— पांच हजार दो सौ छियासठ —
I guess I'll start with Gina and Beth's Housewarming in Olympia on Saturday. This would ordinarily justify its own, separate post, if for instance it were another holiday family gathering. But, this party was even more casual than that, far less exclusive (it included a lot more friends of Gina and Beth's than it did family), and thus not quite as photogenic as visits to get-togethers in Olympia tend to be. As in, I did create a dedicated photo album for it, but it only contains
twelve shots. Even that was padded out with three shots: I swiped the
photo of Beth and Gina holding the SOLD sign in front of their house from the Facebook Event page they created; I never had a chance to take my own photo of the "Bush Prairie" neighborhood sign (see below) so I actually took a screenshot from Google Maps Street View; and I took
a photo of the gas pump at Costco in Federal Way only because, at $3.999 per gallon it was the cheapest gas rate in the entire region (our 4th Avenue Costco gas in Seattle had it at $4.45, which was why we stopped in Federal Way to fill up on our way home). Exciting stuff, huh?
I didn't even get very many photos of actual people at the party. The shot above was the only wide shot of attendees that I took; if you look closely you'll see Dad, Sherri, and Shobhit sitting at the picnic table at center-left. My favorite photo of people I took was the only other of two, of
Gianni playing cornhole, tossing a bean bag toward an oblivious Enzo with his back turned. (They are both my grandnephews, incidentally; Brandi's two youngest.)
Furthermore, we stayed a surprisingly short amount of time, which even I was fine with in this instance; arriving around 12:30 and leaving at about 3:30. Three hours was plenty, particularly for an event that was not exclusive to family, although given the amount of time it took us to get down there with traffic as well as the amount of time it took us to get back (easily ninety minutes each way), we spent just as much time traveling on Saturday as we did at the actual housewarming.
. . . Okay. So now some other observations about the party.
Dad and Sherri, Brandi and her three kids (Jaycee, Gianni and Enzo), were the only family besides Shobhit and me (and of course, Gina and Beth, the hosts) to attend. I knew that Angel had just visited Southern California with Ricky and Raiden and gone to several theme parks with them, returning just the day or two prior; what I did not know until learning it at this party was that Ricky has officially moved down there to be with his new girlfriend. I can't remember exactly where, Ventura maybe? Apparently he moved only about two weeks ago. But, he and his new girlfriend are still expected to attend at the Family Vacation in Leavenworth in late September—none of the "South Puget Sound Family" will be missing from it. Brandi coming to the party kind of made sense, as she also apparently recently moved to Tumwater, the city Gina and Beth's house is in. They live right by the regional, Olympia Airport, used pretty much exclusively for private planes.
Dad and Sherri did not hug anyone. It was somewhat curious to me, as we hugged when I saw them for my Birth Week and that had been after all of us had covid earlier in the month—but, to be fair, that was not another big gathering. And Dad had said "I learned my lesson" about getting covid at a large gathering. That said, I'm not sure how much they thought about the fact that breathing shared air for a sustained period of time is what causes infection, not a brief hug, especially outside. They way Shobhit and I passed coved to them at the Easter/Sherri's birthday party in April was because we spent time together inside the house. This past Saturday, with a few relatively brief exceptions, we all spent virtually all of our time outside, which I'm sure made a key difference.
What I still do not truly have a clue about is whether I have yet to be
re-infected with covid so far because of continued immunity due to both being fully immunized
and having a prior infection (I keep hearing many stories of re-infection even among vaccinated people), or just blind luck. I continue to avoid crowded indoor spaces whenever I can, and I always wear a mask when grocery shopping or on public transit. Shobhit doesn't ever wear a mask when working anymore, mostly because that's just the staff culture now at Total Wine—the only staff wearing masks are those recently recovered and back to work—nor does he ever wear one when we go shopping. It bothers me and he knows that, and he doesn't care. To be fair, I'm not bothered enough to make a huge stink about it either, but part of that is because I know it won't get me anywhere. I also don't lose a lot of sleep over it either. If nothing else, I figure I cut our risk roughly in half by still wearing my own mask in higher risk areas. That said, I only got infected the first time because Shobhit was not bothering to wear a mask at work, and I am quite convinced that when it happens again, it will be because, again, I'll get it from him. On the other hand, there is also the argument that current variants are so contagious that masking does very little to protect you from it, so what difference does it make? Well, the bigger difference it makes is how much less of a risk you pose of spreading it to someone else when you have it but are asymptomatic. This would be broadly a far lower concern if we were all still wearing masks in communal, particularly indoor spaces. But, most people aren't.
