Starting two years ago, I decided a good way to burn through my excess PTO at work would be to make it a new tradition to take the day off work for Shobhit's birthday every year. I should have started on the milestone of his 50th birthday, but whatever; it didn't occur to me until the year he turned 51. And this has never been particularly pressing in terms of scheduling, as Shobhit usually makes very little of his birthday. My approach, always, is to do whatever he wants to do, and we rarely do much more than go out for dinner or something—and, for his 50th in 2023, what he wanted to do was just make his own birthday dinner. We invited Alexia, who still lived next door at the time, but did not even tell her it was his birthday until she had already come over, just so she would not feel obligated to bring him something. (She's taken care never to forget it since; she texted him a "birthday gif" of a hot shirtless man yesterday, which very much amused him.) But, he still seems to appreciate that I take the day off.
And I went on a long walk with him yesterday afternoon, even though I didn't particularly want to, especially given how rainy it was. But, it was his birthday! We walked to a bank at the Bullitt Center where he could deposit a work check (and also
spill a nearly-full cup of coffee on the concrete floor); down to the Douglas Branch library, where I returned the
Battlestar Galactica season 1 DVD that Alexia had come over Thursday evening to use for watching the 2003 miniseries that kicked off the series (which she had never seen, but I knew she would like, and she was indeed super into it; we both agreed that it holds up incredibly well); then over to the Starbucks on 12th Avenue and Columbia, where he could claim his free birthday drink (by filling a large tumbler bottle with espresso shots, Shobhit always finding ways to game the system); and then back home. We had considered going to the Capitol Hill branch library first, which is a mile in the opposite direction, but when I looked it up I found that the Douglas-Truth branch was actually 1.5 miles away. Shobhit hypothesized that going to the Capitol Hill branch may have still resulted in a longer round-trip, if we were still going to walk down to the Starbucks on 12th and Columbia (his favorite), but he was wrong: had we walked to Capitol Hill branch first, the total walk would have been 2.7 miles. But, we wound up walking 3.2. He made me waste half a mile of walking! It ruined my day. I'm just kidding, it was fine. Except maybe that the rain was starting to soak into my socks.
I helped Shobhit run his lines a couple of times, and we also watched a couple episides of TV. That about covered the excitement for most of the day. What still made the day easier due to my taking Shobhit's birthday off of work was that the Tasveer 9th Annual Gala was scheduled to start at 5:00, and this gave me plenty of time to change before heading down there, instead of leaving work early and rushing to do that.
This may have been the 9th year of the Tasveer Gala, but it was the first one either of us had ever gone to. I think their entire Board was there, but this was the first Gala after Shobhit joined. Even before it occurred to him to feel obligated due to his position on the Board, though, his interest piqued significantly when he discovered it was scheduled on his birthday. In the end, I was the one who bought our tickets, which set me back a combined $378.26. Ever since then, Shobhit has clearly delighted in telling people his husband bought our tickets for his birthday.
So, most years Shobhit's birthday is pretty chill and uneventful, but this year was one of the exceptions that happens every few years. With his birthday being so near the end of October, it often overlaps with other major events, from Halloween weekend clubbing (which we did
in 2011); to concurrently-scheduled costume parties (as in
Los Angeles in 2015 and
2016); to the date-varying major Hindu holiday,
Diwali; to the West Seattle Harvest Festival (which landed on Shobhit's birthday
in 2022); to, now, the
Tasveer Annual Gala, which landed on his birthday this year. Only a couple of times have we deliberately did something highly photogenic for his birthday, such as the
day trip from Los Angeles to Catalina Island in 2014 (you get free ferry fare for your birthday), or the
trip to Los Vegas in 2021.
One of the other members of the Tasveer board, a White woman named Jimi Lou, kept telling people all evening last night that it was Shobhit's birthday. He took any and every opportunity to bring it up, which maybe resulted in more people wishing Shobhit a Happy Birthday than he's ever gotten outside of Facebook. Shobhit was also taking phone calls from family members wishing him a Happy Birthday all day, including a couple of times during the gala. At one point I took a photo of him from inside the banquet room, standing just outside the door at one of the tall tables, now otherwise abandoned, after the hour or so of people milling about out there before they finally opened the banquet room for seating.
It turned out I really didn't need to be there as early as 5:00. I could easily have waited until 6:00, which was around the time they opened the banquet room. Shobhit, being on the Board, needed to be there early, so he walked down to the Seattle Convention Center Summit building (the one that
opened in 2023) about an hour earlier than I did. I changed into mu formal Indian "kurta pajama" outfit and headed out at about 4:30—although I had to backtrack and go back up to the condo
twice, first to retrieve the AirPods charging case I was forgetting; then to go back and fill the flask with whiskey, after Shobhit texted me that it was a cash bar. (There wound up being free wine on the tables, so we never drank any of that whiskey in the end.)
This set me back several minutes, so after walking to Broadway, I hopped on a #49 bus that happened to be coming by and rode that the rest of the way—not that it saved me much time, at 4:45 on a Friday. I wasn't thinking at all about it being rush hour.
