Birth Week Epilogue: "Cinco de Matthew"

— छह हज़ार बाईस — Okay, after last night, now all the celebrations for my 50th birthday are over. Throughout last week, in the interest of time and efficiency, I just copied and pasted (with the addition of needed html commands) each day's section from my email travelogues into daily blog posts. I added a few things here and there, but by and large the posts were the same as what, in email, was sent out to my distribution list in two parts—Part Two getting sent out late last night, as I waited to send that out until after I could include a photo from Shobhit's and my dinner at Gabby and Nick's. So, here, I will still paste here what the caption was in the one photo from last night that I included in the email, which was the photo above: Gabby invited Shobhit and me over for dinner at her and Nick's house in Edmonds on Tuesday, May 5—or, as Gabby took to calling it, "Cinco de Matthew"—as one final, slightly belated celebration for my 50th birthday. They made enchiladas and a rice dish from a family recipe, Nick made us all margaritas, and they bought tres leches cake. All of it was delicious. They even had a HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner draped on the wall in their kitchen when we arrived. If you look closely you can see the 5 and 0 candles Gabby put on an extra piece of cake just for this photo. None of us ate that piece; Gabby and Nick had already shared one and Shobhit and I had already shared one, and we were stuffed silly. —Okay, back to today's actual blog post now. I did add at the very end in the email that I guess it's time now to start planning for next year's Birth Week, which I have kind of already started doing. I'm leaning toward "great picnic spots" for next year's theme, which after the specificity of this year's "1976 landmarks" feels like a relief in how broad and flexible it should be. On the other hand, I also mentioned last night to Gabby that I have asked both ChatGPT and Gemini for recommendations. I wrote what I take the week off of work every year for my birthday in late April and May; I use a theme each year; I share what most of the themes have been; and I asked for recommendations for future themes. Both of them came up with a large number of themes that were either "bleh" or really didn't work for me. But, a few in their lists actually struck me as pretty good ideas, and I wrote all of these down: lighthouses of the Salish Sea (I maybe liked this idea best of all); film locations (what could possibly be more Matthew coded?); waterfalls (an easy and beautiful one); "Fire and Ice" volcanic history with visits to Mt. St. Helens, Ape Caves, Mt. Rainier glaciers and the like (somewhat of a challenge but I do like the idea); "Moss & Rainforest Vibes" (apropos as the Olympic Peninsula boasts the largest temperate rainforest in the contiguous U.S.); "Stairs, Trails and Urban Paths" (another idea that's very Matthew-coded—though I would modify it to favorite public spaces); and "Bring-a-Friend Theme Week," or as I would rather call it, "Guest's Choice," where each day I spend with a friend or family member, they decide themselves what cool or fun thing we do. If you count my picnic spots idea, that alone covers potentially the next eight years of Birth Week themes—basically the majority of my fifties! I am always open to ideas from actual-human people, though (a broker suggested islands to me, and that's the theme I used in 2024). In any case, I had started to feel like I was running out of ideas, and now I feel pretty well covered going forward. Okay, so I contributed to the desolation of the environment to do it, but whatever. I use AI pretty sparingly, actually. I've been struck recently by how often regular, not-tech-inclined people talk about how much they use it. Ivan keeps talking about how ChatGPT is basically a new friend (he hasn't said that, but he might as well have; I find it a little creepy), and even Sherri's sister, Wendy, commented last weekend on how "I use AI all the time!" My sister, Angel, says she's using AI to write a book about her life. AI is all over the fucking place. But I digress! The original plan yesterday was for Shobhit to meet at the office at 4:00, and Gabby and Shobhit and I would take Light Rail together to Lynnwood City Center Station, where Nick would come and pick us all up. But, Gabby changed her mind in the morning and texted me that she decided to work from home. I had walked to work rather than biking because of the expectation that we'd all be leaving directly from the office, so it bummed me out a little bit that I could have ridden my bike, but it wasn't that big a deal. Also, it was definitely for the best in the end, because I had come to work wearing sandals without even thinking, and suddenly I worried about going into Gabby's house in bare feet—especially if they're a shoes-off home (which, guess what, they did turn out to be). It would be one thing if Gabby were a friend on par with Danielle or Gabriel and if I had been to her house many times before, but I really didn't think I should