Anyway. I remain fully committed to having learned my lesson from Easter, however, and I did still do a home test on both Shobhit and myself before going to the housewarming on Saturday. Just as was the case at Easter, I would bet money we were the only people at that party who did so (it's possible one or two others did, but there's little doubt the vast majority did not), but particularly knowing Dad and Sherri would be there, I was comforted by the peace of mind of having a negative home test that very morning. And I'll do the same thing when going to Idaho and to Leavenworth with Dad and Sherri next month, probably testing more than once in that case, since I'll be shifting mid-trip from Wallace, Idaho to a large family gathering—inside a shared vacation house—in Leavenworth. I will also ask Shobhit to test before coming to meet us in Leavenworth. Masking is a relatively effective mitigation strategy, but testing is arguably far more important.
Okay, so back to the party itself. There's not a whole lot to report, really. A lot of introductions to friends of Gina and Beth's, many of whom remembered me from having met before, probably from Gina's 50th birthday party in 2021, which had been at Dad and Sherri's house, before Gina and Beth's new house was host-ready. More than once I asked how someone knew Gina and Beth, and they would say something like, "from the fellowship," which sounded to me like maybe
coded language. And I can see how that can get tricky, given the importance of the "Anonymous" part of that organization, but how else can you indicate how you know someone in polite conversation and mixed company?
There was a ton of food. The invite had asked us to bring "your favorite side," but Gina had made so many side dishes on her own that Shobhit and I needn't have stopped at PCC on our way out of town like we did. I got a quart each of our vegan kale Caesar salad (a lot more of which got consumed than I expected) and Lemon Capellini. When I pulled the two plastic quart containers out of our tote bag after we arrived, Dad was standing near me and he quipped, "Did it take you long to make that?" I was just like, "Yep!"
Gina made several salads of her own, including a "frito salad" that included Frito chips that made it delicious; I took the last of it before we left and had it for dinner later that night at home. Some friends of Gina and Beth's who were neighbors in their old neighborhood brought homemade blackberry cheesecake that was stupendous, and they let us take some of that home too—we polished that off yesterday.
For the most part, we just spent our time sitting at the picnic table in the backyard, visiting with whoever else happened to come and sit there. For a period of time Dad and Sherri were there; Gina was there for a bit; for a while we spoke to an older lady who lives four houses up the street and is a retired gym teacher. She was born and raised in Seattle, she told us, but moved to Olympia for a teaching job in 1973—the year Shobhit was born!—and has lived in the house up the street since 1979. I never did fully ascertain whether she was a lesbian, but I certainly got "butch vibes" from her. A lot of straight-lady gym teachers have the same kind of vibe, though.
Dad and Sherri actually left the party before we did. I had initially expected we might stay as late as around 5:00, but as I noted already, we left by about 3:30. The party had overall largely wound down by then. I'd have been happy to stay and visit with just Gina and Beth for a while thereafter, but, we're seeing them again next month anyway, as we are the entire family. There was no real obligation for us to come to this party in particular; the vast majority of its attendees were people we didn’t know; sticking around for about three hours was plenty. Plus, Shobhit actually called in sick at work so he could also go (he also drove the entire time, saving me the trouble, which was fabulous). It was overall a perfectly pleasant day, and it must have been around 5:00 when we got back home, which gave me plenty of time to edit and upload what few photos I had taken.
— पांच हजार दो सौ छियासठ —
— पांच हजार दो सौ छियासठ —
Shobhit had yesterday off, but I had plans with Tracy, which at first really put him off when I told him while we were shopping on Friday. I try to keep my days clear to spend time with him on his days off when I can, but expecting me to do that every single Sunday is not reasonable at all. Besides, even though Laney had come over for a movie watch the previous Sunday, he participated and had the whole day with me; the Sunday before that, we had gone to West Seattle together. It's not like he never gets to spend time with me. He just gets pissy when I start sharing my time with other people, which is frankly straight up bullshit.
