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I already posted about Alki Beach Pride, which happened on Saturday—you can read about that
here. That closed the door on all Pride events,
local or regional or
international, for the year.
I spent the rest of the weekend going to movies or watching TV. On Friday I took myself to see
Spider-Man: Brand New Day right after work. Yesterday I rode my bike down to Lower Queen Anne to SIFF Cinema Uptown to see
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. They are wildly different movies but I still gave them both a solid B.
I also signed up for a week's trial subscription to AMC+, which allowed Shobhit and me to binge-watch the third season of
Interview with the Vampire, actually categorized as a "limited series" called
The Vampire Lestat. Even though it was kind of overstuffed with plot detail and information which made it often difficult for me to follow, I really enjoyed it. I think the performances on that show are excellent. We watched episodes 1-3 on Saturday after coming back from Alki Beach Pride and doing a bunch of grocery shopping; we watched episodes 4 & 5 before I left for the movie yesterday; and we watched episodes 6 & 7 after I was back home and written the review. And then we watched this week's episode of
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,
and we watched last nights premiere episode of the new DC show on HBO,
Lanterns, which was actually more compelling than I expected.
I worked on tagging photos from the trip to Europe during a lot of this. I have also done a lot of this while at the office, including while on a Teams call with all the POS people this morning. Don't tell anyone. I do need to get my ass in gear with a lot of the backlogged work I still have to do after returning last Thursday; today is only the third work day since I've been back. I've gotten the most pressing stuff done, at least, and in kind of a miraculous turn of events, things were relatively quiet during my time away. I'll credit that to being well prepared before I left, and leaving my coverage people (Amanda and particularly Cathryn) well prepared.
It seems both Shobhit and I have developed colds. As I texted to Laney, I remain grateful: I much prefer this over having caught colds right before or during the trip.
Anyway, Karen also had to take some extra time to finish prepping for a presentation she has at 2:00, so she hopped off the call at 12:50. So our call this week only lasted about 40 minutes. I think she felt like I must have a lot more to tell about our trip, though I couldn't think of a lot off the top of my head. I told her I'd take down some notes for our next Zoom lunch on Friday next week.
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— छह हज़ार इकहत्तर —
I just finished with a bit of a truncated Zoom lunch with Karen. She already had a scheduling conflict on Friday and asked to reschedule for today, but then she was staying at their Tulalip home over the weekend and her hearing aid died, which created an emergency need for a repair. She had to return to Seattle today, earlier than origially planned, and had an 11 a.m. appointment for getting the hearing aid fixed.
She told me she had appointments for the majority of the hours of the day today. It was kind of nuts, but because of the hearing aid issue, she had to scrap most of her other meetings this morning. I didn't mention this but I'm kind of struck by her decision to keep the lunch meeting with me on the calendar.
She had texted me she might be a little late getting on the call, and it was probably 12:10 by the time that happened. I was in the call and waiting, and came back to my desk to get some tissues and cough drops; when I returned she was then there waiting for me on the call.
Other than the tale of her hearing aid, we spent a good amount of time talking about Shobhit's and my trip to Amsterdam and Brussels. She told me that in the photos (from the travelogues) we looked "relaxed and happy." I was like, "Well, that's good to hear!" We did bicker a couple of times—once in the middle of the street in Amsterdam—but by and large we got along fantastically, which is saying something considering we spent most of every hour of every day together. We did do some things separately, though, particularly when it came to gay bar events and the bathhouse, plus my solo trip to Zandvoort, and that also helped. All the major stuff we did otherwise, though, we did together. It's only in retrospect that I am realizing it's a miracle I never got sick of him. Granted, it's worth noting that we were just doing fun shit the entire time.
I sort of thought about Seattle in this context, upon returning. Shobhit and I were in Amsterdam a combined 13 nights, and we never ran out of things to do. I may be a permanent tourist here in Seattle, but would that even be possible here? I suppose it could if I were the tour guide—and, a key point of comparison here, Seattle were hosting World Pride. That might still be a stretch, though. There's a lot to do here, but is there enough to keep someone visiting for the first time entertained for two solid weeks? Maybe with a few day trips to areas outside the city, just like Shobhit and I did to Rotterdam, the Hague, and I did to Zandvoort. It's still a compelling thing to consider, though. Seattle remains my favorite city in the world, but I'm not sure it has nearly as much to offer newcomers as Amsterdam does. To be fair, Amsterdam has the advantage of 600 more years of history to draw from.
— छह हज़ार इकहत्तर —
[posted 1:06pm]
