another fifty-three hours
I feel like I did plenty this weekend, although once again I did no socializing to speak of. I did spend all day with Shobhit Saturday; he had a five-hour shift that day but wound up doing what my once upon a time friend Andrea used to call "calling in disinterested." Technically he called in sick. Then we did a bunch of shopping.
He worked until 9:45 Friday evening, and I'm struggling to remember at the moment to remember how I filled my time that night. Checking my social media, I do know I walked home from work during a break in the rain we've been getting every day, and before going to the condo I went up to the roof of the Braeburn Condos East building to take a photo of the Seattle skyline at dusk. But, then what? Hmm. Let's look at my Netflix account viewing activity. Damn! Nothing for January 24. Goddammit, what did I do on Friday? Surely I hung around at home and watched something, I don't remember going out anywhere!
Wait, wait, hold on—I watched Rob Delaney's standup special on Amazon Prime! Which was . . . okay. I like that guy a lot but holy shit, he's terrible at segues. Shobhit made salad for dinner, so I had that to eat. He also ran the dishwasher, so I had dishes to put away. I must have just spent the rest of the evening listening to music and puttering around online.
I didn't go to bed until 11:26 pm on Friday, according to my Sleep Cycle app, which means I did hang out for a while with Shobhit after he got home from work that evening. Oh, right—we caught up on a couple of sitcoms on the DVD: Modern Family and Will & Grace, neither of which were the greatest episodes. But, it gave us something to do!
Shobhit does get one Social Review point for the weekend: we woke up Saturday morning and he felt like going out for brunch that day. We wound up deciding on Maggie Bluffs, since we still had all of about two bucks left on the gift card we got for Christmas from Dad and Sherri, not this last Christmas (we got a different card for that one and are attempting to save that for The Cheesecake Factory in Portland for our anniversary in June), but for Christmas 2018. We first went for my Birth Week in 2019; next went as our Happy Hour location with Laney (and joined by Laney's sister Lorrie and her husband Richard, along with Jessica—it was an unusually large Happy Hour Group) in September, and on that date I did not spend as much as I thought I had because I assumed I could write in the tip on a gift card, and I could not. Protip for the future! Anyway, that left a couple of bucks on the card, so we used it up late Saturday morning; Shobhit paid the rest of the balance with his card and thus left a proper tip with it.
He had the breakfast tacos and I had the bananas foster French toast, which was delicious. I should have read the description on the menu because I did not realize it came with bacon, and Shobhit was convinced the bacon was the holdup: it was a full half hour before we got our food, and we could see our plates ready to be picked up for several minutes. We were headed over to Karen's house in Magnolia for a brief visit afterwards and she had asked that we come by at 11:20 instead of 11:30 because she'd be between appointments.
We barely made it. We wolfed down our breakfasts and even stood up to pay because that dawdling waiter was not coming back to pick it up. I had been convinced for a minute that we wouldn't make it any earlier than 11:30, and even texted Karen as much, but then we got out and since she still hadn't gotten back to me I texted her again that we were headed over anyway. And we arrived at 11:20. Not bad!
Karen had a box of international travel supplies for us to sift through to see if we wanted to borrow anything, a lot of it international plug adapters. In the end, though, she only had British adapters, and Australian ones are different from either Britain or the U.S. I still borrowed a few things from her, though: two inflatable hangers that make hand-washed clothing dry faster, and a drain stopper for bathroom sinks in case they do not have built-in plugs. From there we went to the AAA store, which we knew would sell the adapters we needed, and we got two Australian outlet adapters (which, strangely, are the same as China's). Instead of the U.S.'s plug with the two vertical inserts at the top and a round one for some plugs at center-bottom, Australia's has two slanted inserts at top and a vertical insert at the bottom—like so. Every time I look at that power outlet I think of the Ghostface mask from the Scream franchise.
Shobhit had been convinced we only needed one such adapter, but if we bring his laptop, both our iPhones and possibly also my iPad, I am really glad we'll have at least two. Karen also had several other great international travel tips, as this will be the first time I have traveled anywhere for this long where I have no real time for laundromats. It did occur to me that the one other time I was away for a full two weeks was the drive with Grandma and Grandpa McQuilkin to San Francisco in 1999, as a college graduation gift from them. I really can't remember what I did about laundry then: did I get laundry washed at one of the campgrounds we stayed at? or did I just pack enough clothes for two entire weeks? I would guess the latter, actually, but that trip had a lot more downtime than this one is going to. In fact, I may yet just pack enough for two weeks so I don't have to wash clothes at all, but, we'll see.
