"Spooky Specimens Tour" at Volunteer Park Conservatory 2021
This past weekend, I already went to a Halloween event! It means I already even have a full Flickr photo set for Halloween. That means, in turn, that if I can manage to get Gabriel and Lea and Mandy to connect for another virtual Pumkin Carving Party this year, combine that with this weekend's event and the requisite photo albums for "Halloween at PCC" and Halloween Day itself, my Halloween 2021 albums collection will likely have four different albums. Maybe even five! I want to walk the North Capitol Hill neighborhood blocks to look at decorations again, which I assumed I'd be doing with Alexia this year like we did last year on Halloween Day itself, and since we'll be in Las Vegas on Halloween, I figure I can do the walk earlier, sometime next week, and it may just yield its own separate photo album. If I manage five albums for one year, that'll be a record for Halloween; if I even just manage four, it'll be the most separate Halloween-themed albums I've had since 2012.
Time will tell whether I still combine the neighborhood walk with the regular Halloween photo album. It depends on how many Halloween-themed photos I actually get in Las Vegas. If a lot, then it will warrant separate albums. It not very many, then I'll just combine them. Or, and I just realized this was what I did in 2012 that expanded the albums to four, I could just use "Las Vegas Day 2" in place of the "Halloween" album and create a separate album called "Halloween Time 2021" for random Halloween themed photos taken over the course of the month previous. That would still potentially mean five albums this year, though. I'm working on two already, now that I have one for
"Spooky Specimens Tour" at Volunteer Park Conservatory 2021
I went on Saturday evening—the only date for which they did these tours, in timed-entry increments every half hour between 5 and 7:30 p.m. Shobhit and I were talking about how many people were in each tour, and I had to do some calculating, as when my 7:00 tour started, they said nine of the people who had signed up had not yet shown; three in the group we had assembled were actually late for the 6:30 tour and joining ours; so far as I can recall, otherwise there were only one other couple and myself in our group. I know that the ticket I purchased was the last one available in that time slot—otherwise I may have purchased a ticket for Shobhit as well—so, the three present and on time for the 7:00 tour plus the nine who were late, must mean that the cap for each half-hour tour was 12. Five to eight is three hours, thus six tours, thus 72 tour goers total for the evening. Setting aside the $4 in taxes and fees that the Volunteer Park Conservatory wouldn't be getting for themselves (I spent a total of $39.06 on my ticket—too much—but, decided to regard it as a donation to a place I want to support), the base fee of $35 a ticket would mean they made $2,520 that evening alone, just in the space of three hours.
Granted, they also had a DJ inside their Education Wing behind the main Conservatory building, plus a table of snacks (Halloween bite-size candies and bags of chips) and a table selling drinks (beer, non-alcoholic hot cider), and I have no idea what might have been spent on that. Maybe nothing? It's possible all that stuff and services was donated. I don't have a clue what the deal was with the DJ, but the music was not very loud and only a couple of people were otherwise hanging out inside that space. The whole thing was just slightly interesting to me because I had never seen this space behind the main Conservatory building before, and had no idea so much was back there.
They could have stood some better signage, actually. I just double checked, and nothing on the event web page or in the email confirmation or in the digital ticket said anything about the tour meeting down the driveway and around the back. In fact, as I walked up to the front door of the Conservatory and saw that it was rather dark inside, I wondered if I had made a mistake and gotten the wrong date, or if maybe the event I had just hours earlier purchased a ticket for had been canceled for some reason. I walked up to the front doors and tried to open them, finding them locked. Luckily there had been someone inside, who opened the door to tell me I needed to go down the driveway. Okay, then.
The whole experience was . . . all right. The tour was slightly disorganized, and honestly I was glad my group that had been booked as 12 was only 6, as much of the space in there was quite tight. I have no idea of most of the lights being off was a deliberate part of the so-called "Spooky Tour," or if maybe the main lights are on some sort of timing system they have no control over. Either way, it did kind of add to the effect. I was sure glad I upgraded my iPhone right before the trip to Australia in February 2020, though, specifically for the far better camera capability: even in very dim lighting, I got quite a few very nice photos of plants there on Saturday night. And although there was all of eight specimens that would qualify as in any way "spooky"—three of those being a stretch as it only had to do with their names; only five were carnivorous or poisonous or lethal in any way—the outing still yielded a good, 27-shot photo album.
