— पांच हजार छह सौ दस —
I spent most of my time last night finishing up my "Part Two" travelogue email, covering the back half of my Birth Week: Wednesday through Sunday. Counting two kitchen islands and one traffic island, I visited a total of 12 islands for my Birth Week—but, I covered only five between Friday and Tuesday, one island per day. The second email thus covered seven islands, with two days covering two islands each: Foster Island and Marsh Island at Washington Park Arboretum on Wednesday (at least those were right next to each other), and then the traffic island and Vashon Island were both on Thursday. Vashon had so much to see though that I rather wished that one could have been a full day trip. Another time, I guess.
I added a fair bit of time at the end of my email draft, when I decided to save a copy of a satellite image of Puget Sound, and then
label all the islands I visited last week on it. My "Part One" email had featured 15 photos; with the addition of the annotated satellite image, "Part Two" thus featured 16.
I finally thus had all things I still needed to do in regards to Birth Week 2024 finished. Now I can focus on planning next year's!
I have decided to do one more email travelogue from last week, though—the Major Event that had nothing to do with my Birth Week: Gabriel and Lea's wedding. I hadn't been thinking I would do that, but there was a moment when Mandy made a reference to seeing photos in email, and it became clear that at least some people were expecting it. It wouldn't normally do a "travelogue" for a friend's wedding—I typically reserve these for my own vacations, travels, and family events—but, this wedding in particular was so unique and interesting I think my mailing list will be into it. I have even more reason to be confident of that after my Lopez Island weekend travelogue got among the most enthusiastic responses of all the traelogues I have ever sent out. People really seemed to love that one.
— पांच हजार छह सौ दस —
— पांच हजार छह सौ दस —
Once I was done with my email last night, I finally came out to eat some dinner, and sit down to wach some TV: Sunday's episode of
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, a very good episode about the cultural threat American public libraries are under; and episode 4 of HBO's
The Sympathizer, which I actually do think gets better as it goes along. This episode in particular is a pretty effectively unflinching look at Hollywood and how it has historically approached momentous events like the Vietnam War, and stripped it of nuance.
While this was happening, Mandy texted me a link to a OneDrive folder with the photos and videos David had taken at the wedding. I got very excited: finally, some photos of the actual ceremony! Alas, not very many: the OneDrive folder of David's included about 33 shots, two of them video clips. I downloaded 23 of them, skipping a few extras that kind of over-focused on Mandy—I mean, Mandy's great, and I totally get that her husband would take lots of photos of her, but
I don't need a ton of photos of Mandy at Gabriel and Lea's wedding.
There weren't quite as many shots of the ceremony itself as I'd hoped, but that's okay: David did take video
of Gabriel's vows, apparently at his request, and it's a pretty lengthy clip—about nine and a half minutes. The ceremony shots I got out of this folder padded my Wedding Ceremony
up to 12 shots, including that lengthy video.
There is one shot that really confused me, as it shows Mandy, Garret and Brian standing to the right of Gabriel—but I'm not up there. I first saw that and thought: where the fuck am I? Was I photoshopped out or what? In the ceremony I stood to the left of Mandy (to her right). I was there, I know it happened! Finally I realized the explanation for this shot: the wedding parties for each side had walked up the aisle from outside to in, and I came out
after Mandy did. David would have taken these shots right after Brian, then Garret, then Mandy go up there—but while Anna (the bridesmaid I walked with) and I were still walking out, not there yet.
Duh.
This would be the one time I kind of wish Shobhit had been there. He'd have taken tons of photos of me, in that fantastic blue suit with pink accents, both in the ceremony and otherwise. Much like David, quite reasonably, took photos of his spouse. I still think it was better for everyone that I came alone though. I mean, this is the thing: setting Gabriel and Shobhit's contentious history aside, Shobhit would have been itching to go home far earlier than I would have wanted to, just because he gets bored at things like this. He did come with me to Lynn and Zephyr's wedding last year, granted—but we were at that wedding three and a half hours.
At Gabriel and Lea's wedding, being part of the wedding party, I was out in Snoqualmie for a solid ten hours. Shobhit would have been climbing up the walls wanting to just go home, no matter whose wedding it was. So, this was for the best. But it did mean not getting a lot of photos I'd love to have gotten.
I'm dying for
someone to share a photo of Gabriel and Lea, from the front, returning down the aisle with the canopy of lightsabers over them. I was only able to get my own
shot from behind them, and a shot from in front of them would be much better.
Anyway. There's more to come on the wedding, maybe even a supplemental blog post about it sometime in the coming week (I've even been taking notes on things I didn't think to mention in the blog post I wrote on Sunday). Beyond that, I'm now looking forward to the next big things: Shobhit and I leave for Toronto June 11. Pride is at the end of next month. I need to come up with a date for returning to Jetty Island with Lynn and Zephyr n Everett this summer. We leave for the Third Biannual Family Vacation on August 18. This one is officially iffy at the moment, but I even exchanged some emails with Scott yesterday about the possibility of coming to stay a few nights at his new house in Phoenix (actually, Peoria) this fall. I told him I'm not insane enough to visit Phoenix in the summer.
And of course, in the midst of all that: movies, movies, movies. Karen asked if I wanted to join her for a SIFF movie on Tuesday about a wheelchair user, and I finally got around to buying my annual ticket 6-pack for the festival, which starts this week! Usually I buy it as early as a Black Friday deal back in November, but I just kept not having the budget for it. It cost nearly seventy bucks so I am now officially a hundred bucks over budget because of it. But I'll be fine. At least now my Birth Week, for which I cam in way under budget, and events related to the wedding are behind me. I also made my 12th and final payment on the MacBook Pro laptop I bought a year ago, so that frees up $258 a month for travel expenses. I only get that budget line item once before going to Toronto but every dollar counts.
— पांच हजार छह सौ दस —
[posted 12:28 pm]