I've already got a game plan for trying to adjust to the time differences. I realize there's a very good chance I will fail miserably at this plan, but I like having a plan at least to try, anyway. When we leave San Francisco for Sydney the evening of Monday, February 24, I will try to stay awake, at least until 1 a.m. Pacific Time. If I then sleep (uncomfortably, no doubt) for seven hours, when I wake up it will be 3 a.m. Sydney time. Still far too early, but that would be better than, say, waking up at midnight Sydney time. And then, on the way back, I will try to sleep fewer hours, so I will be more tired by the time it's later evening local time again. But again, we'll see how well I manage this.
Anyway! After the AAA store on Saturday, we did some shopping: on to the 4th Avenue Costco, then PCC Columbia City, then the QFC along Rainier Avenue to use some of the weekend coupons. I also had a PCC member coupon 2-for-1 Health and Body Car item coupon, which . . . I had forgotten at home. Shobhit was pretty annoyed by that, but whatever; it was an easily solvable problem yesterday.
We were back home mid-afternoon on Saturday, and we watched a bunch of TV, Shobhit a lot more than I did. We first watched Friday night's episode of Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO Go, during which he fell asleep after I baked him some spring rolls. He was really tired for some reason, but once the episode ended and I went back to the bedroom for a while, to listen to music and update my budget and work on a few other things, he woke up again and started watching more of the new season of Grace & Frankie, which he likes a lot but I could never get into. It's been on for six seasons already! He watched, like, four episodes.
I had leftover salad for dinner, wanting to limit my calorie intake after that French toast brunch. My weight did not go down over the weekend, but it went up so minimally I'm still calling it a success: Friday morning I was at 153.7; this morning I was at 154.1. Not bad, actually. I should finish next weekend even lower.
I came back out in the evening to watch a couple episodes of Sex Education and then a couple episodes of Cheers on Netflix before going to bed Saturday night at 10:30—the earliest I went to sleep all weekend. I didn’t get to sleep last night until 10:39.
Movies are slim pickings right now, and yesterday I went to the movie I had originally planned to go see on Saturday but switched to Sunday so I could spend the day with Shobhit on Saturday. The movie was called Little Joe, and it . . . really wasn't that great. Well, it was something to do.
It was at SIF Film Center at Seattle Center, though, so I decided the new Ballard PCC would be the best choice for going to use my coupon. I left home to catch the #11 downtown at 2:15—seven minutes delayed, ten minutes delayed by the time it got downtown, which just meant I only had five minutes instead of fifteen to wait for my connecting Rapid Ride D bus to Ballard. That's the same bus I sometimes catch the rest of the way to work, only this time I rode if further up until it reached the north end of the Ballard Bridge.
It took me a minute to find the ZuZu Luxe makeup counter in the HBC section. And then, I saw they had the greatest selection: every color possible! I was able to get the "Azure," very blue color for the first time in ages, so that made me very happy. I like having Greenlake Village as our primary shopping store, but its one major flaw is its shit makeup selection: they carry only three of the ZuZu Luxe liquid eyeliner colors. Ballard had all eight of them! I only needed a new one of the Black Pearl color, though, so this was perfect. Two $15.59 ($13.25 with my 15% employee discount) liquid eyeliners for the price of one, a fantastic deal.
From there I took the D bus back to Lower Queen Anne, where I stopped to see the movie; then I caught the #8 back up Capitol Hill to home, where Shobhit was nearly done preparing tacos for dinner. We still needed soft tortillas to use as soft taco shells, and he went to Trader Joe's without me to get them. This was the perfect opportunity for my very efficient time management, as I had my review done and posted literally minutes after he got back. We ate and then spent the rest of the evening watching a couple more episodes of season two of Sex Education.
Speaking of which, the DVR has its own Netflix app, which is not as intuitive to use as the one on the Apple TV box, but it does have far more reliable color correction. I only just the other day learned that the DVR has a microphone button for voice commands, so all I have to do is press that and say, "Netflix!" and voila, the Netflix app comes up. We've had that DVR a year now and I'm only just realizing it has simple and easy shortcuts like that. God knows what other easy things on all my devices I continue missing out on.
[posted 12:18 pm]