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Shobhit and I went out to run some shopping errands early Saturday evening, the typical run of three different grocery stores: Costco, PCC, QFC. I spent a lot more than budgeted at Costco, because it was our second run to Costco within one pay period. I only spent about $38 the first time, and it was Shobhit's suggestion to move the rest of the $100 I had budgeted to the travel budget, so I did. Then Saturday's Costco run cost around $80. That went out of the $100 I had already budgeted for the
next pay period, which takes us through April 25. If Shobhit wants to go back to Costco yet again before then, the budgeting will be right, if he doesn't want me to take money out of the travel budget. I'm budgeting this tightly because of him, after all.
Anyway! It was a lovely day on Saturday, weather-wise. The cherry blossoms being in bloom at UW had come up recently, and we talked about going to look at them. At first Shobhit was suggesting we take a long walk up to the U District on Sunday morning. But, the forecast was cloudy and rain all day yesterday. I would get much better photos on an at least partly sunny day. And, since we went to the Columbia City PCC as it's more on the way home from Costco, we also went to the QFC maybe a mile further up north on Rainier Avenue. Shobhit noted that we were not far from 23rd Avenue, which we could take straight to the U District in the car.
It was getting closer to sunset time, but we barely had enough daylight left. So, we went for it. We even discovered a covered parking garage on campus which, though marked as permit-only, was an easy place to get free parking for a short while on a Saturday evening when no school officials were around. This meant finding fast and free parking far more easily than I expected.
I had also seen seen some old photos, from 2017, from the first—and last—time I ever went to see the UW campus cherry blossoms in bloom. I had gone there with Danielle and her two kids (Morgan and Rylee, then ages 12 and 7), as well as Danielle's friend Lisa and
her two kids (Ainsley and Kate, no idea how old). When I went in 2017, it was April 1, and I happened to see some photos in my Facebook Memories page last Tuesday. I even sent Danielle
this delightfully candid shot of all six of them, Danielle taking a photo of Lisa, the kids all clearly very bored. I really love the composition of that photo, even though there are no cherry blossoms actually in it. (There certainly were in other shots from
that photo album.)
Having now gone a second time, eight years later, I have
a Flickr collection of my UW Cherry Blossoms photo albums, both from 2017, and now, an album
from this year. I got 24 shots out of it this time.
This was the first time Shobhit had gone to see them, at least with me certainly. The blooming cherry blossoms, particularly at "The Quad" on the University of Washington campus, have long been an annual Seattle attraction, but one I have—clearly—not often bothered with, even though it certainly is very pretty. Like in 2017, the Quad was packed with people on Saturday, and this year I was there for all of about twenty minutes between 7:10 and 7:30 p.m. It made me wonder how much more crowded it must have been ealier in the afternoon when it was both sunnier and warmer.
It was quite pretty, even while some people did kind of annoying things. One young woman was sitting in the grass under falling blossom petals while the photographer shook the tree branch overhead to make it "snow," something I am certain they were not supposed to be doing. There are signs posted around The Quad asking people to help preserve the trees and not climb on them, and at least I saw no one doing that. One kid was hanging from a thick branch by his hands at one point. As time goes on and things like climate change make things like this even more delicate and precious, I bet one of these years they will start putting up barriers to keep people from getting close enough to touch the trees at all.
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Before the shopping and the cherry blossoms on Saturday, Laney came over and we watched a double feature in the Braeburn Condos theater: we saw Ang Lee's original 1993 film
The Wedding Banquet, which we found utterly charming albeit with a couple things that had not aged well; and
Black Widow, which served as a reminder of how I had kind of enjoyed it more than expected when it was finally released—after several covid-related delays; the initial release date had been March 2020—in the summer of 2021.
We watched both of these movies as warm-up to upcoming films this year: there's an American remake of
The Wedding Banquet opening in two weeks; and then there's
Thunderbolts, the MCU movie opening in May, which features the same character Florence Pugh plays in
Black Widow.
This was our only opening for watching either previous movie before both new ones were released, but Laney felt strongly that there needs to be a connection between two movies we watch as a double feature. But, she found one for these two! Noting the titles
The Wedding Banquet and
Black Widow, she emailed me, "You can't have a widow without a wedding!" Ha! We made it work.
I had hoped to get both movies in DVD from the library, saving me the cost of any online rentals, and I already had
Black Widow picked up a few days before. The library has three copies of the 1993
Wedding Banquet, and mine was still "in transit." Shobhit walked with me to the library shortly after they opened at 10 a.m. on Saturday, and he would have gotten a Social Review point for that (a half-cheat, in my view, but I'd have done it) but then he wound up getting one for going to the cherry blossoms later in the evening anyway. In any case, we asked the lady at the library if there was any chance the DVD was still around even though it was listed as "in transit," and alas, it was not.
