— पांच हजार नौ सौ चार —
Yesterday was Shobhit's 52nd birthday. Technically he turned 52 Wednesday evening, if you factor in the time he was born and the time difference in Delhi, where he was born, but people get sick of me talking about that. I'm a stickler for details, what can I say!
I could have posted yesterday about his birthday, especially since he actually spent several hours working. I still took the day off for his birthday myself, as I need to burn through PTO anyway so I lean toward doing this on his birthday for the foreseeable future. Instead, I spent a fair amount of time working on this year's calendars. I've nearly finished getting all the photos cropped and captioning the ones that need captioning. I'm making calendars with five different themes depending on the recipient. But, I'm pretty close to the phase where I can load all the images to Shutterfly, start dropping the photos into their calendar templates, and actually place the orders.
In any case, that leaves me with today to catch you up. I thought maybe we could watch a bunch of TV yesterday, but Shobhit wound up working instead. Sachin had stayed the night at the house he rents out down in South Seattle, but he did come back to our place in time to join us for Shobhit's birthday dinner. We went to meet him at the Capitol Hill light rail station, then we walked together back to Ramen Danbo, in insanely popular ramen joint on Pine between 12th and 13th, just a couple of blocks from our place, for an early dinner.
Shobhit doesn't approach his birthday the same way I do, by any stretch of the imagination. To be fair, few people do.
My approach to
his birthday is simply to do whatever it is he wants to do with it, since it's his birthday. Hence, when he turned 50, he made dinner at home, and invited Alexia, who still lived next door to us then, to have dinner
just the three of us. The only reason I got a
16-shot photo album last year is because of the commissioned portait I got of Shanti and Guru for him. I didn't get him a gift this year. I did pay for dessert though!
I actually took 80 photos yesterday, but only
6 of them went into the "Shobhit's Birthday 2025" photo album. The rest were taken on a day-early Halloween Walk of North Capitol Hill, but I'll save that for my Halloween post.
We got to Ramen Danbo shortly after 4:45. Shobhit much prefers dinner far later than that, but he hadn't had any breakfast or lunch. I had both, so I ate more than plenty yesterday, weighing in this morning at 169.9. Not great. Shobhit ate and ate and ate for the rest of the evening after that, and was also up 1.4 lbs this morning from yesterday. I was up 1 lb even from yesterday. Not that we're both obsessed or anything!
Shobhit chose this place because he figured it would be reasonably priced, it's super close, and he had still never been there, even though it's been open in Seattle since 2017. I had actually been there twice before: first with Ivan, during one of the times he lived with us; and once with Danielle. I have a feeling the popularity has more to do with the meat stock used for most of the ramens; they have four options for vegan ramens, though. I had a sesame one this time that was maybe better than the previous two times I had been there. I want to make a note to get that one next time.
I had budgeted $50 for Shobhit's birthday, and probably should have doubled that. And that was before I had any idea Sachin would be with us on Shobhit's birthday. We all got lunch "specials" but with some add-ons that really increased the price; the total came to nearly $100. Sachin insisted on covering the bill, which always makes Shobhit uncomfortable but whatever. "Matthew can pay for alcohol," Sachin said, jokingly because we all knew we'd have cocktails at home later.
We did our Capitol Hill walk almost directly after that, stopping at the condo only so Sachin could drop off his heavy backpack. Sachin was tired and his feet hurt so he didn't stick around for maybe a third of the time Shobhit and I walked, if that. Shobhit wanted to take Sachin's suggestion of going out for dessert too, though, and he wavered between Salt & Straw (excellent) and Cinnaholic (not great). In the end, when we got back to the condo complex and Sachin came downstairs, we went to check out Coche Valley, the crepes place on the corner of 15th and Pine in our own building.
And that was where we got our dessert. We split two desserts between the two of us, and really could have settled for one. The "Mango Delight," made with shokipan bread and vanilla ice cream with mango sauce and fresh mangoes, was amazing. The strawberry banana crepe was fine. I spent just over $34 for those two desserts.
After that we all went back upstairs and I made us all hot apple cider with either rum (for Sachin) or apple cider whiskey (for Shobhit and me). It was super tasty and Sachin was particularly pleased with his: "It's warming my tummy," he said. Shortly after that he took the bus back to his house rather than staying at our place, after he had sort of deliberated on which to stay at. Shobhit and I watched this week's episode of
Abbott Elementary on Hulu and then two episodes of
Nobody Wants This on Netflix. Then it was time for me to go to bed.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ चार —
— पांच हजार नौ सौ चार —
Since I did not post an update yesterday, I need to go back another day now: to Action Movie Night, which happened Wednesday night. We had eight people in attendance this week: Tony, Jake, Ryan, Ben, Chris B, Greg, Daniel, and myself. Shobhit did not make it because he had a rehearsal. Greg came in a few minutes into the movie, apparently having been unable to make it for the pre-movie potluck.
The choice this time was Daniel's. Expressing my feelings about Daniel overall in a public space (which this blog technically is) requires a great deal of diplomacy, but I have to give him this much: he has good movie taste. This was his third time having a choice, which he declared "the last movie in a monster trilogy." His first choice had been
Prey, easily the best film in the
Predator franchise; his second had been
Godzille Minus One.
His choice this week was an excellent one:
Pan's Labyrinth. What surprised me was how divisive it was with the group, specially with Jake, who immediately declared when it ended, "I
hate that movie! I've always hated it!" His complaint was that all the fantasy stuff seemed pointless, because it was never actually real, it only ever exists in the little girl's head—and, spoiler alert, the girl dies in the end.
It felt like some of the other guys kind of agreed with him, but the way I see it, none of them are getting the point of the movie. The movie is
about escaping into fantasy to avoid facing real-world horrors. That's precisely the point. People said about Guillermo del Toro, "He got better later," and I'm over here thinking
Pan's Labyrinth is maybe his best film. I have a far bigger problem with
The Shape of Water, which never had any business winning Best Picture, and I still think might as well be called
Elisa Fucks a Fish. A woman literally fucks a fish-man in that movie. I'll never understand why anyone thinks that was okay.
Shobhit and I made cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches for Action Movie Night; I helped him assemble them after I got home from work Wednesday. He added pickled strips of bell pepper, which he pickled himself, and quite well. The sandwiches were so good that more than one of the others complimented them, and on our way out after the movie, Ben even went out of his way to reiterate how good they were. That's always nice to hear. The only other food was two medium pizzas brought by Ben (meat) and Tony (vegetarian); I had two slices of the vegetarian one.
In short, I've been eating way too much since Wednesday. I need to get my shit together! But first I'm going to eat this chocolate chip cookie from my desk drawer.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ चार —
[posted 12:33pm]
