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Instead of doing our normal FaceTime lunch on Friday this week, after I had asked Karen if she was open to meeting in person sometime again finally, she said meeting after work would be a lot easier—and she suggested The Mountaineering Club atop the Graduate Hotel in the U District, which she had only just recently heard of. I had been there once before, three years ago, and was all about going back. We went last night after work.
This adds to my
collection of "observatories" photo albums, now 55 of them. But also, being my second visit, I now also have a
collection specific to The Mountaineering Club. I have 37 photos from when I went with Laney in May of 2019, back when it was a lot easier for her to get around to such places. I no longer hold out any hope of getting to places like that with her again, due in large part to her perpetually injured knee, but also the challenge of parking costs now that she is retired. Her budget is incredibly tight, which I understand.
Last night's visit
yielded 21 photos. I might have gotten a few more but it was easier to get distracted, being there with two wheelchair users and thus not walking around the perimeter of the top-floor space until we were just getting ready to leave. Which, again, was fine; I'm not complaining.
Karen's daughter Anita joined us. She's been teaching elementary school for a year now. I asked how old she is now and she said 25. God damn. Anita asked when her mom and I first met, and I told her it was in Hindi class in 2005. She would have been eight years old then. I see Anita infrequently enough that I forget how old she's gotten. She was at Shobhit's and my wedding in 2013 as well, and at that time she was 16. A Sophomore in high school, she told me last night. She now has a kind of stunning amount of gray in her hair, really quite a lot for someone only 25.
The original plan was for it to be just Karen, Shobhit and me. I had tried to change the reservation from 3 to 4, because Karen had said she'd like to bring either Dave or Anita, but the reservation page wouldn't allow it. I found this especially annoying once we were actually there, and to accommodate us as a party of three they just pushed together two 2-person tables, at which one seat went unused. I probably should have emailed about it and they would have made a reservation for four work.
Shobhit wound up backing out anyway, which was why Anita joined the party at the last minute. Shobhit wasn't feeling well and went home early from work yesterday, even taking a covid test. He was fine though, tested negative, and actually felt a lot better by the time I got home last night. This way he saved some money. So did I, since Karen managed to pay for our appetizers and drinks without my even realizing hit while we were engaged in stimulating discussion. We shared two orders of "potato chip nachos" which were delicious and wound up functioning as my dinner, and I had
one cocktail, a very pretty and tasty and strong drink called a Whidbey Island Iced Tea.
There's an outdoor seating deck around three sides of the building at The Mountaineering Club, and we all three meandered around it after we were finished at our table. I took several pictures, of course, and as expected by all. I took
another group selfie while in the elevator on the way back down, during which I accidentally let a small fart. I pretended like I didn't notice. Karen is hard of hearing and uses hearing aids, and I know from experience there's no way she even heard of it. Anita, who was right behind me, was probably a different story. She may not have heard it but that's extremely unlikely. Did she just ignore it too? Did we part ways just in time for her to say to Karen, "He farted in my face!" I have a theory that being a vegetarian is a big part of what makes me very gassy. Sometimes it results in some very embarrassing situations.
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I did not go home first, as we had the reservations for 5:45. I walked downtown, reading my
utterly delightful library book, and then caught Light Rail from Westlake Station. Three stops later, I came out the new(ish) U District Station that just opened last fall—and we struck to find
how close I was right outside the station exit. I actually spent some time walking around getting exterior shots of the building, which has an art deco design and was built in 1931, as I had been quite early; I arrived at the station at about 5:08. It was barely past 5:20 by the time I went into the lobby, thinking I would just read in the lounge while I waited—but Karen and Anita were already there! They had been even earlier than I was, to my shock; Karen had said she would need until 5:45 but in the end apparently the errand she had to do previous was finished earlier than expected.
I think getting there early really worked in our favor, because once we got to the top floor in the elevator, the Mountaineering Club was not very full, and that made it easy for them to accommodate our party that included two wheelchair users. I did get a sense of staff really going out of their way, which left a slight air of not actually treating them like they would any other regular person. On the one hand, I imagine living with a disability, at least one that visible, must be endlessly frustrating. On the other hand, a lot of it they are used to and kind of just ignore. I think the worst is likely when they get asked stupidly ignorant questions, but that never happened here.
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In other news, PCC has already backtracked, to a degree anyway, on their PTO policy change. It's still changing, just not effective immediately: now it's going to change in early 2023. This means the option is back to cash out PTO in 2022.
I'm actually resisting it now, though. I had nearly a week to get used to this idea, and plan out all my extra vacation, and even send out the Outlook calendar announcements and put in the PTO requests to my manager (Eric, who has not yet officially approved any of it there, and only accepted some of the Outlook events). We'll have our weekly virtual 1:1 this afternoon so we'll see what gets covered in that conversation, and what I get out of it.
Predictably, Shobhit wants me to cash out money to cover the trip to Australia. My issue now is that there is little doubt a bunch of people will cash out PTO this year in a panic knowing it will be the last time they can, and I don't really want to pile onto that. We had already just accepted the extra cost of Australia, after all. Plus, I was getting to a point of really looking forward to all this new, extra time off.
On the other hand, maybe I can split the difference, and cash out some, but not all, of the PTO I had thought was going to be the case last Friday. I can keep my September, November and December vacations. But, the whole week I was going to take off a the end of August was not timed for anything other than to burn PTO, so that's 40 hours, at least, maybe I should go ahead and cash out. I could also shorten the time off I planned to take for Shobhit's birthday by a couple of days. That's a good 56 hours to cash out, at least.
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[posted 12:30 pm]
