I can tell you exactly how much time I spent with Tracy in Puyallup yesterday, because even though my Sounder commuter train arrived on time at Puyallup Station at 8:37 a.m., she sent me her location at that time and she was 15 minutes away; she made better time than that and picked me up at 8:50. And as for the Sounder train back to Seattle, they only do three northbound ones on weekday afternoons, and I initially had the third and last one on my calendar at 5:27, but I later switched it to the first one that leaves at 4:18. And she dropped me off at about 4:10. So that means we hung out yesterday for seven hours and twenty minutes.
Whew! So glad I cleared
that up!
Tracy had texted me sometime last month that we should pick a day in September to get together and hang out, and I was like: absolutely! And this was when I proposed that we take advantage of one of the several random days I need to choose between now and the end of the year for burning through my backlog of PTO that I'll just lose if I don't use it. Knowing that she has been avoiding spending too much time in Seattle just because she's missed it too much in the now-
seven(!) months since she moved back into her childhood home with her dad and her sister, I proposed that we get together on one of my PTO days—and that I come down and hang out with her in Puyallup. Plus, being a weekday, so long as the southbound morning trains were not too early for her (the last of
those leaves at 7:55 a.m.), I could take the Sounder train, which is super easy and more fun than the bus.
I probably should have anticipated that she'd be running a bit late when I arrived, but it wasn't a big deal at all. I really never mind waiting. I did have my library book with me, but I killed the time by walking over to a new four-level parking garage instead. I took a few photos from up there, including
a hazy morning view of Mt. Rainier. By the time I was walking back to the station itself, Tracy had arrived earlier than the ETA on the location marker she had sent.
We basically went to four places yesterday, at least in terms of places of interest or hangout spots. All told, I got 64 shots for
a Flickr photo album for the day. I took two shots at the King Street Station; four shots at Puyallup Station; and just two shots at or from our first stop, where we just went to kill some time because our second stop wasn't open until noon:
Anthem Coffee, where I bought myself a 16oz hot chocolate for nearly $7 even though I had only budgeted $15 for lunch. Anyway, they had
a sign up on the wall in the men's room that read, COFFEE AND FRIENDS MAKE THE PERFECT BLEND. I mean, sure, I get it—but is the
bathroom the perfect place for that?
Anyway, I took one more photo in downtown Puyallup; and Tracy drove me to a spot with a
pretty spectacular view of Mt. Rainier. And after that, we took the long way over to
Meeker Mansion, our primary destination for the day. Tracy had looked up ideas for things for us to do, and didn't even know Puyallup had this historic mansion you could tour, which had been built as basically a retirement home my Puyallup co-founder Ezra Meeker, with his wife Eliza, in 1890.
It was fun and I'm glad we went, but we both later agreed we weren't sure it was worth the $15 admission price, even acknowledging that it's packed with artifacts and displays that need regular maintenance and upkeep. Still, I kept comparing it to the
James J. Hill House that Amanda and I had toured in Saint Paul, which has nearly four times the square footage of floor space (36,000 vs 10,000); had a guided tour with no upcharge to the ticket price (Meeker Mansion is only self-guided); and also had cost all of $15. James J. Hill House was the far greater value.
It did prompt me this morning, though, to create a new Flickr collection of photo albums, this time specifically for
Historic Houses/Mansions. I found at least four albums to put into it, three from the past four years alone. Now I might have to start looking out for more mansions to tour! This would never get prioritized the way I now prioritize Central Libraries and Capitol or Parliament buildings, though.
Meeker Mansion does look pretty cool, particularly
from the outside, but also on the inside. Tracy and I meandered through all of its 17 rooms (James J. Hill house has 42)—or I guess not quite that many, as there was a third floor not open to the public; we could only tour the first and second floors. Anyway we did that for about an hour, during which I took 40 photos (well, I took more; I kept 40 of them—and one of those 40 is a shot of
the two of us in an ornate mirror that Tracy took and then texted to me). So: Meeker Mansion alone takes up 63% of the day's photos.
We were getting pretty hungry by about 1:00, so we then went to a place called Giorgios Greek Cafe for dinner. I took just
one photo there, of the portobello mushroom ravioli dish I ordered from the $12 lunch specials menu. It came with pita bread, clearly because this is mostly a Greek restaurant. And the ravioli was nutso-delicious.
Next, we went to
DeCoursey Park, which had stemmed from one of my original ideas for the visit: that we get some food to go and then go have a picnic at a park. I had found a park on Google Maps, but Tracy said DeCoursey would be better. My intent had been to get like a sandwich to go from a grocery store deli or something, so it would be both less expensive and easily transportable to a park, but then we wound up at the restaurant where we sat to eat for lunch. Which was fine; my lunch was still barely more than the fifteen bucks I had budgeted for.
We still wanted snacks for the park, though, and we happened to be passing by a Dollar Tree store. Tracy noted I could probably find a cheap snack and drink in there, and I got kind of excited: I noted that Shobhit and I had recently discovered the Dollar Tree in Issaquah and it was like we were going to Disneyland. "Right?" Tracy replied.
Tracy bought a lot of stuff. I bought a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos and a Cherry Coke. When we got to the park and sat at a picnic table, though, I think I ate about seven or eight out of the bag o Rese's Peanut Butter Cups she bought (she ate only one), and one of the Blow-Pops out of a bag of those she also bought (she also had one of those). We sat and shot the shit for a while, and it was while we were there that, thinking about the text Shobhit sent me that he was going to an art gallery exhibit in Pioneer Square between 4 and 6, I decided I should take an earlier train back so I could arrive in that same neighborhood while he was still there. Tracy and I had already exhausted all the stuff we wanted to do for the day anyway, and still had more than an hour to kill even when I made that decision.
We still walked the loop around the large pond in the park, though. I took another nine photos at DeCoursey Park, including one video clip (see below), and a shot of
the men's room where not only the door to the toilet stall, but the entire wall where said door should be, was missing. Thank god no one else was in there or else I wouldn't have been able to pee one last time before being taken back to the train.
I got one more shot on the way, of an
amusingly realistic heart as public art that Tracy said creeps her out but I thought was funny. It hangs from pole with a sign that reads
Hearts are *bigger* in Puyallip. I then had some momentary confusion at the train station, as there are two tracks and the trains pass by on the left each direction, I have no idea why. I'm glad I asked a Sound Transit guy who assured me I needed to be on the other side to catch the northbound train. There's a 4:17 train southbound and a 4:18 train northbound, and I could easily have wound up going the wrong direction by mistake. The 4:17 train was on time but the northbound was about 5 minutes delayed, but I got on it. It had a lot more people than the morning train had, but still not many: there are many cars on these trains, and there were only six other people on the upper level of the one I boarded. None of them were near me so I didn't bother wearing my mask.
I did later, though, when Shobhit and I took the RapidRide G bus home from downtown, as that one got pretty crowded. This was after I got off the train at King Street Station and then walked over to 1st Avenue to join him at
ArtX Contemporary, the gallery where a showing was happening and Shobhit decided to check out. There was indeed some pretty cool art pieces in there, and some crackers and cheese. Shobhit was chatting with several people in there when I arrived, including the manager of the space, who even went and fetched me a cup of wine. So that was cool. And: an easy Social Review point for Shobhit! Which he already has a ton of anyway.
After that we had some dinner at home and finished the season of
Paradise we had been watching on Hulu.
I only realized shortly after arriving in Puyallup, by the way, that this was the first time I went to hang out in Puyallup for any reason besides going to the Washington State Fair. And the fair is happening right now! But, I'm not bothering to go this year, because I went last year and I only go overy three years.
[posted 10:58am]
