dinner in issaquah

— पांच हजार आठ सौ तिरसठ — I'm sure glad I got my Twin Cities / Co+nvergence 2025 travelogue written up on the flight home on Saturday evening; I really had no time for it yesterday. Shobhit even texted me suggesting maybe I nap on the plane because, having acclimated to Central Time, by the time my plane landed at 9:45 p.m. Pacific, that would be 11:45 Central and I was likely to be tired. He was not wrong about that, but I still needed that time for working on the travelogue—which I spent the entire four hours on the plane doing. Under normal circumstances I would have had all day yesterday, a Sunday, to work on it. But, yesterday turned out to be the one day open for all of us when it came to Shobhit and me going over to Alexia's apartment in Issaquah to provide a pretty elaborate, Indian dinner for her—and not just her, but also for her cousin Jennifer, who has been staying with her the past couple of weeks to help out while Alexia recovers from hip replacement surgery. This was another big part of the timing: I was out of town four days last week; I already had too many other plans the weekend before (I obviously couldn't reschedule Dad's 70th birthday party); and any earlier than that was too soon after the surgery, which she had on Monday the 4th. But also, Alexia really wanted us to meet Jennifer and Alexia wanted Jennifer to be able to join for this dinner, and Jennifer heads back home to Spokane today. So that left yesterday as kind of the only option. Shobhit always starts working on prep for dinners like this days before the dinner is scheduled. He often enlists my help, largely with chopping vegetables, but as I was out of town Wednesday through Saturday, he was largely on his own for that this time—he fared just fine. He also regularly texted, both to a group chat with Alexia, and directly just to me, about what he was doing, what he was prepping, and what changes he was making to the extensive menu, which in the end was as follows: 1. palak [spinach] paneer
2. garbanzo beans
3. okra
4. fried onions and portabello mushrooms
5. potatoes
6. samosas
7. opo [calabash] pakoras
8. potato naans
9. rice
10. salt & pepper chopped cucumber Shobhit fried up the naan yesterday, making that the one thing I helped a fair amount with—well, all the fried stuff, I should say: the naans, the pakoras, and the samosas. Basically everything else was already prepared and just needed reheating. The "naan" he made was technically such only because he made it with his sourdough starter and thus had yeast in it, but functionally and shape-wise they still were basically parathas. Either way, they were delicious as usual. Alexia said she preferred we leave by 7 p.m., as she still gets tired easily, and she was already an early-to-bed person anyway. She suggested we get there "after lunch," so we aimed to get there are 2:00. It was closer to 2:20 when we arrived, but it was still fine. And not only was Jennifer there, but Alexia also invited the friend she made in the apartment complex over there, Ann, to join. So there were five of us. We broke out the samosas and pakoras as appetizers first, and we had to remind ourselves not to eat too many and spoil our appetite. We were there until probably around 6:30, which would make it a roughly four-hour visit. I don't like okra so I didn't have that dish, and although everyone else loved the mushroom dish, I didn't have any only because I had too much of the palak paneer and the garbanzo beans. After we all sat to eat at the table, Alexia also offered us some Molly Moon's ice cream, and some sugar cookies, and some See's candies. I crushed one of the sugar cookies into my bowl of ice cream, which thankfully was a very small portion; I think Shobhit and I both had at least three of the chocolate confections from the See's Candies box, which was left by another friend of Alexia's who doesn't like chocolate. Alexia had initially planned to take only two weeks off before starting work again, working from home, as of today—but because she still gets tired very easily, she told her work she needs another two weeks. When I noted that I'm taking my own PTO all of next week while everyone at PCC is being asked to work from home between the last day at the current office (this Friday) and the first day at the new office (Tuesday September 2, the day after Labor Day), Alexia suggested I come over one of those days to watch a movie. Perfect! We can do the last of our Batman Movies Marathon, and watch The Batman. So we settled on Friday August 29 for that, now leaving only Wednesday as the one day I don't have any plans made next week. It's never hard for me to keep busy. — पांच हजार आठ सौ तिरसठ — — पांच हजार आठ सौ तिरसठ — As for anything else to catch you up on, I also spent some time yesterday morning finishing up the "extended cut" of my 70th birthday tribute for Dad—this extended the original coverage from the original 10-minute length to about 12 minutes; and with added video clips from the 70th birthday party itself, the video is now about 15 minutes long. This makes it too long to upload as a single video to Flickr, which has a 10-minute limit, so this one I had to load to my OneDrive account. It can be accessed at this link. I had some technical difficulty getting the link to work on my laptop, and tried to post to my socials right before Shobhit and I headed out for Issaquah, but it was taking too long. Shobhit wanted me to drive, which I did, so I wound up finally posting it at about a quarter till 7pm, while we were on the way back home—Shobhit drove us back. (I should have driven back as well. Shobhit spent the entire time whining about how no one else on the road was going fast enough. He loves to talk about his own rising blood pressure, and this behavior serves no purpose but to add to his own stress levels, while also increasing mine, for no useful purpose whatsoever.) Anyway. I spent some time last night updating the daily Bluesky digests that I was unable to keep up with while traveling, some of which I did while we caught up on TV shows: Foundation (I'm finding season three to be a bit of a drop-off from the first two seasons); Platonic; and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. I'm all unpacked, settled back in, and just need to take the suitcases back down to the storage room. I won't be taking any overnight trips again until Shobhit and Alexia and I do an overnight to Victoria on the Clipper shortly before Christmas. Plenty of other local stuff going on between now and then though, as always! — पांच हजार आठ सौ तिरसठ — [posted 12:14pm]