Anyway. I got off the bus at 9th Avenue, then crossed Pine Street to its south side so I could get the exterior shot of the Seattle Convention Center Summit building seen at the top of this entry. At upper left, you can see a kind of black rectangle section of the building jutting out a bit: that's the section of the building with the banquet room where the event took place. It's the same architectural section of the building seen in the above shot, above the 3rd-floor courtyard, which I took through the windows at the opposite end of the 4th floor from it. (That section is also on the 4th, or top, floor, of the Convention Center Summit.) I really wanted to get an equivalent shot of it after dark, and I even tried, but in the evening the reflection of interior lights made it impossible to shoot through the glass.
I had not had lunch, and was getting really hungry shortly after I arrived at 5:00. I said this to Shobhit, and he managed to pull me into the staff room with food for the hired help—the keynote speaker, the emcee, etc. I had a
relatively small plate of food that did tide me over for the next hour, but I really should have just toughed it out and waited. I got a
lot of food at the banquet, where I ate two and a half bread rolls (largely thanks to Shobhit asking the catering staff to bring the table another basket); a
salad; a delicious plate of
cheese ravioli that was a kind of shockingly large portion; and then, at the end, cake.
There were full cakes for every table; this was not a birthday cake for Shobhit—but we might as well regard it as one. It was Shobhit's birthday, and he got cake. Not only that, but the dessert was made part of the countless auction opportunities that took up the bulk of the gala's time—it was called the "Dessert Dash," and it worked like this: each table fills out a form with each person's donation pledge, and whichever table has the largest cumulative pledge amount, they get to choose a "runner" to go and get first choice among the cakes for their table. Shobhit "volunteered" to be our table's runner, which the rest of the table seemed fine with.
How this all worked seemed unclear to me at first, and I was disinclined to make any pledge at all; I had already spent a fortune on the tickets alone, and wasn't really prepared for the countless ways in which the room would be asked to pledge even more money—I certainly know to be prepared for this next time, though. (I get it: it's a gala
fundraiser.) We had already bought a $100 raffle ticket for free flights for two on Alaska Airlines—which, incidentally, the older woman from Massachusetts who was sitting on the other side of Shobhit won. But, when we realized the "Dessert Dash" was a communal effort for each table, we would be holding the table back by not making a pledge. The first person from our table to fill out the form had pledged $200; all four or five of the others had
each pledged $100. So, Shobhit did the same. We were at somewhat of a disadvantage with two empty seats at our table, but I think our total was about $700. Shobhit guessed we would wind up fifth or sixth among the tables, and he was right. He was already up at the dessert tables when Table 12, our table, was called. I was somewhat surprised when he skipped the Red Velvet, his favorite; and instead instantly snatched the Black Forest Chocolate cake—which everyone was still very impressed with, as it was light and delicious.
There was also just a general auction, both for specific prizes (a theater rental at the Tasveer Film Center; a personalized barbeque from a local restaurant; a full film festival pass; that kind of stuff), and for additional general donation pledges. These started from the highest tier down: I think it started in the thousands, but no one in the room lifted their donation number card until it was down to about $1,500 I think. I don't remember for sure. I just know the auctioneer went through a few tiers before anyone bid. The lower the tier, of course, the more people bid. Even though they ended at $50, by far the most bids were for the $100 level—which Shobhit also did, in the end donating an additional $300 total over the course of the evening. Between the tickets themselves and the additional donations, we gave nearly $700 to Tasveer in relation to this event.
Shobhit had suggested I be the one to make the donations, and he would pay me back. At first this was just going to be for the Alaska Airlines raffle. He's already Zelled me $300, though, even though none of last night's bids have hit my credit card yet.
At the end of the event, they had a DJ and a small dance floor toward the front of the room, which Shobhit kind of pulled me up to for some dancing, which we didn't do for more than maybe one and a half songs. Shobhit tried to encourage other people to dance, but only maybe ten did, and before long, people were already filing out. The event was scheduled from 5:00 to 10:00, but after the "cocktail hour" the banquet room only opened at 6:00, and I'd sat at least half the people were gone or leaving by about 9:30. The
very last photo I took was of Shobhit changing back into his regular shoes, and that was taken at 9:34. We left right after that.
I nearly forgot to say more about our outfits. Shobhit wore the same one he wears to everything like this—what he wore at our wedding, and he's worn at all the other Tasveer events over three years that we've bothered to dress up for. Now, when we first bought our Indian outfits for our wedding, we bought them at a store in Brooklyn in 2013, and Shobhit managed to get a 2-for-1 deal out of them. I've been oddly averse to re-wearing the one I wore at the wedding over the years, and both last year and the year before, I wore the other one we had bought, a more
solid red one in design. This year, I finally decided to wear the other one again, more for variety as compared to previous years at Tasveer events than for any other reason. I never did get a photo of us in our outfits with my phone, but their hired photographer, Cloud, did—very much at Shobhit's request, shortly after we arrived. Hopefully he can get Cloud to text him one of those photos. We did look good. One woman, who clearly has seen me at other events, walked up to me at one point when Shobhit was not with me, and actually said, "You are always dressed the best!" I just smiled and thanked her.
And then we walked home, thankfully with the rain that restarted during the gala having just stopped. No one else at our table wanted the leftover cake, so Shobhit got a to-go box for it and I carried it on our walk home. I look forward to having it today, even though after last night I weighed in at like 2 lbs heavier.
[posted 10:21am]
