So here's the photo album that yesterday yielded: the Museum of Illusions, which opened its Seattle location downtown on 5th and Union on June 28. I took 54 shots there, 11 of them video clips.

I had known for a couple of months that the museum was coming, as I happened to see it advertised in the windows on that block as I passed by while it was still getting prepared. I had no idea then that it was part of a global chain, nor that most of the exhibits are the same city to city, with just a few unique to each city. I would have been interested either way, and I asked Danielle if she would be interested, as I knew Shobhit would immediately balk at the ticket prices. To be fair, $38 after taxes and fees is a bit pricey, but I still thought it was worth it to have gone at least once. And I must say, Danielle and I had a really good time there.

I made this plan well before I knew for sure Beth would be coming, and most of the several things I had planned remained unchanged even after I knew she would be. I invited her to join for whatever she might be interested in; she did indeed join me for the movie Friday night, for instance. She declined to join for the architecture tour with Alexia on Saturday, and she also declined to join Danielle and me for the Museum of Illusions. But, she did want to hang out with her, so we also made a plan for Danielle to come back to the condo after the museum for a lunch Shobhit made.

Danielle had made a lot of plans herself yesterday: she was joining a couple of friends for a floating hot tub ride out on Lake Union at 2:00. She would need to leave for that by 1:30, which worked out just fine—we decided we would meet at the museum when they opened at 10:00 a.m., and on Saturday I purchased timed tickets for 10:00.

That tends to be for a half-hour period, not that it was a huge deal. Not a huge number of people were there that early as it was, and although Danielle was in downtown within minutes of my getting to the museum right at 10:00, she took a good 20 minutes or so to find street parking and then walk the couple of blocks over to meet me.

We got a fairly amusing shpiel just before we went in after having our tickets scanned in the lobby, by a young person who very much presented as nonbinary, and who kept waving their arms out in time to their words as they spoke. Once inside, we were immediately quite engaged by the exhibits, many of which were interactive. I got a lot of very, very cool shots during the time we were in there, during the solid hour we were in there. This meant we left the museum just after 11:30, so it was close to noon by the time we got back to the condo, giving her a good ninety minutes to visit for lunch.

Shobhit had already decided he would make pani puris for lunch, the wonderful Indian street food "snack" that we make into a meal, circling through the ingredients to put them together by hand, over and over until a single box of them are eaten through. Shobhit had bought a 2-pack of those boxes of the crunchy puris, so we still have another one to make them again sometime.

He had already made these for Danielle and her neighbor friend Lisa once, five years ago in July 2019. I think he was thinking of doing this for lunch yesterday with Beth already, before we also invited Danielle to join. Beth had expressed interest in seeing her, so this was how we made that happen. The pani puris were absolutely delicious, as expected.

I've been eating a lot more each day than usual lately, largely just because Beth is here, and that is inspiring Shobhit to cook more. But, last night Beth cooked dinner for us all: she made quesadillas, having them ready to eat by the time Shobhit was home from work after he got off at 8:00. These were no ordinary quesadillas, though; much like Shobhit does with his flatbreads, Beth made the tortillas from scratch—something Shobhit has never done for quesadillas, always buying those from the store, like Costco or Trader Joe's. I helped a little bit, including going to Trader Joe's for certain things Beth asked for that we didn't have: salsa, canned corn, oregano. Beth made elote Mexican street corn with mayo and cojita cheese, thus using one of the sample cheeses I brought home from work a couple of weeks ago.

She had also sauteed sliced bell peppers, mushrooms, and onions, and done it in a slower, kind of more conscientious way than Shobhit or I do. All of this combined to make quesadillas that were truly incredible. I actually told Beth, "I don't think I have ever had a quesadilla that was better." She said, "I'll be riding on that high for a while!"

We ate while watching this week's House of the Dragon, which was awesome as always; and then we watched Last Week Tonight with John Oliver before I finally went to get ready for bed.

[posted 8:42 pm]