be in bare feet my first time there. I was even thinking about asking Shobhit to bring me a pair of socks. But, then Gabby said she wouldn't be coming to the office, so that gave me a chance to leave work at 4:00 just as had been originally planned, go home briefly, and have just enough time to change into some shoes and socks. We walked to Capitol Hill Station maybe 15 mintues after I got home. — छह हज़ार बाईस — — छह हज़ार बाईस — While I was at work, Shobhit did go on one of his long walks, and he went to Pike Place Market. Gabby insisted we didn't need to bring anything, but Shobhit cannot abide showing up empty handed (I'm totally fine with it). He chose one of the wine bottles we already had at home, and we found a gift bag with a map of California on it, which worked perfectly because we figured out the wine was from Sonoma County. But, he also bought a small pot of a really beautiful little bunch of orchids, as you can see in the photo above. We carried it with us on the train. Gabby was waiting for us in the roundabout at Lynnwood City Center Station, and I had never seen that spot so full of cars before—she later commented on how poorly designed it was for how many cars come to drop off and pick up people there, as that's currently (and will be for many years) the north terminus of the Light Rail track. When she dropped us off there again a few hours later, I was shocked how many cars were there even at 9:15 at night. Anyway, I was amused to walk into their house and see a HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner hanging on the wall in their dining room, just in case there were any doubt that this was definitively a "celebrate Matthew's 50th" event. While we chatted over dinner, I mentioned that 50 is, so far, not my favorite—indeed, this age has weighed more heavily on me than any age I have ever reached before. It's not just that I'm half a century old, but that the average lifestpan of an American male is about 77 years—and that means that, statistically at least, I reached the haldfay point at age 38. That was twelve fucking years ago! 2014, for fuck's sake! Ugh. Every day is another day closer to the enevitability of death. I suppose I can take comfort in that being the case for all of us. (I did ask Shobhit what half of 77 was, and when he mentioned 38 that kind of struck a cord with Gabby, who is currently 37.) Gabby asked if it made me feel any better that I look way younger than 50. I told her it does a little, actually. But, it still has no bearing on average lifespan. I may look great until the day I die, but I'm still going to die, right? I suppose this is really just an issue of the culture I was born in, where we are conditioned to be in denial about and fear death, even though it's a fact of life that cannot be avoided. Well, I just reiterated that as far as I'm concerned the purpose of life is to have a good time. Life is short, right? Why waste it being miserable? Okay, so, back to dinner. Nick was not yet appraised of all the 1976-landmark activities I had done, so we took quite some time having me run through them. This was kind of extended by how Shobhit would occasionally take the conversation down a tangent, and I would bring it back. He was a very nice and pleasant guest, though. I'm tempted to say I should give him credit for that, though that shouldn't be an impressive thing. I suppose one thing I can give him credit for is his insistence on certain social norms of politeness, such as showing up with gifts. Gabby also had a gift for me, as I suspected might happen; it was partly why I wanted to bring my backpack—both so I could carry the wine bottle and my jacket (which I knew I'd want later) in it, and so I could put anything else Gabby might give me in it. I didn't want to be presumptuous, but I did want to be prepared. That said, they did send us home with quite a lot of delicious leftovers, which I hope there's enough of left for dinner tonight, and they gave us a tote bag to carry those in. Shobhit did not think he would need a jacket and so he did not wear one. I was sure he'd regret that, and indeed when we went with them to take their dogs (Teddy and Maple) for a walk, he was already getting rather chilly. Gabby had expressed some interest in seeing my "Matthew McFifty" video (now as an "Extended Cut" with a couple minutes added from the party on Saturday), but their TV is apparently old enough that it does not have casting capability. I didn't even think to bring it up until near the end of the visit, but it's just as well since the video is 17 minutes long. What we did instead, since they did have the capability of navigating to YouTube on their TV, was watch my combined edit of both Jessica's and my recordings of the song Laney wrote and sang for me at the party on Saturday. It clearly did not hit quite the same with people who do not know me as intimately as the people who were at the party do, but they still appreciated how well done and sweet it was. We watched that not long before we took the dogs for a walk, and then Gabby took us back to the Light Rail station