— पांच हजार छह सौ अड़तालीस —
Well, I guess I'll give both Shobhit and Beth Social Review points for last night, even though it mostly just involved driving Beth
to the airport.
I thought that candid shot I took of Beth gathering her luggage to go inside the airport was going to be the last I took of her visit with us here in Seattle. Turns out, nope! She's going to be with us at least another four days.
This is the thing. Beth married a man who is in the military, and he is stationed on a base in South Korea. That's why she's been living in South Korea the last two years. I asked her, and this is only the second time she has traveled back to the States since she moved there. She traveled back to D.C. for a cousin's wedding about a year ago.
RJ, Beth's husband, has four kids, and they had lived with them for the past year. This was the whole impetus of Beth's trip this time: she was escorting them all back to the States to be reunited with their mother, who took them back to San Diego.
Beth, for the first time, took military flights for this trip. This saved her a massive amount of money, and apparently cost her only about forty bucks to take the kids—that's five people!—when they arrived on Tuesday last week. It also meant that she could not book any flight with guaranteed seats. She had thought they would be flying in on Sunday last week, and when they were unable to get on that flight they shifted to Tuesday. It has to do with seniority, as in actual military personnel get priority, and people like spouses or children are on standby.
This is basically what happened for the flight she attempted to take this morning, which was supposed to leave at something like 7 a.m. But, she signed up to be on the list several days ago, and she needed to get to the airport last night so she would be there at 6 a.m. when the "roll call" happened and she could get confirmation that she'd be on the flight. Beth seemed fairly confident that she would get on it.
Shobhit texted her shortly after 6:00 this morning to ask if she had gotten a seat, as she had not texted us any updates. She replied,
They haven't done roll call yet, but I'm optimistic. Send good juju!, followed by prayer hands and crossed fingers emoji.
Roughly one hour later, we got this text:
Didn't get on. Plane was too heavy. Next flight is Sunday. Presumably, this means we'll give her a ride again to the airport Saturday night, after we have Alexia over for dinner. If Beth is still around at dinner time she'll be welcome to join us, and I'm guessing she will wind up helping Shobhit out with a lot of the dinner prep, which both Shobhit and I will be happy to accept.
Anyway, she took Light Rail back to Capitol Hill and Shobhit picked her up at Capitol Hill Station. Shobhit has a work shift tomorrow evening and I plan to see a movie; we'll see if Beth has any interest in joining. All of our Friday evening is free, and I can imagine that being a lot of Saturday-dinner prep. Saturday we have Alexia over for dinner, and Sunday Shobhit may pick up an extra shift and I have no current plans that day; I may go watch the Blue Angels air show but we'll see.
— पांच हजार छह सौ अड़तालीस —
— पांच हजार छह सौ अड़तालीस —
Before taking Beth to the airport last night (only for her to take the train back this morning), I met up with Laney for a movie. We had planned on seeing
Sing Sing, but it turns out that's not opening locally just yet. So, Laney asked if I'd want to see
Inside Out 2 with her; she wasn't super interested in joining me when I saw it six weeks ago, but she's had multiple friends tell her they thought it was amazing, so she decided to go see it after all.
In the end, Laney's reaction to it was
about the same as mine. I gave it a B+, but that's a bit downgraded from the solid-A movie that was the original
Inside Out in 2015. Laney herself noted that the first one had a more tightly constructed script, which I mentioned after getting home (I had ridden my bike to work and then to the theater, but walked it with Laney as far as Broadway coming back up the hill) to Beth. Beth was one of the people who kept raving about this new one, how much it made her bawl, but although I did shed a couple of tears even last night, it just wasn't the same as the way the original moved, and continues to move, me.
At least I didn't have to take the time to write a movie review after the movie last night—my favorite thing about going to see a movie a second time. I got home and just made my dinner of burritos with filling ingredients Shobhit had already made; I grated cheese to add and also added a bit of salsa and it was super delicious. Beth was all packed, had washed the linens on the guest room bed, had washed all the towels we gave her and folded them. Now that's all going to continue getting used for another four days.
It's fine, really. We've enjoyed having her, and another four days isn't a big deal. I do hope she makes it on the plane leaving on Sunday, though; we're getting a bit closer to looking forward to having the condo to ourselves again, and for one evening we thought we were already there. Beth had talked about how stressful getting travel arrangements finalized when coming here, and I could imagine, but I probably can't even fathom the half of it. I don't envy being in her position.
— पांच हजार छह सौ अड़तालीस —
[posted 12:36 pm]
