So last night I went to Volunteer Park for the fourth annual Lusio Festival, a free light exhibit art show called "A Night to Awaken." I only went to it the first time last year, as I had never even heard if it the previous two years but found it when I was looking for things to do during Ivan's visit in August 2018. But I guess this means now I've been to half of them.

It does mean that now I have a Flickr collection dedicated to Lusio, to fit in among my broader "Local Events" collection of photo albums. My hope is to keep growing the Lusio collection as the years go on, and attend every year that I can. It's awesome and it's free!

I was slightly concerned that it might be all the exact same exhibits as there had been last year. There was no need for such concern, because it was entirely different exhibits, and I daresay this year's event was even better than last year's. I suppose that makes it kind of ironic that I managed 64 shots at last year's event, and only 32 shots from last night's. On the other hand, only two of those shots last year were video clips, and fully ten of them are video clips among this year's shots. In all likelihood, as a result, it probably takes a roughly equivalent amount of time to click through both photo albums.

Technically I had eleven shots, but I decided to combine the first two video clips I took into one shot. This diamond shaped thing began to open just as I stopped the first clip, before I even realized what was happening, and that made me think maybe I should shoot another ten seconds or so. And I have to say, doing something as simple as combining these two video clips into one on Apple devices should be a hell of a lot simpler than it was. The iMovie app on my phone has seriously limited features, and although I could edit the two video clips into one, because I had shot these vertically like an idiot because I wasn't thinking, the app does not "fit to screen" and cuts off the top third or so of the picture, with no means for correcting it. Opening iMovie on my iMac, on the other hand, made "fit to screen" quite easy -- the frustrating difference being that it takes literally minutes for the program to fully load so I could create the combined video at all. But in the end, I got it done!

Boy, wasn't that worth it?

I do rather wish I could have gone with someone rather than just myself, even if it could not be Ivan this time (although it was a kind of interesting twist of fate that it landed on the very evening of the day he flew out to New Zealand). I had seen on Facebook that Lea and her friend Josh were both planning to go, which made me think maybe Gabriel might go as well. I actually texted him in the morning but it met with no response. I even emailed Elin the other day to remind her, after setting a reminder in my calendar a year ago to do so, at her request as she liked the photos I had shared so much. She replied saying she almost never drives into Seattle anymore and is even more of a homebody than she was before. It sounds like retirement suits her. I could have asked Laney -- she lives even closer to Volunteer Park than I do -- but I already knew she had a full day of other plans so I didn't bother. Perhaps I should have. I think I will look it up a few weeks beforehand next year and try to convince her to put it on her calendar. I really think Laney needs to see this. I suppose I could have contacted Lea directly to see when she planned to be there, but I sort of feel like I don't quite know her well enough yet to attempt making plans with her that do not involve Gabriel. I tried that once with his mother when I wanted to see Kathry Griffin and Gabriel was kind of weird about it.

Anyway! My broader point here is that, with another person, I almost certainly would have gotten more pictures. With Ivan last year, for instance, we both posed for photos that we took of each other inside of and next to certain exhibits. I had no one to help me with such an endeavor last night, so I could only take photos of pieces straight on, and none of myself interacting. In a couple of cases I just got photos of strangers in a few shots, interacting with the interactive art.

That aside, I still enjoyed it thoroughly, even if it was by myself. I was there for exactly one hour -- the time stamp on my fist photo is 9:02 pm and the last one is 10:01 -- so I actually think 32 shots is pretty good. I took more than that, as always, but deleted the ones that did not turn out so great, an easy thing to have happen with nighttime shooting on my iPhone. In any case, I still think you should take a look at the full photo album on Flickr.

As such, it made for a very full day, after spending all afternoon with Gina and Beth at Mount Baker Beach for the Blue Angels Air Show. And all of that was while Shobhit had to work. Maybe a miracle will happen and next year Shobhit will be able to go to the Lusio Festival with me. I think he'd really like it. I just need to figure out where the hell all the people there find the neon things they wear around the park. Are they bringing that stuff independently? I have questions!

I suppose I could actually caption the photos now.

[posted 5:24 pm]

So yesterday I had barely gotten to work when Laney texted me that she had a stomach bug and couldn't do Happy Hour after work after all; we postponed it for Sunday afternoon instead. That left my evening entirely free to spend with Ivan, although I wasn't quite sure what we would do, although hopefully more than just sitting around at home all night.

And then, I just happened to see the Capitol Hill Seattle Twitter feed post a link to an event page for something going on that very nigh, which sounded very cool and was free: a presentation of artistic light installations all over Volunteer Park, called "Lusio: A Night to Awaken."

I messaged the link to Ivan and wrote, I just found something interesting for us to maybe go check out tonight?? Pretty soon afterward he responded, That sounds great, let’s go!

And thus, almost spontaneously, I went out last night to something that yielded 64 photos for a set on Flickr, most of them very cool shots. I didn't even know when I woke up yesterday morning that my Friday would end like this.

I had ridden my bike home from work, and Ivan was sitting at the dining table looking at his phone, just like he often was when he used to live here. We agreed to leave for the park at about 8:00 and walk there; in the end it was about 8:10, and then we even went slightly the wrong way first, as he wanted to get a caramel macchiato at the Starbucks on Broadway and Pike first. But before we left, he really wanted to check out this new Stephen King-based show on Hulu, Castle Rock, and so we watched the first episode -- which he promptly ignored as he look at his phone the whole time. So I watched a few episodes of Broad City, a show we watched together a couple of times in 2016 before he moved back in the last time, after coming over to see the cats after our many monthly dinners we had that year between maybe March and November.

Anyway, the "Lusio" event was very cool, and we were there until past 10:00, which slightly surprised me. There was a lot to see -- and take pictures of; hence the 64 photos. (I took way more than that, but tossed a lot that didn't turn out well.) I'd say maybe once we spent half the time we ultimately spent there, we started feeling like we'd seen everything there was to see, only to turn and discover something new.

Before starting this post, I just got done captioning all those photos, so you can get a lot more detail by clicking through to Flickr. We stopped at Safeway on the way back so I could get a bag of chips and use them to eat the last of the artichoke spinach cheese dip Eric sent Shobhit and me home with last weekend, and thankfully, Ivan happily helped me with that, so I wouldn't scarf it all down. I was down to 151.3 lbs this morning! Actually I even weighed myself a second time later this morning and it said 150.8, but I don't trust that so I'm sticking with 151.3 as my official weight for the day.

I think I'm going to read my library book for a bit now. Ivan left the condo a couple of hours ago while I was still getting read and I have no idea where he went. I suppose he can have some of his own time though, that's only fair!

[posted 12:21 pm]