not long after that. She had picked us up around 5:30, and then dropped us off around 9:15, so we hung out roughly 15 minutes shy of four hours. Unfortunately the southbound train left the station seconds after we got out of the car, and even though the screens with posted times said the next southbound train left in 11 minutes, when that time was up, it just disappeared, there was no train, and it now said it was another 9 minutes. So, we waited around for a good 20 minutes before we were actually leaving the station. It takes about half an hour from there to Capitol Hill Station, and another 13 or so to walk home from there; we finally got home just about 10:30. It was more than an hour after we had been dropped off in Lynnwood, but whatever, at least we were home now. I quickly edited and uploaded the day's photos before bed, and then I slept like a log. It was actually kind of hard to get out of bed this morning. I do love this shot I got of the last moments of dusk from the Lynnwood City Station platform though. Oh, I don't want to forget—I also had lunch with Amanda and Cathryn today, our second "Power Users Lunch," and the second we've done since we moved to this new office location. Cathryn had suggested it when we needed to talk about a coordination-cross department task we need to do this week. We also talked about another pretty major thing that Gabby brought up with me today—I've been tasked with writing an SOP document for contingency plans in the event our Partners Portal, which is where vendors and brokers currently submit promotion contracts online, were to go down before we can get it replaced sometime next year. This necessitated conferring with Amanda and Cathryn in particular. As such, we spent a lot of time talking about work stuff. We had already paid, but I was like: could this not be considered a work lunch that PCC could pay for? Granted, we spent the first half hour just hanging out and catching up (albeit with a little bit of work-related shit-talking), so I don't know how much of a difference that makes; I never expense anything. That said, when Cathryn started talking about needing to get back to work, Amanda came back with, "You're not taking a long lunch, this is a work meeting!" I mean, I had to spend over twenty bucks on my lunch. At least the food at that place (Freya Bakery & Cafe) is very good, if limited in vegetarian options. [posted 12:55pm]

Birth Week Debrief

— छह हज़ार इक्कीस — Even though it's Tuesday and I was back to work yesterday, I let the final post about my Birth Week activities from yesterday morning stand as the day's blog post—and that means only today are we back to the regular Daily Lunch Update (DLU) routine. Still! I'm sure I have a few observations I can come up with, now that I'm not just mostly transferring what I wrote in the email travelogues into separate blog posts for each day of my Birth Week. I don't think I've ever done this before: why don't I do a linked rundown of each day? Day One: Friday, April 24 Birth Week 1976 Landmark #1: 1600 Seventh Avenue, 32-story skyscraper built in 1976 Birth Week 1976 Landmark #2: Third Place Books, original site and building of PCC Ravenna, opened in 1976 (with Tracy) Day Two: Saturday, April 25 Birth Week 1976 Landmark #3: Bataan Park in Bremerton, comemmorating the dead Filipinos in the World War II Bataan Death March, dedicated in 1976. I visited here after having lunch with Gabriel, Lea and Tess in Bremerton. Birth Week 1976 Landmark #4: Mason County Senior Activities Association, formed in 1976 (with Jennifer, before going out for dinner and then staying the night at her place in Union) Day Three: Sunday, April 26 Birth Week 1976 Landmark #5: Erector Set, downtown art installed in 1976; and Birth Week 1976 Landmark #6: Surf II, created for the Everett Waterfront in 1976 (with Lynn and Zephyr, before having lunch at Skuttlebut Brewing) Day Four: Monday, April 27 Birth Week 1976 Landmark #7: George's in Kirkland, opened in 1976 (with Shobhit and Valerie) Birth Week 1976 Landmark #8: Starbucks at Pike Place Market, opened 1976 (with Shobhit) Day Five: Tuesday, April 28 Birth Week 1976 Landmark #9: Picnic at Central Park in the Issaquah Highlands, surrounded by the "Issaquah Alps," phrase coined by hiking enthusiast and conservationist Harvey Manning in 1976 (with Alexia) Day Six: Wednesday, April 29 Birth Week 1976 Landmark #10: Ballard Avenue Landmark District (with Shobhit and Barbara) Day Seven: Thursday, April 30 Birth Week 1976 Landmark #11: Olallie State Park, 200 acres of which was added in 1976 (with Shobhit, Barbara, and Ivan) Day Eight: Friday, May 1 Birth Week 1976 Landmark #12: Freeway Park, opened July 4, 1976 (with Barbara and Laney, before moving to coffee and tea at Olympia Coffee in the US Bank Center lobby) Day Nine: Saturday, May 2 Birth Week 1976 Landmark #13: Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, hospital where I was born in 1976 (with Shobhit and Barbara) —followed by my 50th birthday celebration at Dad and Sherri's house in Olympia Day Ten: Sunday, May 3 Birth Week 1976 Landmark #14: Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve, Thurston County, established 1976 (with Shobhit, Dad, and Barbara) Epilogue: Tuesday, May 5: "Cinco de Matthew" dinner at Gabby and Nick's house, Edmonds —So was this Birth Week a special one, one that stands out? Well, they're all special; I'm pretty good at ensuring that they are every year. But still, yes! For two key reasons: 1) Barbara's return to Birth Week for the first time in 15 years; and, of course, my 50th birthday party—the final one of four between myself and my three siblings. (I also figured out that all four of us will be in our fifties for the next three and a half years. Then, the cycle starts anew, when Angel turns 60 in 2029.) Shobhit did also make a fantastic red velvet cake, modified slightly from a recipe provided by Valerie. It actually turned out fantastic, in spite of both Barbara's and my skepticism with some of his odder modification choices, but that's often how it goes with Shobhit's cooking. Sometimes it doesn't work quite as intended, but usually it does. Now, the making of that cake was one in several instances of Shobhit being kind of an asshole throughout the week, to the point where by Sunday he was saying maybe we should go back to therapy—the second time he's made this suggestion, so maybe I should pay attention to that. It says something that he's the one who brings it up now and not me. In any case, I mentioned to Barbara the one time I baked him a birthday cake, a carrot cake with a lovely lotus flower design that I did entirely on my own, because that's how you do it when you bake a cake for someone. But Shobhit was insistent that I help him with this cake, which kind of defeats the purupose of a gift, and he was fairly pissy about it too. And that was just one of several instances over the week, culiminating in his getting irate because I agreed with Barbara's criticism of his driving rather defending him. (I don't know why, after more than two decades, he still thinks it's somehow my duty to take his side even if I believe what he's doing is wrong just because I'm his husband, which is preposterous on his face, and this has never been and never will be something I am willing to do. We've actually been over this many times.) He even pulled over to the side of the road and tried to say for a minute that we should both just get out and walk, as this was when we were nearly home on our way back from Olympia, and this is objectively childish, stupid, petty, counterproductive behavior. Ealier that morning in Olympia, I was in the kitchen at Dad and Sherri's house, and he started bitching at me about something that had to do with what was in the microwave. I didn't even know what the fuck he was talking about. "What are you criticizing me for now?" I said. "I didn't even put that in there." Sherri called from the dining room: "I did." That, of course, shut Shobhit up. I went to sit at the dining table and Sherri said, "Are you okay?" I said, "I'm going to murder him." She said: "That's how relationships go sometimes. And then something sweet happens." I was kind of glad she said that, actually. It did make me feel a little better. That said, I woke up in the middle of the night on Sunday night and could not get back to sleep for over an hour, because I could not stop thinking about how I cannot tolerate this kind of shit for the rest of my life. I was leaning toward this: if we finally just split up, because he can never let go of his absolute insistence that his behavor is okay even when it clearly isn't, it will no longer matter whether he's right. He can just continue believing he's right, and he can do it alone. And I hope he'll feel that it was worth it. I don't actually think we're going to split up. But this sort of shit makes me think about it a lot—I haven't even covered it all. And I already know from experience that therapy makes a huge difference, and we did not do it for long enough the first time around, stopping only because our therapist left the practice and I was overwhelmed by the prospect of starting all over with someone new, plus all the bullshit paperwork and benefit-code fenagling involved. But, it may indeed be time to get back to it. — छह हज़ार इक्कीस — — छह हज़ार इक्कीस — Getting back to Barbara, she flew out yesterday morning. I rode my bike to work yesterday, so I hugged her goodbye right before leaving for work in the morning. She gave me a long, tight hug, and thanked me for everything. She even called out to me, "Love you!" as I was shutting the door to the condo and leaving. Shobhit dropped her off at the airport at about 8:30. Her first flight, Seattle to Chicago, took off at 11:16, and that one was on time. Shobhit only dropped her off as early as he did because he had a Weight Watchers meeting to get to. In the original itinerary, she had a three and a half-hour layover in Chicago. Shobhit texted her an earlier flight from Chicago to Louisville and suggested she ask if she can get bumped back to that flight for free. He knew Barbara might not be comfortable with doing that, and even acknowledge