diesel

— पाँच हजार सात सौ सैंतालीस — 2025 is shaping up to be an exciting year now, in terms of planned travel. Granted, only the first major trip, which doesn't even happen until June, is currently booked, so much of the rest of it is more in the "hopeful" stage. But right now, if all goes the way I would like it to, this is what I'm looking at in 2025: Wednesday-Tuesday, June 4 - June 10: Washington, D.C. for World Pride 2025 [fully booked] Wednesday-Tuesday, August 13-19: Saint Paul for Co+nvergence conference + Calgary with day trip to Baudette, MN [not booked, currently tentative but looking likely] Monday-Tuesday, December 22-23: overnight trip to Victoria, B.C. for package deal that includes hotel and bus ride to Butchart Gardens Christmas Lights. I only even learned about that last one a couple of months ago, and have been talking to Laney about doing that during my Christmas PTO. I am finding the package price to be surprisingly reasonable, as low as $269 per person and including the Victoria Clipper round-trip ticket, admission to Butchart Gardens and overnight at one of the participating hotels. If these same things were all booked separately, it would be minimum $91.20 per person for the Clipper; $35.14 per person (converted to USD) for same hotel if split three ways; and $19.15 (converted to USD) for Butchart Gardens, which totals at $153.94—but, without any transportation to the gardens, which are a half-hour drive outside the city. I guess I can see Shobhit arguing that we might as well drive there on the vehicle ferry, but the convenience of not having to bother with either the far greater travel time by car or the price of gas might justify the relatively negligible extra cost, in my opinion, especially for just an overnight trip. I still think it's a good value, especially for the shortest and most direct travel option between Seattle and Victoria. Mind you, all this is minimum price options, and Laney is confident she can save up over the year for her part of it, even if she prefers to get a private hotel room of her own; that is still an open question. And that would increase the price for all of us, but not by a huge amount. I also want to stress that we have only been talking about this and have no intention of booking for several months. Laney only wanted to get a sense of how much she'd likely have to save up for. I just love the idea of visiting Victoria during the holidays, which I have never done, and getting to visit Butchart Gardens for the first time as a holiday lights display. — पाँच हजार सात सौ सैंतालीस — — पाँच हजार सात सौ सैंतालीस — Shobhit wants to work on catching up to Laney on the current point-count for the Social Review, so he suggested we meet up at Diesel for Happy Hour after work yesterday to get him a point. Plus, Diesel is very generous with their pours and their Happy Hour well drinks are five bucks, I think the bartender said; I chose a different vodka than Tito's because Tito's never sits well in me, and that made them a whopping $6. Anyway. The first aim had been to go to Pacific Supply on 11th Avenue on Capitol Hill by the time they closed at 5:00, to get some replacement light bulbs, especially after one of the ones in the master bathroom burned out the other day. I'd have made it there in time even when I left work at 4:25, but several things conspired against me: I noticed late that Shobhit had sent me some script sides to print out for him, which I did right before leaving. Had I not done that, I'd have made all the connecting transit options. The elevators were not working reliably, and there were three of us waiting for the freight elevator when I left, which took a few minutes. Had that been the only thing not to happen, I likely would have made the 4:38 Monorail leaving Seattle Center. Instead, I saw that train pulling out of the station just as I arrived, and I had to wait another ten minutes. I knew then that I would never get to Pacific Supply by 5:00, and I texted Shobhit the photos I had of the bulbs I needed and suggested he go there himself. I checked One Bus Away as the Monorail reached Westlake Center, and saw the #12, which would get me right up to Pine and 12th only a few blocks from Diesel, was listed as 5 minutes delayed. I estimated that I had barely enough time to go catch that, two blocks away on Pike, rather than going down to Westlake Station to catch Light Rail as originally planned. But: the #12 made up some of that time, and yet again, I saw it drive past me right when I reached Pike. Now the choice was to backtrack and go all the way down to Light Rail just to have to walk half a mile from Capitol Hill Station, or just walk up Pike to Diesel on 14th and Union from right there. The latter would actually take me less time, so I went with that, and after Shobhit got the replacement bathroom light bulb, he just walked in my direction down Pike until we met up, and then he turned around and we walked to Diesel together. The bartender was kind of cute. I ordered a vodka and pineapple juice; Shobhit went with vodka and orange juice. I marveled at how, after putting in the ice, he must have filled each glass about 75% full of the vodka before topping them off with the juice. You could get pretty easily wasted at Happy Hour there. It wasn't very busy. We sat at a table and nursed our drinks for a few minutes. We scrolled on our phones. And then we walked the few blocks back home from there, and watched a couple of episodes of Squid Game 2. — पाँच हजार सात सौ सैंतालीस — For the second evening in a row, I called Gabriel at about 10:00 and there was no answer. We had been playing phone tag for a few days. He called me back at 10:30 or so, and I did answer, and then we proceeded to talk for a full hour (72 minutes, to be precise). It was nearly midnight before I was going to sleep. Somehow, I'm not really tired today. I never used to be able to handle this kind of thing very well but now it's fine, especially if it's rare. And I wanted to finally get on the phone with him again. We talked about movies, and about the Dune novels, because I am in the middle of Children of Dune and loving it. He also mentioned something that really amused me. Apparently Tess found the link to my Google Calendar, which I list as "Social Calendar" among the links at the top of this blog. I often forget I even have that there, but it's fine. But when Tess mentioned it, Gabriel thought she was looking at my Social Review, which is a very different thing. And when Gabriel asked Tess, "What number am I?" she quite understandably did not know what the hell he was talking about. Let's clarify! Social Review—series of blog posts in which I track, and rank, the number of days I have had social interactions with people. (To answer Gabriel's question, in the fall 2024 Social Review, Gabriel ranked #16—with one point. Lea, incidentally, ranked #10 with two points, because of when she joined us to see Wicked but Gabriel did not, a scenario that had never happened before. On the current, working winter 2025 Social Review, has already has 2 points, but I couldn't say yet where he ranks. Lower than many others, in any case.) Social Calendar—this is just my Google Calendar, made public. This was clearly what Tess was looking at. I suppose this could also make it very easy for someone to stalk me. I created the public link ages ago to make it easier for friends to make plans for me, as a reference. No one ever uses it, though. You know what? I'm going to remove it from my blog links. Done! (Of course, I just shared it here too, but this post will get buried in the archives soon enough.) I just went ahead and also replaced it with a link to my BlueSky account, which I am kind of hoping will organically come to replace my other socials over time. I've had a minor debate with Laney over the implications of abandoning Meta platforms because of their recent heinous policy changes, which Gabriel and several others have already done. — पाँच हजार सात सौ सैंतालीस — [posted 12:34pm]