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Boy, was it smart to take a buffer day off of work yesterday, even though we got home Tuesday night. It was fairly late once we actually got home, after all, around 10:00 at night, and I can't fathom getting up and going right to work yesterday morning. Besides, the
jet lag on this trip is killing me like no other trip ever has; it was way easier to travel westward to Australia with nearly the same time difference just in a different direction, in both 2020 and 2023. This time, it was over halfway through the trip before I was sleeping a normal schedule through the night, and then we also did certain things that had me up way later than I normally am at home, which continued to disrupt my normal rhythms. But I felt pretty acclimated by the second week—only to have the process start all over again after getting home. It's pretty tough when the time of day is pretty much just inverted, and suddenly you need to be trying to sleep at the time when your body is used to it being in the middle of the day.
I have more thoughts I can share about the trip, but I already need to tell you about yesterday, when Shobhit and I walked down to the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) to see the traveling exhibit
Freedom Plane National Tour:A Documents that Forged a Nation.
This exhibit is on display at MOHAI between July 30 and August 16, but I had plans—or thought I had plans—both days this coming weekend, which left only Wednesday, Thursday or Friday this week as options; plus I haven't gone to a movie since July 18 and am going through withdrawals. As of now I have movies booked after work both today and tomorrow.
The museum is only open until 5 p.m. actually, which is what left Wednesday this week really the only option. I originally was going to go with Alexia, who was very interested, but when I followed up with her it turned out she had a conflicting trip to North Carolina planned; she's still there right now and gets back the 22nd, only a week after which she has to go to Boise to take care of a bunch of stuff regarding the house she owns and rents out there.
It was not very surprising that Shobhit was interested in this, though; political stuff always interests him and original founding documents would be a part of that. The exhibit is actually free but you have to book timed entry tickets, which I did for two several weeks ago. I booked it for 2 p.m., figuring that the safest bet in light of any possible jet lag—which, again, we are both experiencing significantly. I was crashing by mid-afternoon yesterday, on our way home from MOHAI; we both keep waking up numerous times through the night. Yesterday I finally got out of bed at 5 a.m. even though I didn't have to go to work. This morning I got out of bed at about 4:50 but I had been awake at least half an hour. Shobhit keeps waking up and moving and shaking the bed and that in turn wakes me up and keeps me awake too.
But, the 2 p.m. time slot worked perfectly. We actually got a lot done beforehand; I did all the laundry that was dirty from our entire 18-day trip (18 counting travel days), and Shobhit went to his first Weight Watchers meeting in a few weeks. I worked on my budget and a few other things, but still have a lot left I want to do: I'm done with all the travelogues, thankfully, but that means I need to work on tagging the nearly 2,000 photos from the trip that I never tagged as we went along because I prioritized getting photos uploaded so I could copy and paste them into the travelogues. I also have a lot of detailed tracking from all 18 of those days, plus yesterday now, to enter into my draft of the Summer Social Review.
All this is not even to mention the TV shows we are now very behind on. Three episodes of
House of the Dragon have aired in our absence, and I really wanted to watch at least one last night, but Shobhit said he wasn't in the right mental state for it and he wants me to wait for him. I have movies tonight and tomorrow but maybe we can squeeze an episode in here or there. I was in bed and zonking out by 9 p.m. last night, but as per usual, I woke up at both something like 12:30 and again maybe around 3:30. I long for a night when I can sleep soundly through the night again.
I did go to the store and buy a gallon of milk. Plus I re-deposited the $100 in cash I had withdrawn in case of any emergency, at Shobhit's suggestion, none of which was ever needed. I used the milk to make one of the
hot chocolate kits—with a shot of rum, this particular one—we bought at a shop called Chocolatte at the wonderful
Markthal in
Rotterdam. Shobhit wasn't as impressed with it but I got my hot chocolate fix out of it. I think it does make a difference having it made with foam from an espresso machine at the shop versus boiling milk on the stove, though. We bought three of these; maybe for the next one I'll nuke the milk instead.
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— छह हज़ार उनहत्तर —
Anyway, I should get back to MOHAI. The day beforehand was fairly productive for both of us; Shobhit even did literal work for his job for an hour, and again later in the afternoon, I think. We left home at maybe 10 after 1:00 and got to MOHAI with seven minutes to spare before our 2pm entry—they would not let people in early. They were pretty strict about this.
The exhibit features only seven original documents (listed at the bottom of
this page), though "original" is kind of a gray-area definition with the Declaration of Independence, as that was actually one of 50 known engravings from 1823. Others were very much originals, though, and maybe the most fascinating thing about them was all the original signatures by founding fathers—some of which were different from the same person depending on the year and which document it was on, Shobhit noticed.
The staff on hand asked us not to form lines to each display and to look at it from the side if need be. Naturally I took several pictures, both in this exhibit and in the supplemental one you walked into after finishing there—I got a
30-shot photo album out of it. Plus, I only noticed this morning that I never made a collection of albums specific to my visits to MOHAI over the years, and have now
made one, covering four visits to the museum since 2012. Two of them were actually part of Birth Weeks: 2012 with Auntie Rose (including
this great story she wrote about actually attending the World's Fair in 1962), and 2017 with Dad and Sherri, a year we pivoted from the usual bike ride with Dad because of bad weather. I went once with Shauna just because, once in February 2013; and now this visit with Shobhit.
There's some kind of gratingly patriotic stuff in there, specifically in the supplemental exhibit where they had people write down who they pledge allegience to (lots of "God" and "Jesus"), but some other objectively great stuff as well. I'm really glad I got to go. It kind of felt like an extension of our trip in a way, another museum after two and a half weeks of museums, among countless other things as well.
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On the way home through South Lake Union, Shobhit decided to drop in the new Mayuri, the South Asian grocery store, that opened down there not long ago. They have a cafe in there and you can order a ton of stuff; Shobhit decided to order a thali for us to share.
I had hoped to simply skip lunch and then eat dinner later, but this was a very heavy and filling late lunch around 3:30 in the afternoon. I never did eat again after that, except for one of the chocolate confections from Brussels. The thali was really good, though, especially with the garlic naan Shobhit wound up also ordering to add to the small bit of bread the thali had come with.
Walking away from there, Shobhit asked if I wanted to take the #8 bus home, and without hesitation I said yes—I was just too tired all of a sudden. We barely missed a bus and so we killed the next 15 minutes walking around the Whole Foods there at Westlake & Denny, then we caught the next #8 bus back home. Shobhit caught up on some more work and I did some light unpacking (there's still a bit more to do of that) and also ironed a couple pairs of shorts.
I have so much I still want to do, but I found myself calculating categorical totals from the trip: public transit ($265.85, not counting the EuroStar), grocerires ($171.48), eating out ($657.92—and that was with
saving due to bringing about a week's worth of meal packets, but $231 of this was for Choux restaurant alone), tourist attractions ($687.63), Belgian chocolates ($171.28), and that's not even all the categories I came up with. Roughly $219 could be attributed to what I'll call "sex tourism" alone, but we won't get into that—I'll only clarify that it refers to places and events we attended, mostly separately, but not prostitution. The Red Light District is deeply, deeply heteronormative. I never thought to look on any rent boy apps or anything like that, though. Maybe I should have!
— छह हज़ार उनहत्तर —
[posted 12:37pm]
