— 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]
