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I seem to forget that multiple notable events happen monthly on the first Thursday. For example: Laney and I had long planned to visit the Seattle Art Museum for Free First Thursday; I forget why we wound up having to skip October and went for November instead. I've got nothing but TV shows noted on my Google Calendar for Thursday October 2, so maybe it was Laney who had a conflict that day. I first brought it up to her when Shobhit and I went in September, but I discovered that I never saw
the LEGO version of Monet's Water Lilies, even though we had gone for the Ai Weiwei exhibition. So I decided I should go back and find it.
Well, guess what? This is even noted on that web page and I just never registered it: this piece is not at the main Seattle Art Museum. It's at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, on Capitol Hill! Jesus Christ. Well, a very cute museum staff guy I asked about it let us know it was there. So I guess we'll just have to go
there sometime, before they remove it in March.
Laney had met me at the Downtown / Corner Market PCC and we walked the couple blocks over to the museum. We were already there, so we still checked out the
Impressionism exhibition currently there—in the same space, in fact, that Ai Weiei had previously been in.
Laney hadn't slept well because the houseless people in the alley behind her building were really loud and yelling all night. I'm glad she pushed through and still came rather than canceling, even though the thing we actually came for wasn't even there. We spent roughly and hour looking at a lot of very impressive 19th-century and early-20th-century Impressionist paintings. Laney was particularly taken with a painting of cows.
It was a bit rainy yesterday. They asked us to check our umbrellas in addition to our jackets. We got there early enough that checking them in was quick. When we were set to leave, though, the line was nuts. A staff person noted that this happens when it is Free First Thursday and also rainy. The line moved pretty steadily, though.
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— पांच हजार नौ सौ नौ —
So anyway, the other thing that happens on First Thursdays:
Pioneer Square Art Walk. Shobhit and I also already did this once before this year, back in September—the same day, again, that we had gone to the Seattle Art Museum. I took fewer photos at the museum and more photos at the Art Walk this time, particularly because of a specific, awesome exhibition Shobhit found while just out on a walk: "
Dogs and Cats," at Chatwin Arts gallery. He texted me a good eight photos while Laney and I were still at the museum.
When Laney declared she was starting to wind down, I decided to meet up with Shobhit. The long line at coat check was a concern at first, but then it moved steadily. Still, Laney and I hugged goodbye while she was still waiting for her jacket and umbrella, and I rushed outside, having no idea when that gallery would close. Shobhit was already at that very block, and then we walked south again to Pioneer Square.
Turns out most of these galleries stay open until, like, 9:00, so we really had nothing to worry about. I'd really like to do these Art Walks more regularly, though. They're really fun, always feature a lot of awesome art, and typically have snack tables with free crackers and cheese to take, often even free wine. What's not to love here?
Shobhit had also found this place called
Peter Miller. It's an architectural & design supply store, but also has a room packed with books about architecture! I could have spent all day in there, and we even found a couple of books about Amsterdam that we were tempted to buy but were like three times the cost of what you could get on Amazon. It's better to support local, of course, but that difference is hard to ignore.
Anyway, I wound up with
a 22-shot photo album out of the evening. I got lots of great photos of paintings of cats. Even a couple of dogs. I don't know how these galleries feel about photos being taken of art that local artists are trying to sell. There was one painting I really fell in love with at the September Art Walk but I don't have hundreds of dollars to spend on a painting. It's fun to see them on these Art Walks, though.
We thought we might walk all the way home, but a #12 bus caught up with us after we reached Pike Street, so we caught and rode that the rest of the way up Capitol Hill.
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Aside from that, I just had my Zoom lunch with Karen, after the last one two weeks ago wound up canceled due to some travel woes on her part. She told me all about them today. It turns out it had a lot to do with the latest
IT outage at Alaska Airlines, resulting in a bunch of flights being grounded and/or canceled. She was on a business trip to Philadelphia, extended slightly to see her cousin as well, when it happened.
She was there for an event havin to do with a local community center opening soon with lots of accessibility design, to allow for a lot of different sports played by teams with disabled players. Wheelchair basketball, that kind of thing—and much, much more. We spent a good amount of time talking about this, and that made a great segue into my telling her about having visited the Peter Miller store in Pioneer Square, and specifically
the bookstore. She told me she's never gone there though, because she doesn't like to support places that do not have accessible entry. Apparently for a long time they were in a location that had only staired entry. It doesn't now, but their front door is currently off an alleyway paved with bricks, so not the most significant upgrade there in terms of accessibility. (I took the photo in the middle of this post while standing in the alley right outside the entrance, incidentally.)
Anyway, we talked about lots of other stuff too. Four weeks since our last lunch, the last one being when I went to her house, there was a lot to catch up on. I had almost forgotten and then I realized: "Oh!" I had to tell her the news of Shobhit's casting as the lead in a play to run in a downtown Olympia theater in March. "Shobhit's Olympia debut," she called it. I liked that. Even she said she'll see if she can't come down and see the play. I love how many people are expressing interest in going to see his performance.
But now I need to post this and get back to work!
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[posted 1:09pm]
