bikewalk

— छह हज़ार पचपन — Shobhit met met at work when I got off yesterday, and we walked together straight from here to 20/20 Cycle, where I was finally able to bring my bike back home—I had dropped it off there Thursday last week. We went to pick it up Saturday morning, but one more thing needed to be done with glue on the handlebar grips, so we left it again, and because of how busy we were over the rest of Pride weekend and the fact that they are closed Mondays and Tuesdays, the next chance I had to pick it up was yesterday. The initial estimate for the many things that had been done to the bike was $280. I had spoken to one employee when I dropped off the bike; a guy named Chuck had left a voice mail telling me the bike was ready on Friday evening; we spoke to the actual owner when we were there on Saturday; and we spoke to yet a fourth guy when we went back there yesterday. This guy, an older Black man whose name I forget even though Shobhit asked his name (Shobhit loves to ask people's names and then address them by their name; I wonder if he picked up this habit when running for City Council in 2022), actually volunteered to knock a bit off the total. We didn't even complain, really; Shobhit just wanted an explanation because the itemized line items on the bill were not adding up to the same estimated total. Well, in the end I was charged $257.45. That was an 8% discount, which fell under even what the total tax would have been, but hey, I was still happy to get $22.55 back. Every dollar counts! Whoever worked on the bike fucked with the seat. It's way too high now. I could have taken it back when I first noticed this, maybe two blocks away, but I decided to deal with it later. It will take using a tool but I'll figure it out. My blocked off time on my calendar to avoid bike riding for six weeks after being discharged from the hospital ends on Thursday next week, so I have another solid week to figure this out. Still, I was a little unsure while walking the bike home, but once I had it inside the garage, I got on it for a minute and the seat is definitely too high. — छह हज़ार पचपन — — छह हज़ार पचपन — Once we were home, I made chai, and Shobhit made burgers using the potato filling previously used for paratha filling as patties. Burgers made this way tasted all right, except that the fried potato paties squeezed right out of the bun as soon as I picked up the assembled burger. Oh well. We went over my budget together to figure out how to incorporate the $257.45, which was an un-budgeted expense. I had thought I'd need to take some out of my scheduled payment to savings, but I still hadn't used $100 budgeted for Costco for this pay period or nearly $35 left of the $50 I had budgeted for other groceries. We aren't going to use that before I get paid again tomorrow, so we just took those line items out, and then I took Shobhit's suggestion to add the 20/20 Cycle expense without adjusting anything else, and allowing the budget balance to be negative for now. I've budgeted several other things that I may very well come in under budget on for the next pay period (starting tomorrow; it also helps a great deal that this is a three-paycheck month), which I also budgeted out last night. Now my budget balance is something like -$98. I know, fascinating stuff, right? I have a whole other tab with planned travel expenses, with very complex grids for all the places we plan to visit in Europe in a few weeks. Right now that's all covered by a separate line item to which I add $333 per paycheck and have been for a year, since we got back from Washington, D.C. in June 2025. I budgeted $10,000 for that trip, a number I arrived at because it's what we had budgeted for Australia in 2023. I don't know if it's inflation or Europe being more expensive than Australia or simply planning more stuff this time or maybe a combination of all of the above, but Shobhit is starting to think we may spend more than $10K in the end. We'll see. My budget balance post-planned spending right now is roughly $1000, which would thus cover little more than food expenses, but I also have several things budgeted there that I will likely decide not to do in the end; I simply budgeted a stuff just because I want it on my radar. I must say I am getting more and more excited about this trip, the most significant trip we'll have taken since the trip to Australia in 2023. That was the last time we went to any other country outside of the U.S. or Canada; and up to now these remain the only three countries I have ever been to. With The Netherlands and Belgium, I'm about to add two (we have a layover in Iceland but I am not going to count that; besides we have Iceland on the docket for its own trip in the next couple of years). Once the budgeting was done, we burned through about four episodes of season five of Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO Max before I went to bed, where I was up later than I really should have been because I got sucked into videos on YouTube, something I rarely look at. I was thinking of finding videos about Amsterdam, and then got fed interesting videos about random other things! One was a video, which I watched maybe a quarter of, of a YouTuber describing a visit to Seattle. I cracked up when he suggested getting on the Light Rail "Symphony Line" as part of his "money saving tips." It's just the 1 Line from the airport; Symphony is the name of the downtown station that used to be called University Street Station. They recently renamed it to end confusion with University of Washington Station, which is in the U District 4 miles to the northeast; they call it "Symphony Station" now because it's beneath Benaroya Hall, where the Seattle Symphony performs. — छह हज़ार पचपन — [posted 12:33pm]

