— छह हज़ार उनतालीस —
Yesterday, very shortly after I finished my work day at 4:30, Shobhit and I went to this month's
First Thursday Art Walk in Pioneer Square. It's now the
fourth one I have done; I went in September 2025, November 2025, March 2026, and now June 2026. Shobhit has actually gone to a couple more, during months when for whatever reason I had other plans on the first Thursday of the month.
There's a lot to love about the First Thursday Art Walk in Pioneer Square, including it being by far Seattle's longest-running monthly neighborhood Art Walk; claimed to be the longest continuous monthly Art Walk in the nation; easily the most popular of Seattle's
many monthly neighborhood Art Walks; and arguably the easiest to actually navigate on foot—its
many participating venues are maybe the most densely located in proxinity to each other.
Shobhit and I have kind of established many venues we check out each time, and our typical route, as walked yesterday, covered roughly one mile total, and maybe 12 blocks. The first venue we tend to go to now, which often has an event for Art Walk with pretty substantial free food, is "The Shop" by LMN Design on 1st & Columbia; we then make our way down 1st Avenue to the block south of King Street, and almost every block has one or more participating venues on it. In fact, the Pioneer Square Art Walk has so many participating venues that you don't even need one of the maps or guides to easily fill up your time with them; lots of places have Art Walk signs outside their doors and you can just find them by walking around.
Anyway, normally we would walk all the way there from home so Shobhit can get more steps in, but due to my weakened state after last week's bike accident, this time we caught the G Line up at 17th and Madison, and took it down to the southwestern most stop at 1st Avenue between Spring and Seneca. When you factor in the walk from and back to that bus stop, we did walk
well over a mile while down there; I really thought it would have been more walking than I've done since getting home from the hospital, but I actually fell slightly short in steps yesterday compared to Wednesday: 5,921 steps compared to 6,313. Clearly the two were comparable, at least; and far higher than any day since getting home from the hospital. (The Saturday before the accident, I walked 13,842 steps. I was with Gabriel on Lummi Island that day.) Anyway, I think Wednesday this week had the edge because Shobhit and I walked all the way downtown from home before I went to my movie that day.
Under other circumstances, we probably would have checked out more venues as well. As it was, we went into 9 total, or 10 if you want to count the super-popular market at Occidental Square—where, incidentally, there are also participating venues on either side of the square, which we have gone into in the past but did not this time.
I was rather struck by a noticeable difference, now that we've gone in the spring rather than the fall or winter: somewhat to my surprise, the participating galleries were far less crowded. I suppose this actually makes some logical sense, because even though the Art Walk involves a lot of walking outside between venues, most of the time is still spent indoors. Yesterday was nowhere near as warm as the few days prior, but it was still warm compared to fall or winter, and it wasn't raining yesterday evening either. The days are much longer now, and people probably wanted to do other things that took advantage of the weather.
That said, the Occidental Square market was far more crowded than I had ever seen. Probably for exactly the same reasons. Shobhit and I walked the length of it but did not spent much time at any specific booths. I actually bought my latest pair of earrings at one of them back in March, which I still have yet to wear but will have an excuse to this month, being Pride Month:
peeled banana earrings where, if you look closely, the white banana parts are actually penises. Maybe I'll wear them to Pride in the Park tomorrow.
Another partial mainstay of our visits to First Thursday Art Walk: capping it off with a stop at
Mirabelle by Orphée, the wonderful new French bakery in a prime location near 1st and Cherry, at the north end of Pioneer Square Park (at the south end of which is the
Pioneer Square Pergola—itself being visible, incidentally, in
this painting seen during last night's Art Walk). We sat at the small tables outside, and Shobhit bought a
ratatouille dish for us to share, which was delicious.
Mirabelle usually closes by 5:00, but Art Walk runs between 5 and 9 p.m., so he stays open late on the first Thursday of the month.
— छह हज़ार उनतालीस —
— छह हज़ार उनतालीस —
Not long after we got home and I had processed my photos from the evening, Shobhit went on a long walk to meet his quota for daily steps. During that time, Danielle called me, and we had our first actual conversation outside of texts since the accident; she has checked up on me over text but has been very busy with work in the interim. Holy shit, did she have a lot of major updates from her own life to share, between a garage door opener salesman making deeply unwanted sexual advances to her adopting a new, very big dog (something she decided to get rather than buying a gun after feeling far too vulnerable after the aforementioned incident), who has also bit her in the face! She explained how it was really her fault with the dog, who was a foster care at first and you need to be less familiar for a while in those situations and she startled her while she was sleeping by laying her had on her side, far too soon after bringing her home. Danielle actually had to get a few stitches, though. In any case, Danielle explained all the nuances about this dog in a well enough way that I don't feel nervous at all about meeting her eventually. Also, and I don't know why this amuses me, the dog's name is Val.
I also talked with Danielle about the First Thursday Art Walk, because I was already thinking about her earlier in the evening—she came up once for the Belltown Art Walk, and I wanted to suggest she come up sometime for Pioneer Square, which is even better. She was even more enthusiastic about the idea than I expected, and we actually both marked our calendars for Thursday, July 2.
She may want to come back for the Belltown Art Walk again one day too; the one she came to with us before, she bought a T-shirt she really loved with an anatomically correct heart on it. But, she ran it through the laundry and now there's a tear right through the heart. "I'm heartbroken!" she kept saying. She really wants to replace it, but given the transitory nature of a lot of these art walks and which artists participate, I'm not sure how easy that will be.
In other news, being a nurse, and talking about the varying levels of pain I've been in, Danielle finally convinced me to take some of the methocarbamol I had been sent home with. She explained that it's not even remotely connected to street meth, and it's just a muscle relaxer. And she told me I could even just start with half a pill instead of a full one. I cut a pill, and it really cut more into 2/3 and 1/3 pieces; I took the latter. I did sleep better last night than I did the previous, like, three nights. I have no idea if that pill made the difference of it was finally just enough time passing. I did still wake up with back pain, but it was higher up and more on the side, so I could tell it was related to my injuries and perhaps residual strain from the walking I did last night—I had none of the lower-back pain of the previous few nights that were clearly the result of having to sleep on my back because it still hurts too much to lay on my side. A did turn on my side a few times last night, though, so I think this issue is slowly but surely getting better.
I still took the requisite Extra Strength Tylenol this morning, which definitely helped, as it always does. I think it may be several days before I stop taking that. I fully plan to be working back in the office on Monday, but I'll want to remember to take the Tylenol with me.
— छह हज़ार उनतालीस —
I just had my biweekly Zoom lunch with Karen—this time taken from home, after the one from two weeks ago had to be rescheduled to the following Wednesday, the result of which was pivoting to her visiting me in the hospital. Now I was able to catch her up on how things have been going since then.
We also talked about lots of other things, her super busy work schedule and how much presenting she has scheduled at upcoming conferences; how Shobhit and I have gotten into puzzles recently; what we've been reading. Pretty standard, catching-up kind of stuff really. Honestly we did more of that than I expected, I kind of thought we'd spend more time on my pain management than we did. But then, how much more about that is there to tell, really? I did tell her about going to First Thursday Art Walk last night and how we took the bus there and back so as not to overextend myself.
I will say that as soon as she saw me on the Zoom camera, she noted how much better I looked than the last time she saw me. I would hope so, presumably I looked like shit when I was in the hospital on Wednesday last week. I mean, relatively speaking I mean. I probably looked way better than almost all the other patients in there. Ha! At least I've got my looks.
— छह हज़ार उनतालीस —
[posted 1:05pm]