That early version of
The Wedding Banquet is, strangely, unavilable not only on any streamer currently, but even for VOD anywhere. My only option, then, was to play the full film from my laptop from a page I found it posted on dailymotion.com. The movie got interrupted frequently by commercials, which was annoying, but at least we still got to watch it.
Shobhit, by the way, walked with me to the library on his way to
the massive protest and rally against President Fuckwit and his puppetmaster Elon Musk, at Seattle Center, part of concurrent protests in many other cities. I felt a little bad not going myself, especially after
publicly declaring my commitment to going to more events of this nature. In a bit of a reversal of typical roles, Shobhit even said, "I would say this is more important, but you've made your choice." Indeed I did, and I was somewhat ambivalent about the choice, but I don't really feel terrible about it either.
Especially after Shobhit got down there and texted me that there crowd was
twenty thousand strong—at least as stated by Rep. Pramila Jayapal while speaking. (The
Seattle Times artile notes that 7,000 actually registered, so the real number would likely be somewhere in that wide margin in between.) In any case, it was packed. Shobhit had gotten quite close to the stage at first, but had to go find a bathroom, and when he was done the crowd was too thick for him to get close enough to see or even really hear. At that point, after being there maybe an hour or two, he gave up and left. So, my main point here: my lack of presence there clearly made no difference to the massive impact of turnout at those protests.
And I know this is tricky, because I am a planner, and had I known about this protest much earlier, I'd have blocked the day for it. A lot of times these things get organized at relatively short notice, though, and I'm not sure how best to reconcile that. I did wonder about Laney, who had herself debated with me about the efficacy of turnout out to protest when I had been much more disillusioned by it than I am now—she argued it was effective to go—and when she arrived on Saturday I said, "I presume you know about the protests today?" She said yes, "But, I've gone to a lot of protests." She's tired, was the basic message. Not only that, but she'd never have been able to handle that massive a crowd anyway.
I was really heartened to see such huge turnout, not just in Seattle but all over the country (and even
in some cities abroad). In the end, I was also okay with keeping my other Saturday plans.
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As for yesterday, what I did was actually put together on pretty short notice: Danielle came over for chai, dinner, and Yahtzee. I had called her on FaceTime Saturday night, to finally catch up especially after the news that
101 non-union staff at Valley Medical Center, where Danielle works, are getting laid off. It's even more bullshit stemming from federal cuts by President Fuckwit, and then Danielle dropped this bombshell: she had recently been at the Mexican Consulate for an interview. We were talking about her job so I thought she meant a job interview. But, nope: she's moving forward with a probable plan to become an ex-pat living in Mexico. Like: what? She had never told me this was a plan before. It's not hugely shocking, given how often she's been visiting the country, and a guy she hooked up with the last time she was there who moved there the last time President Fuckwit was president. "I'm
done," Danielle said.
She was also aware of the protests, but had a similar attitude about it to Laney's: she's tired of it all, and went to paddle board on the lake instead. She's not longer interested in protesting and just wants to "peace out." She said, "My opinion doesn't mean anything," which is debatable, but at least she's still insistent on voting.
We didn't spend a huge amount of time on this stuff, though. I had no solid plans yesterday so I asked her what her plans for Sunday were. She had none, and Shobhti immediately invited her over to play Yahtzee and have dinner. Even though it was just Danielle as the one guest, it become our first hosted dinner for the year: Shobhit made
four dishes, including a paneer & vegetablie dish; a potato based dish; a garbanzo beans dish; and a broccoli dish. He made seven parathas from scratch. I made us chai, which I had done and ready and being heated in a thermos before Danielle finally arrived around 2:00. She hung out for roughly five hours.
Danielle asked if she could bring anything and we said: containers for leftovers! She didn't have to be told twice.
After we sat down and stuffed ourselves at the table, we played four games of Yahtzee, and had a really good time. Danielle even said, "Monthly game night?" Then, within seconds: "I can't commit to that. Bimonthly game night!" Maybe I should mark my calendar for sometime in June. Which is a month already super scheduled with stuff—as it typically is, being the month of Shobhit's and my anniversary as well as Pride Month.
Anyway, after Danielle left, Shobhit and I spent the rest of the evening watching TV: this week's episodes of
The White Lotus (season 3 finale!);
The Righteous Gemstones;
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (an impressively nuanced report on the run of legislative bans on trans athletes in sports). Anything else I haven't covered from the entire weekend—including Friday evening—we were probably watching
The Residence on Netflix, which I'm getting a kick out of. Well, Shobhit did go to a Seattle Men in Leather event on Friday evening, which I opted not to join him for, but that was only a couple of hours. Oh! I nearly forgot: Shobhit did meet me at work on Friday at 4:30, and we walked together to Penache on Capitol Hill, where he browsed, and then bought, some fetish gear for the aforementioned SML event. Then we walked home from there. Another point for him!
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[posted 12:32pm]