On the upside, by the time yesterday actually rolled around, his attitude was much better. I actually did invite him to join Tracy and me for the movie plus our rescheduled picnic dinner at Golden Gardens Park, and he declined. So, most of my time yesterday was spent with Tracy. Thankfully only one day over the weekend planned with her, which very much lessoned the chance that she might bail at the last minute.
So, first we went to an afternoon showing of
Three Thousand Years of Longing, which was . . .
fine. Solid B. But because I spent the rest of the evening with Tracy, there was no time to write the review last night; I wrote and posted it after getting to the office this morning. Don't tell anyone.
We had both packed our dinners so we could go straight to Golden Gardens Park from the theater. We even both had the same idea, packing our sandwiches in insulated bags. I even put ice packs in mine to keep it cool. This worked well with the sandwich but did little to keep the ice in my tumbler-filled Moscow Mule from melting. Oh well; it was still a tasty drink with my dinner.
I also brought my blanket tote, so we had no concern about trying to find a picnic table that would never have been empty on a beautiful Sunday summer evening. We spread out and sat on the blanket tote on the beach relatively near the water, with great views in two directions:
Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains beyond to the west; and to the east, between us and the Golden Gardens Bathhouse (where Shobhit and I were married in 2013, and where there was a wedding happening while we were there last night), several games of volleyball, with a lot of very hot, fit, shirtless young men. Also a young woman with a bikini on whose bottom was sort of half-thong and prompted Tracy to observe, "That woman is very proud of her butt."
We also did a fun exercise that had been Tracy's original idea for this outing: we share our respective lists of movies that we consider "flawed but compelling." My list included movies I recognize are largely imperfect but I keep rewatching every few years anyway, including
Alien 3,
A.I. Artificial Intelligence,
War of the Worlds,
Blade Runner 2049, and two contenders from this year itself:
The Northman and
Nope. Her list had a lot of movies I had never seen, and one that I thought was a fantastic choice: the 2006 Ben Wishaw film
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.
I really appreciated Tracy's approach to this version of her celebrating her birthday in a similar way to how I do mine. This was originally scheduled for the weekend after her 40th birthday earlier this month, but as we already had hung out on Saturday, she wound up canceling this plan for that Sunday, saying she had no more energy for socializing that weekend. But, she wound up being the one herself to suggest this reschedule, and her plan had already been tailored to my interests: she asked what my favorite spot in Seattle is (it's always been Golden Gardens Park), and it was her idea to talk movies in this way.
We were probably at the park for a good three hours, from around 5:00 (it took around 25 minutes just to drive there from downtown) until around 8:00, just as the sun was setting. When we first got there, we truly lucked out, as the parking lot was full but just like dozens of others we still went in hoping to catch someone leaving—which we did
just before we'd otherwise have had to leave the parking lot on the way out, and we wound up pulling into a fresh spot quite close to the bathhouse, which is also where the bathrooms are. So where we sat on the beach also had easy access to that.
Tracy then drove me back home, and it was shortly after 9:00 when we barely still had enough time to watch this week's episode of
House of the Dragon before I went to bed. I have so many podcast recap episodes to listen to about this show every week now, I don't want to delay seeing the episode before I can get to the mass of podcasting content about it.
— पांच हजार दो सौ छियासठ —
I haven't even mentioned Friday yet. We
were going to go over to Alexia's next door to watch
Solo: A Star Wars Story with her, but I'd have to say that's postponed indefinitely at the moment. She had to text us she needed to cancel because her mom was transferred to hospice and was not expected to live through the weekend. Right now I'm assuming she did after all, because I haven't heard any news (yet?) of her passing. Amazingly, Saturday was Alexia's mom's 92nd birthday. There would have been a kind of poetry to her passing on that day. Either way, she did live to see 92, although by all accounts she didn't experience 91 with all that much clarity. Still, that's a long, full life, something to be grateful for. In very different ways from my own mom and me, Alexia also had a complex relationship with her mom, but she's really been there for her as a daughter in her mom's final years.
— पांच हजार दो सौ छियासठ —
[posted 12:28 pm]