But hey, why don't I list the eight specimens here anyway?
I spent a fair amount of time yesterday captioning all of these photos, with blurbs from other websites I found expanding on how "spooky" the specimens really were (or really weren't, as the case may be). You can click any of these links to be taken to their page and get more detailed information in the caption below the photo:
1. Tropical Pitcher Plant, carnivorous, insect-eating, but we were told some were known to consume small mammals
2. Cobra Plant [pictured, below], cobra-shaped, carnivorous
3. Dumb Cane, common houseplant also poisonous if consumed; you'll be unable to speak for up to two weeks
4. Ferocious Cycad, included only because of the word "ferocious" in the name; otherwise harmless
5. Orchid, which releases a pheromone that attracts wasps which, according to the tour guide, sometimes die as they continue attempting to mate in vain
6. Saguaro Cactus Skeleton, included just so the tour guide could exclaim, "There's a skeleton in this room!
7. Carrion Plant, whose blooming flowers smell like carrion . . . bleh; thankfully it wasn't blooming
8. Pachypodium, included so the tour guide could say, "There's a monster in the corner!" although my online research was unable to yield any solid reason why, and I did not take good enough notes during the tour
Honestly, by and large, the very theme of this tour, clearly timed in tandem with Halloween season, was a stretch. But, whatever. My experience of it is something I'm kind of neutral about, but I did get several quite lovely photos. And I'll always have that!
Cobra Plant
So, what of the rest of my weekend? The same day as the "Spooky Specimens Tour," Saturday, Ivan and I went to a movie: The Last Duel, which was quite good, a bit better than I expected, even. It's also quite long—two and a half hours—but it never felt like it. Ivan and I both enjoyed it, and in retrospect, I think even Shobhit would have enjoyed it. Oh well. I do already have tickets purchased for him, Tracy and myself to see Dune this coming Thursday.
Ivan had Friday night off, and thus had gone to sleep much earlier than usual, thus being up and eating his breakfast much earlier in the morning than I had anticipated. I had at first suggested the 3:45 showing of the movie, but seeing him up in the morning, I gave him other options, and he went for the 12:20 showing. In the meantime, Shobhit and I went out to get some shopping done, at Costco and then Hau Hau Market in the International District.
I had made myself a sandwich to have for lunch during the movie. Ivan and I left home to walk down to Pacific Place just before noon, and on the way, Ivan rushed against a walk sign that switched to solid DON'T WALK when we were maybe halfway across. He turned back and quipped, "I like to be subversive." When I took my sandwich out of my bag in the theater, he said to me, "You're not supposed to bring food into the theater." He was just needling me. I replied, "I like to be subversive."
This does mean I did not have my mask on, for as long as it took to finish the sandwich. And I took it off intermittently after that until I was finished with the hot chocolate I also brought. That took us maybe half an hour into the movie, after which I kept my mask on. Ivan had no refreshments, and I have noticed he often keeps his mask below his nose when he's in a theater watching a movie. Strange move for a guy who works as a nurse, and must know that doing that renders the mask entirely pointless.
On the upside, breakthrough cases notwithstanding, we can still enjoy some measure of security knowing that we are fully vaccinated (and I've even had a booster shot; for some reason, Ivan hasn't yet). Unvaccinated people are 8 times more likely to be infected to begin with, and 25 times more likely to be hospitalized. I'm in an even better position having gotten the booster shot. Of course, none of this is absolutely foolproof and something far too few people understand is that no vaccine is 100% effective, which is why I understand some of my decisions are calculated risks—as in, I go to movies, but I wear a mask. Except when eating a sandwich. I also understand that risk of infection is directly tied to duration of exposure, which means a room full of people who keep a mask on when not eating is far safer than a room full of people wearing no masks at all for two or three hours.
I'll probably double-mask for the flights to and from Las Vegas in a couple of weeks. I'll keep masks on inside public indoor spaces, where interactions with strangers will also be consistently brief. I know how this stuff works. That said, I am comforted by the added level of protection from a booster shot. Still not an absolute guarantee, but also still better than relying on a vaccine with an effective rate now known to wane after five or six months.
