birthday dinner with shobhit / halloween morning
It's Halloween! I can't very effectively tell you about my day today until I have photos processed and uploaded. I can tell you people really stepped up this year with some truly great costumes. My "Cactus Hook" costume is quite dumb compared to most, and it's frustrating that I have to explain it to everybody, but whatever. Dumb is what I was going for, and it amuses me, which I suppose is what's most important from my perspective anyway. Still, I feel like next year I need to come up with something a little more straightforward.
For now, I should shift focus to Shobhit's birthday anyway. I really try just to defer to him as to how he wants to spend his birthday; he's pretty much the opposite of me with my annual insistence on celebrating for a minimum of nine days straight, sometimes ten, and calling it my "Birth Week." The degree to which he's wanted to make it special has really varied over the years. Two particular years (2005 and 2017), he wasn't even around, as he opted instead for a Diwali-timed trip to Delhi.
Usually, at the very least he wants to go out for dinner—last year he didn't even do that, and we just made dinner at home, making for my smallest photo set for his birthday (4 shots) since 2006. I squeezed 15 shots out of his birthday this year, though, although a couple I included in the set only because I happened to take the photos on the same day. Oh, that and I combined it with Diwali, which was only three days before. So really, in that one photo set of 15 shots, 6 are for Diwali and 9 are for Shobhit's birthday. But hey, whatever works!
We went out for dinner last night. Shobhit's choice: Saffron Grill, which I don't believe we had eaten at since we went there with Uncle David and Mary Ann in May of last year. I should be less than a year before our next time back, though, as after our last dinner with Lynn and Zephyr, which was also in Northgate, we all decided we would go to Saffron Grill for our next outing, where Shobhit can get some genuinely spicy food.
And it was almost a challenge last night, actually. Mohammed, the longtime owner, was there to greet us when we arrived, as he often is, and as always he immediately gave us both big hugs. This was the place, and the owner with whom we negotiated the deal, that catered our wedding in 2013, after all. Almost without fail he brings us a free appetizer, or a free dessert. Last night he brought us pakoras.
He seems to have aged a bit. Shobhit wasn't sure if his wife is still around. He just came across as kind old to me, albeit still very attentive and friendly. He seemed to spend a lot of time kind of wandering around doing nothing much—but I realized later what he was perhaps doing quite deliberately: with other staff hired to do all the busywork, he could step in any time a more individualized issue arose. Such as: when Shobhit told our waiter, "make it 5-star Indian spicy but 8-star American spicy," and then his bhindi (okra) dish came much too mild for his taste. The waiter offered to fetch some red pepper to add, but Mohammed stepped in within moments, picking up Shobhit's plate, and bringing it back spiced to his liking. Shobhit was very happy with it, and suggested when I paid the bill that I give a 30% tip, which I did.
I ordered the shahi paneer, as I am wont to do; it's my favorite Indian dish, and they make a very good version of it. I asked for spice level 2, and dug in my heels when Shobhit suggested I go up one level. I might actually go up one level next time. At other places a 2 is plenty spicy, and I generally don't like my food to be spicy, but this might as well have not been spiced at all. I like a tiny bit of a kick sometimes, at least. However! Unlike Shobhit, I did not feel that made it any less delicious, and I was delighted to have the last of it as leftovers for lunch today.
We drove to Total Wine & More afterward, as Shobhit thought he had left his reading glasses there, but he didn't find them. Before dinner, he actually picked me up on his way home from there, the timing working out well as he got off work at 4:15. When he texted me with the offer, even though I normally would say I still prefer to walk, I decided to take him up on it so he'd get more of my company on his birthday. When we got home we each had a small slice of the very good scratch-made pumpkin pie he made. The crust was a little tough but otherwise it was still delicious. He wanted to have some before dinner because dinner might make us too full to have some afterward. And indeed we were pretty stuffed once dinner was done.
When we got home after dinner, we watched a few episodes of TV (American Horror Story Apocalypse—Stevie Nicks made an appearance again! and that was a genuine thrill—and Modern Family) before I went to bed.
It's only lunch time and I've already taken 23 photos at work today . . . my "Halloween at PCC" photo album on Twitter already has 3 shots in it, which makes 26. The PCC Halloween set from last year had a record 27 shots . . . I think it's pretty clear I will exceed that this year. After a few years that seemed kind of a slump (mostly in the decade of the early 2000s, I'd say), I feel like people step up with their costumes better and better each year these days.
I even got at least one vote for a costume prize! One of the receptionists, whose name I also cannot remember, asked for my name in the office kitchen at lunch, saying, "I'm going to vote for you." I was genuinely surprised by that, as my costume is so deliberately dumb. She did tell me earlier today, though, before I even told her I was actually "Cactus Hook," that "I just love the aesthetic." I guess she digs a black, green and white motif.
I'll be relieved to take the costume off at the end of the day, to be honest. I can't even lean back in my chair for fear of flattening the "cactus needles" (which no one ever even recognizes as such) on my back.
Also, as usual, I am not getting a whole lot of work done today. The whole day is one distraction after another. Honestly I think my favorite "costume" this year is a sort of sneakily subversive one—everyone in HR, of all people, dressed up as employees of Trader Joe's (in many ways one of our direct competitors), complete with a coffee samples station with Trader Joe's products, as though you're passing through a store when you go by their desks. Rosie even stood up when I came by, held out a tub of Trader Joe's peanut butter cups, and said, "Would you like a sample?" In fact I took a picture of her doing exactly that.
My favorite individual costumes are definitely Kathryn and Lamai, who went super-local in the best way: Kathryn dressed as the Fremont Troll (complete with toy VW bus in her hand) and Lamai is walking around in a sandwich board that represents the Pike Place Market Gum wall. And it has real chewed up pieces of gum on it! It's so disgusting! She's carrying around a box of gum balls for people to add to it, which I did. I need to get a second photo at the end of the day to show how much more gum had been added to it after my first picture.
Claudia made herself an eagle based on the eagle costume from her favorite movie, Eagle vs Shark, and it is spectacular in its own right. I might vote for her in one of the categories too. I need to do that right now. Don't forget to vote!
[posted 12:39 pm]