orcarama

— छह हज़ार चौवन — I had no plans yesterday after work to report on, except for a Zoom PCC Member Event featuring guest speaker Dr. Darren Croft, Executive Director of the Center for Whale Research, which receives 100% of the proceeds from our store sales of a line of greeting cards called Cards by Lodie. The cards retail for $6, and apparently a few hundred dollars have been raised through this. I want to say the figure mentioned during the talk was in excess of $400,000, but I can't remember the exact number. Anyway, after a maybe five-minute introduction by a PCC staffer in the Marketing and Purpose department, Darren Croft spent about 40 minutes on an incredibly well-polished and well-timed presentation about orca whales. I learned a lot of incredibly fascinating stuff about orca whales and was so glad I signed up for this; it ran from 5:30 to 6:30 so I had about half an hour after I got home to make my chai, dish up some of the dinner Shobhit had made, and settle in at my laptop on my desk on the bedroom. Here are some of the highlights from my memory: * Orca whales are among about five species of whales that are the only non-primates in the world to experience menopause. * This happens around age 40, but many females can live for decades after their reproductive years, and all the younger whales in pods that have such elder females statistically live longer; the elders help them survive. * The orca whales that travel through the Salish Sea eat salmon and salmon only; even though orca whales in other parts of the world regard other species as food, this is a cultural difference analagous to humans regarding different things as food depending on where they are from. For these whales, salmon is food; another fish like tuna is simply not, so they don't even consider them. I found this incredibly fascinating, as this is learned behavior and I don't think I quite grasped the complexity of social behaviors in this species. * Salmon in the Salish Sea has gotten smaller over time, which means orca whales have to work harder to catch prey that can more easily evade them, in order to attain the same nutritional value they once had with larger fish. These examples just scratch the surface. The Center for Whale Research has a great "About Orcas" web page that is packed with information. Some stuff shared in the presentation was not on this page, though (like whales being the only non-primates that go through menopause). Just for kicks, I also found these web pages: "10 Little Known Facts About Orcas" by Orca Spirit Adventures; and this page at the Natural History Museum website goes into how menopause and the presence of elder females is important to the survival of young males (why not the survival of young females? I have no idea). Oh, and it was stated in the presentation that our orca whales are the most studied cetaceans on the planet. The narrow waterways in which the same pods regularly return probably make that an easier achievement. — छह हज़ार चौवन — — छह हज़ार चौवन — Anyway, Shobhit had a SAG-AFTRA Seattle Local board meeting to attend from 6:00 to 7:00, and he walked there and back, so he was gone much of the evening. He was home when I got home but left just minutes after. We did take one more step in our Netherlands trip planning shortly after he got back, though. We have booked our tickets to the Van Gogh museum for late morning the first full day we'll be there. As far as I can tell, this covers all of the most critical things we needed to book well in advance: the guided tour of the European Parliament Hemicycle (I actually booked this first, weeks ago, as soon as dates were available to book), which will be during our detour to Brussels on Tuesday, August 4; the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, which we booked for Sunday, August 2; and now the Van Gogh Museum, which we booked for Monday, July 27. We have decided to buy a 3-day "IAmsterdam City Card" and use it the first three days we are there, which is going to result in us really packing our days in order to get our money's worth, but oh well. The card covers four attractions or experiences I already planned to visit or do, which alone do not match the value of the City Card, but we'll easily find other things to do that add to the value, plus the card also covers the in-city trams. This means spending a bit more than I originally planned for, but that's okay; we'll also do a lot more than I initially planned for. I'm happy to get all this out of the way in those first three days though, because I really would prefer more freedom on other days to just do whatever strikes our fancy at whatever time, especially during days dominated by World Pride events. I suppose I should find out if we need to register for the World Pride March on Saturday, August 8; I think we did at both World Pride Sydney in 2023 and World Pride Washington, D.C. last year. ...Never mind! I just checked the web page for the event and it says nothing about registration, only where to gather and where the march goes. — छह हज़ार चौवन — [posted 12:32pm]