how we should just plan one of our regular Happy Hours up there in the future. We have such a spectacular view of the city from up there. And even, to a degree, the Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountains beyond. It was really a lovely time.

I then had a completely different, but equally lovely time through the evening. This was with Tracy, when I had taken Shobhit's suggestion of going to either Bainbridge Island or Vashon Island for dinner. I had just gone to Bainbridge for a different reason with Valerie last year, so I did not include that in this year's Birth Week island hopping ("island hopping"—amaziingly, I did not even think to use that phrase until someone used it in a comment on one of my Facebook posts). I had also already been to Vashon Island once before, also for my Birth Week—specifically, on my birthday, in 2012, with Shobhit.

Shobhit and I had taken the water taxi directly from downtown Seattle and then taken a bus on Vashon down to the "Old Bicycle in the Tree," and had done little more than that on that day. Last night was thus my first time actually driving there, and it would clearly be worth going back to explore one day when I have more of the day to explore.

With Tracy, since we were driving, we had to drive first to the Fauntleroy Ferry terminal—the very same one I had taken to Southworth on my way to see Claudia on Saturday last weekend. (Most of the boats stop at Vashon Island on the way westbound). I had suggested she come and pick me up at 4:15 to give us enough time, both to drive the roughly half hour to that ferry terminal in West Seattle, and to be there about half an hour early. Tracy got to my place about five minutes late, not a big deal; I think it took about 35 minutes to get there. Washington State Ferries recommends being at the ticket booth at least 20 minutes before sail time, and that was precisely when we got there. We needn't have worried anyway; we were both surprised that a Friday night was not busier—there was plenty more space to spare on the ferry once all vehicles had loaded.

It was maybe a 20 minute ride to Vashon. We had three specific spots there, in the end: the first and foremost was a place to have dinner. Tracy told me she had only had a protein shake all day and was very hungry. I found a highly rated pizza place called Lunetta Pizza which, though from only 20 reviews, had an average Yelp rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars. And, indeed, the pizza was delicious.

It was also quite expensive: all the pizzas were personal sized, or maybe slightly bigger but not really enough to feed two (I could have made it so, but Tracy could not), priced between $24 and $28. Also, their in-house menu had fewer options than the one they have currently online, with none of the pizzas as cheap as $19 listed online. They had four vegetarian pizzas, two of them different types of cheese pizza (these were the two we ordered; a Margherita and one with buffalo cheese that I can't remember the name of, it's not on that online menu) and two vegan ones. This makes two pizza places this week where none of their vegetarian options have any vegetables, which kind of baffles me. At least in both cases the pizza was still delicious.

Tracy had never seen the Old Bicycle in the Tree, so that's where we went next. How it looks now is disappointingly stripped down from how it looked in 2012.

With maybe an hour to kill, I just looked on Google Maps for a spot to go check out, and zeroed in on Maury Island Marine Park. Maury Island apparently once actually used to be an island, but now is connected to Vashon by a tiny strip of land (an ithsmus!), "built by local homeowners" in 1913, making Maury Island—which for some reason still has that name—a large-ish peninsula to the southeast of the main island of Vashon.

This was a spot Shobhit and I certainly never made it to, and I must say: it was beautiful. There's a switchbacking trail that I can only presume goes all the way down to the shore, in a spot that was apparently once a gravel mine. I guess that was between 1968 and 1978, but now it's been turned into a lovely green space. I can't figure out when the park as it currently exists first opened, but it was clearly sometime in the 2010s.

Tracy and I walked down the trail a fair bit, knowing there was no time to go all the way down. and got some pretty great photos, largely of the view across the water to the mainland to the east. Once we got back to the car, it was a 20-minute drive back to the ferry terminal, which would get us there 20 minutes before sail time. So then we headed back.

The ferry back goes over to Southworth first, and then back across to Fauntleroy in West Seattle. At this point, almost certainly because of the two shots of vodka I had put in the cocktail I had with Laney, I had developed a pretty splitting headache. I should have known better, and at least brought some Aleve with me, if not taken some before I left. When we got out of the car on the ferry and went up to the passenger deck, I got a hot chocolate and that made me feel slightly better. Once back in the car once we reached Fauntleroy, I felt worse again. Some of the time I managed to just forget about it while engaging with Tracy in conversation, but once we finally got back to my place, instead of chatting for a while in the car like usual, I had to just get out and go inside. I drank a full glass of water, had some Aleve, and even lay down for several minutes. After a bit of time, I got up to process and upload the day's photos to Flickr.

The Traffic Island Cocktails with Laney photo album contains 14 shots; Vashon Island 2024 has 37. Shobhit got home from work shortly after 10:00, and shortly after that I was in bed. I feel much, much better now, which is a relief because today's the break from Birth Week for Gabriel and Lea's wedding.

[posted 8:43 am]