— छह हज़ार पचपन —
Shobhit met met at work when I got off yesterday, and we walked together straight from here to 20/20 Cycle, where I was
finally able to bring my bike back home—I had dropped it off there Thursday last week. We went to pick it up Saturday morning, but one more thing needed to be done with glue on the handlebar grips, so we left it again, and because of how busy we were over the rest of Pride weekend and the fact that they are closed Mondays and Tuesdays, the next chance I had to pick it up was yesterday.
The initial estimate for the many things that had been done to the bike was $280. I had spoken to one employee when I dropped off the bike; a guy named Chuck had left a voice mail telling me the bike was ready on Friday evening; we spoke to the actual owner when we were there on Saturday; and we spoke to yet a fourth guy when we went back there yesterday. This guy, an older Black man whose name I forget even though Shobhit asked his name (Shobhit loves to ask people's names and then address them by their name; I wonder if he picked up this habit when running for City Council in 2022), actually volunteered to knock a bit off the total. We didn't even complain, really; Shobhit just wanted an explanation because the itemized line items on the bill were not adding up to the same estimated total. Well, in the end I was charged $257.45. That was an 8% discount, which fell under even what the total tax would have been, but hey, I was still happy to get $22.55 back. Every dollar counts!
Whoever worked on the bike fucked with the seat. It's way too high now. I could have taken it back when I first noticed this, maybe two blocks away, but I decided to deal with it later. It will take using a tool but I'll figure it out. My blocked off time on my calendar to avoid bike riding for six weeks after being discharged from the hospital ends on Thursday next week, so I have another solid week to figure this out. Still, I was a little unsure while walking the bike home, but once I had it inside the garage, I got on it for a minute and the seat is definitely too high.
— छह हज़ार पचपन —
— छह हज़ार पचपन —
Once we were home, I made chai, and Shobhit made burgers using the potato filling previously used for paratha filling as patties. Burgers made this way tasted all right, except that the fried potato paties squeezed right out of the bun as soon as I picked up the assembled burger. Oh well.
We went over my budget together to figure out how to incorporate the $257.45, which was an un-budgeted expense. I had thought I'd need to take some out of my scheduled payment to savings, but I still hadn't used $100 budgeted for Costco for this pay period or nearly $35 left of the $50 I had budgeted for other groceries. We aren't going to use that before I get paid again tomorrow, so we just took those line items out, and then I took Shobhit's suggestion to add the 20/20 Cycle expense without adjusting anything else, and allowing the budget balance to be negative for now. I've budgeted several other things that I may very well come in under budget on for the
next pay period (starting tomorrow; it also helps a great deal that this is a three-paycheck month), which I also budgeted out last night. Now my budget balance is something like -$98.
I know, fascinating stuff, right? I have a whole other tab with planned travel expenses, with very complex grids for all the places we plan to visit in Europe in a few weeks. Right now that's all covered by a separate line item to which I add $333 per paycheck and have been for a year, since we got back from Washington, D.C. in June 2025. I budgeted $10,000 for that trip, a number I arrived at because it's what we had budgeted for Australia in 2023. I don't know if it's inflation or Europe being more expensive than Australia or simply planning more stuff this time or maybe a combination of all of the above, but Shobhit is starting to think we may spend more than $10K in the end. We'll see. My budget balance post-planned spending right now is roughly $1000, which would thus cover little more than food expenses, but I also have several things budgeted there that I will likely decide not to do in the end; I simply budgeted a stuff just because I want it on my radar.
I must say I am getting more and more excited about this trip, the most significant trip we'll have taken
since the trip to Australia in 2023. That was the last time we went to any other country outside of the U.S. or Canada; and up to now these remain the only three countries I have ever been to. With The Netherlands and Belgium, I'm about to add two (we have a layover in Iceland but I am not going to count that; besides we have Iceland on the docket for its own trip in the next couple of years).
Once the budgeting was done, we burned through about four episodes of season five of
Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO Max before I went to bed, where I was up later than I really should have been because I got sucked into videos on YouTube, something I rarely look at. I was thinking of finding videos about Amsterdam, and then got fed interesting videos about random other things! One was a video, which I watched maybe a quarter of, of a YouTuber describing a visit to Seattle. I cracked up when he suggested getting on the Light Rail "Symphony Line" as part of his "money saving tips." It's just the 1 Line from the airport; Symphony is the name of the downtown station that used to be called University Street Station. They recently renamed it to end confusion with University of Washington Station, which is in the U District 4 miles to the northeast; they call it "Symphony Station" now because it's beneath Benaroya Hall, where the Seattle Symphony performs.
— छह हज़ार पचपन —
[posted 12:33pm]