that in his text; Barbara indicated she would just go with what had been booked. But, she texted us later that she had gotten booked on the earlier flight! She apparently sat at the wrong gate for her own flight, and it sounded like it was the gate for the earlier one, and she said she realized she'd rather not wait another two hours. So, she asked and it paid off. Or so she thought! She texted us she was boarded and everything, and then over an hour later she said they were still taxiing on the runway. Apparently they were unable to take off because of storms south of there. Eventually she was re-booked on her original flight, which was itself delayed for the same reasons—she texted us at 7:39 p.m. (9:39 Central Time; the flight was scheduled for 9:16 Central) that she was on the original plane. She finally texted us at 10:10 Pacific that she finally made it to Louisville, which would have been 1:10 a.m. her time. I think that was just when she reached the Louisville airport, and she had already planned to take an Uber home from there. Air travel can be such a crapshoot. I'm now recalling Shobhit's and my last trip to Australia, when we missed our connecting flight from L.A. to Brisbane because our Alaska flight out of Seattle was delayed more than two hours. I can only hope our flights to and from Amsterdam this summer will happen without incident. At least we have two and a half weeks for that trip so any delay, or even if (god forbid) a flight gets canceled and we have to rebook, won't be the end of the world. Barbara's two flights here last Wednesday went off without a hitch, so that was nice. At least she wasn't missing out on anything due to the delays going home. I have no idea if or when Barbara will be back to Seattle again. I'd really like to visit her again in Louisville, either next year or the year after, and I'm leaning toward next year. That could very well be it for when we get to see each other, but you never know. It didn't even occur to us to fly her out for my 50th birthday until just a few months ago, after all. Things can change in unexpected ways. — छह हज़ार इक्कीस — As for last night, I rode my bike home, I made chai, I helped Shobhit with dinner a little bit. We continued working on the 3-D Seattle puzzle that I broke out and figured Barbara could help with while she's here. Shobhit has taken to it in a way I did not expect, and it seems to kind of calm him down. I found this place on Queen Anne that does a used puzzle exchange on the last Sunday of every month, so I'm thinking once we have this one done, rather than just putting it away indefinitely, I'll take it there and exchange it for another one. I can keep doing that and not have a ton of space-taking puzzles at home. I haven't even done a puzzle since the one I took forever to put together that Mom gave me as a gift ages ago; that was a Christmas gift in 2013, and I didn't finish it until several months later. I do also now have the puzzle Tracy bought me for my birthday at Third Place Books, and I have already scheduled a day to take that over to Alexia's in Issaquah (Saturday May 16) so we work on it together. Shobhit can come join us if he's available. Anyway, Birth Week 2026 was a great one. I got to spend the time I wanted with all the people I wanted, largely because of the party itself: I almost got together with Danielle on Monday but she canceled at the last minute as she was too busy, noting that she was coming to the party on Saturday, which she switched shifts with someone so she could do. I did meet up with Gabriel in Bremerton but, to my delight and slight surprise, he and Lea still came to the party in Olympia—his first time, in fact, ever seeing Dad and Sherri's house. They got there a bit late, but not too late; I deliberately waited for both the cake and for Laney's song performance until they arrived. In both cases it was worth the wait. I was disappointed Valerie could not make it to the party after all, but Scott was feeling unwell and she needed to stay with him, which I understood. I was thrilled Christopher showed up, along with Christian and Braeden, and Becca came too; bummed that neither Nikki (who is coming to the Family Vacation in August) and Tristen (who had to work) could not make it. Brandi, my eldest niece, had RSVPed that she would be coming—she was the only one of Angel's kids who RSVPed at all, and Jackie, Gina's daughter-in-law, RSVPed that she and David could not make it, which I totally expected; they live in Vancouver, Washington and don't know me well. That said, it was interesting to me how many family members from Idaho did make it—and I was fairly convinced they wouldn't—but none of the nieces of nephews who actually live in Olympia bothered to show. But, whatever. I am very grateful for the ones who did. There were 22 people at my party, and that was plenty. In fact, between the days of the week I spent with people and the party, I had 29 participants in my Birth Week overall this year, which would be a record. I am delighted by and deeply thankful for that. — छह हज़ार इक्कीस — [posted 12:28pm]