Anyway, I'm really digressing here.
I haven't even mentioned Friday or yesterday. On Friday, walking home from work, I stopped at Walgreen's on Broadway and Pine to keep my appointment I had made for a booster shot plus a flu shot, even though I'd already gotten the booster the previous Saturday at the fall Pride event at Volunteer Park. I still wanted the flu shot, and guess what? It fucking hurt! What I can't figure out is if that has to do with the substance being injected, or if it has to do with the skill of the person giving the shot—after all, my second Pfizer vaccine dose in April had also really hurt, but the booster on the 9th, I didn't feel at all, and that lady was just like "Well I've done a lot of these." On the other hand, the lady giving me the shot this past Friday noted that the booster is like half the size, and suggested it was smaller than the flu shot she just gave me as well. On the other other hand, she made it plainly clear she was being overworked: apparently Walgreens was double booking them, so they were having to give two shots every ten minutes! No wonder I waited a while even to be taken into the room. They must have been backlogged.
In any event, I've got all the vaccines I need or have access to for now, both the Pfizer booster and my annual flu shot. I hope Shobhit gets his flu shot with his doctor appointment.
I'm pretty sure that, after getting home on Friday, we just watched TV for a while. We started watching the Hulu series of What We Do In the Shadows over the weekend and are now maybe halfway through the first season. I feel like I can only do a few episodes at a time at most, but it's also funnier as it goes along. It's certainly fun to discover Beanie Feldstein had a small part in it, at the same time American Crime Story: Impeachment is airing, on which she plays Monica Lewinski.
As for yesterday, I never even went anywhere. In the morning, after I decided to shift the movie I thought I'd go see yesterday to Tuesday after work, Shobhit and I sat down and watched the 2001 Ocean's Eleven. That wasn't on my initial list of five Las Vegas movies to watch, mostly because it was the only "Vegas movie" I had already seen multiple times, but I'm sure glad I watched it again. It'll easily be the most fun watch of any of these movies we're going through in the lead-up to the trip to Las Vegas. What a great movie.
I texted Gabriel about it, which I had also done the last time I saw it—when Laney and I did a marathon one-day watch of all three of the Ocean's movies. That was in 2017, four years ago. I estimated then that it must have been the third or fourth time I had seen it. So yesterday would be the fourth at minimum, maybe the fifth. I feel like the movie gets more enjoyable each time I watch it. I went to the bedroom afterward to work on captioning the photos from Saturday night, and took a forty-minute break when Gabriel called and we just chatted, mostly about movies.
Shobhit also decided yesterday he wanted to make banana bread, more specifically blueberry cashew banana bread, and damn did it turn out good. Very tasty. Ivan had some as well, so by the end of the day there was maybe only a third of the first loaf left; we do still have the second loaf to burn through. Just what I need when I'm trying to maintain or maybe even lose some of my weight.
I listened to a podcast yesterday about how much more effectively you can maintain self-control by simply removing the temptation to begin with. Apparently actual studies have been done. Any time I mention wanting to remove tempting items from home, Shobhit wants to tell me I need to stop eating stuff at work. The thing is, I have no control over the presence of temptations at work. And what he apparently wants is for me to have temptations all around me no matter where I am. When I lost weight a decade ago, I did it by both portion control and not having snacks available at home. It made all the difference. Shobhit wants to take it as me "blaming" him when I try to bring this up, which I don't think is particularly fair.
And the thing is . . . did I mention how good that banana bread was?
Ivan up and called in sick last night, according to him the first time he had done so in around three months. He clearly wanted to hang out in the living room and watch something with us as an alternative to preparing for his night shift as usual, and he did, although that did mean sitting through his first-ever episode of HBO's Succession, the season three premiere being released last night. It was a good episode, but in no way representative of the show's greatness for someone who has never seen a single episode of it before. Ivan did say he liked it, but of course he spent most of his time looking at his phone. He then happily hung out as we watched another four episodes of What We Do In the Shadows, before I finally went to get ready for bed.
[posted 12:30 pm]