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]

pride postscript

— छह हज़ार तिरपन — I spent the majority of the evening last night working on my "travelogue," or in this instance simply email photo digest, about Seattle Pride 2026. It covered Pride in the Park on Saturday June 6; and then everything else was the Pride events over this past weekend: Trans Pride and the World Cup "Pride Match" on Friday; PrideFest Capitol Hill and the Indigiqueer Festival on Pier 62 on Saturday; the Pride Parade, the TPS Pride After Party, and PrideFest Seattle Center on Sunday. I noted that I had forgotten about the possibility of the TPS Pride After Party when estimating the number of Pride photo albums in this year's Pride 2026 Flickr collection. I'm already at 9 albums, and assuming I attend both Tacoma Pride next month and Alki Beach Pride the month after as planned, in the end this will have eleven albums, thereby matching the record set in 2024. That won't even be the extent of it when it comes to Pride albums I'll have this year—I'll have several for World Pride Amsterdam, but those will all be in their own collection(s). That said, I do have this collection of all Pride Parades I have ever attended, regardless of city. This now includes Seattle, Vancouver B.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, Sydney, and soon Amsterdam. One of these years I think we should go down to Portland Pride, which we have never done, and happens in July. It would be fun to do that at least once. Also, Shobhit and I have basically committed to traveling to whichever city is hosting World Pride whenever it happens. It was the reason for the timing of our return to Sydney in 2023, the first World Pride we ever attended; it's why we went to Washington, D.C. last year (and thank god we went when we did, before President Fuckwit began seriously fucking up the landmarks in that city); it's why we're going to Amsterdam this year and why we'll go to Cape Town in 2028. Barcelona is likely to host in 2030, so we'll then go there (although apparently other cities still bidding include Bangkok, and London; if either of those cities prevail then we'll go there—honestly now I'm kind of rooting for London, which I really want to visit; I'd be thrilled to go to any of them though). So, I never thought I'd ever have a so-called "Five Year Plan," but I do have a tentative one for travel! I have lists of between three and five desired travel destinations per year now through 2030, which includes all of these World Pride destinations. Other international aspirations include a short return to Vancouver, B.C. in 2027; Iceland in 2028; Australia at the end of 2028 and beginning of 2029; and Hong Kong in 2029. We may combine a trip to Hong Kong, the skyscraper capital of the world, with Singapore. This is all in addition to a bunch of domestic travel plans as well, maybe most notably a trip to Boston and Provincetown for our anniversary in June of next year. — छह हज़ार तिरपन — — छह हज़ार तिरपन — Shobhit made dinner while I was writing, calling out to me several times to ask if I was done or how much longer I was going to be. How the hell can I say how long it's going to take me to write something? The only writing I can reliably time is a movie review, which on average takes me about an hour to write. He made a mixed vegetable dish with rice and scratch-made parathas that were of course delicious. He went out for a walk later in the evening, and I almost went with him, but then I changed my mind. He was obsessing over pending charges listed by both Virginia Mason and UW Medicine for my hospitalization last month. I still haven't made any payments on any of that shit, because there are still updates with insurance happening, and certain things Shobhit thinks we should appeal. Anyway, he started to get all pissy for truly no good reason at all, which made me lose any interest in going on a walk, and by the time he stopped looking at all this stuff it was 9:00 and I didn't want to head out for a walk that late. I was in bed by the time he got back. If only 20/20 Cycle were open on Mondays, I could have gone to pick up my bike. Alas, they don't open again until Wednesday, which means I'll have to do that instead of going to a movie I had hoped to go see. Oh well; it was at a SIFF Cinema theater so it wouldn't have been covered by my AMC subscription anyway. Everything else is shit pickings this week. I won't likely go to a movie again until the weekend, if even that; Saturday is the 4th and is wide open right now but we'll see. I have a double feature planned with Alexia on Sunday. It's all good, though; after the action-packed days of Pride and the whirlwind I'm sure the trip to the Netherlands is going to be, I'm happy to have a few days in between where I can just kind of chill. — छह हज़ार तिरपन — [posted 12:34pm]