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After Tacoma Pride this past weekend, my
Seattle Pride 2025 collection officially has 10 albums in it—just one album shy of matching the
record number of Pride albums I managed just last year.
If it weren't for the fact that I missed the Pride in the Park event in early June (due to being at WorldPride in Washington D.C.), and I
will miss this year's Alki Beach Pride next month (due to my trip to the Co+nvergence conference in Saint Paul), I'd actually be beating that record this year. There are
five Pride events from last year that I did not replicate this year, but there were four new Pride events I did this year—hence the one fewer event in this year's collection.
Anyway. I already
posted about Tacoma Pride, posting yesterday about Saturday. And still there's plenty more about my weekend to tell!
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Laney and I had a Happy Hour
in the park on Friday evening. It was Cal Anderson Park, specifically, so: the easiest park for either of us to access, coming from opposite directions.
Our intent, which we had been planning for months, probably since early last fall, was to get a veggie hot dog from the Dirty Dog hot dog stand that's been at the corner of 11th and Pine for quite a long time, from Thursday through Saturday every weekend. But the one time we actually made a plan to buy one from them, they were nowhere to be found! The corner was just empty. Laney had even texted a number she found online to ask if they would be open this weekend, and someone replied and said yes. She did not specify this location, though, so she texted them again while we were sitting in her lawn chairs on the sidewalk across the street from that corner, but no one ever texted her back that time.
They actually have
an Instagram account, but they haven't updated it in 25 weeks. I wonder if something happened to them.
Well, for Laney's and my purposes, it worked out quite well in the end. At first I still had my heart set on a veggie dog, and I looked up places on Yelp. There was a place listed just a block and a half away on Pike, so we gathered our chairs and walked over there. But that place didn't appear to exist either. Dammit!
So, we pivoted to Mexican street food. There was a booth on the sidewalk on Pine at Cal Anderson Park, this one at the west end of the block from the end where Dirty Dogs was supposed to be, called Tacos Cometa (
their Instagram account was updated just yesterday!). We decided to try them out, and they had vegetarian options for their quesadillas, with grilled mushrooms added, along with salsa and diced onions. Unfortunately, a couple of park rangers came and asked them about whether they had a permit for being vendors at Seattle Parks, right when Laney and I were ordering. They didn't shut them down, thankfully, but they did give them a card for where to call about getting a permit. I hope they do get a permit, because otherwise they are likely to get shut down.
When Laney asked how big the quesadillas were and the guy gestured a size with his hands, they didn't seem that big. The quesadillas are $7 each, and we both ordered two. We had no idea how much they would stuff them with, and in terms of food intake, one would have been plenty. But also two were easy to eat, because they were
fucking amazing.
We usually sit in the area further north at Cal Anderson Park, closer to the fountain. This time, at Laney's suggestion, we sat on what she likes to call "the dog pee pad," which is the astroturfed ground at Bobby Morris Playfield. Tons of people lounge in this area on hot days, which this was. Also, the field was set up for two different soccer fields, and we watched some of a nearby game being played. They had a referee with a hilariously oversized hat on, it must have been half as wide as he was tall.
There were a few homeless people around as well, some of them with bedding or tents set up over by the fencing along Pine Street; no doubt the police will sweep them out sooner than later. I saw at least one smoking fentanyl, a widespread problem around Seattle these days. Shobhit and I are attending a mayor candidate forum on Wednesday and I'll be shocked if this doesn't come up. In this instance, they were basically minding their own business and we were sitting a good 30 yards (maybe? I'm not good at these distances) from them so it was essentially fine.
Slightly different was the woman who clearly had a bit of a mental disability, and was a relatively constant presence, going around and panhandling people. She would meander quite close to people she had already asked, including us, but once we said no to her she never did actually ask us again. She walked with jerky movements and occasional sort of mini-outbursts, but never directed at anyone. Laney felt really bad for her and was really happy when someone actually gave her some money. In retirement she just doesn't have the money to give to pandhandlers, though apparently she used to carry around cash just for this purpose. I'm just selfish, I guess, and wouldn't give people cash even if I did have any in my pocket, which I never do.
In any case, it was a lovely evening. And thankfully, after nearly a week of staying at home with a cold (including missing
Superman with me on Thursday, though she didn't miss much), she said she woke up on Friday "finally feeling human again." It was the first time I had seen her since we all went to see
Jurassic World Rebirth, eight days before.
— पांच हजार आठ सौ छियालीस —
— पांच हजार आठ सौ छियालीस —
Yesterday was a very full day as well, this time with Alexia, and to a large degree Shobhit as well. He was busy all day Saturday with this year's 48-Hour Film Project, but was never called for any shooting yesterday. So, when Alexia arrived at 9 a.m. for walking to the
Valley of the Gnomes, he joined us.
Shobhit and I had discovered this spot, a sort of augmentation to the
Madrona Briar Patch, when we took a walk together last April. I later mentioned it to Alexia and we made a plan for her to come and walk back there with us. I only took four photos when we were there in April; I took 34 on the walk there yesterday.
The walk there from the condo building is 1.6 miles, so it would have been a 3.2 mile walk round-trip. And it was a hot day yesterday too; it was 71° when we left around 9:30 (Alexia was slightly delayed, then I had to go back upstairs twice, first to use the bathroom while Alexia used the one in the West building, then to go back and put sunscreen on that I had forgotten earlier). Usually you can count on it being cooler in the morning, but it wasn't quite yesterday.
It was still really fun sort of scavenger-hunting sightings of all the little gnomes below the foot trestles, though.
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When we got back, Shobhit had to run an errand to upgrade his iPhone because his old one had the microphone crap out. AppleCare covered replacement with a refurbished iPhone 14, but when he realized how little more it would cost him in monthly payments to exchange that one for a 16, he decided to do that. For the first time now, his phone is a more recent model than mine. I still have the three lenses for deep zoom, though, and his has only two. The quality differences of the phones otherwise are negligible, I think.
Anyway, Alexia and I proceeded with our planned double feature in the Braeburn Condos theater, the next ones in our Batman Movies Marathon:
The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and
The LEGO Batman Movie (2017).
Shobhit was back in time for the second movie, and he was very interested in the popcorn I made, so he watched the second one with us. Even though he fell asleep during it. That was better than when he was constantly crunching the paper of his popcorn bag, anyway.
Alexia is early to bed and early to rise, so it wasn't that surprising that she left within minutes after the second movie ended. That gave Shobhit and me some time to run our own errands. He had already gone to the Apple Store at University Village to exchange his replacement phone, but now we drove back there again—this time so I could use
my AppleCare to cover replacement of my shot AirPod, the left speaker having blown out. This is the second time it's happened with this model of AirPods, and it never happened before. The guy who assisted me said an earlier model had a known issue with this, which this model doesn't have. I guess I'm just lucky.
I'm lucky I have AppleCare for these for two years, anyway; it lasts through November of this year. They gave me two new AirPods, though. They must have been refurbished: I did not get a new case. Only new pods. I should have asked him for clarification, but that has to have been what it was.
Shobhit wanted me to drive for this round of errands. I had driven us up there, and then I drove us down to Amazon Fresh on Jackson Street—almost a straight shot down 23rd Avenue. Then I drove us back home, I made us chai, we made veggie burgers for dinner, and we watched this week's episode of
The Gilded Age.
— पांच हजार आठ सौ छियालीस —
[posted 12:31pm]
