So here we are again, more ammunition for Gabriel to claim I actually celebrate a "Birth Month" rather than a "Birth Week." Which month is it, then? April, or May? I want answers!
Granted, I do already stretch my Birth "Week" into 10 days and have been doing so
since 2017 (and I've stretched it at least to 9 since 2014). This is an easy thing to do, of course, when I take the week off of work; that adds an extra two days of non-working days with two weekends on either end; and I now typically start the activities the evening of the Friday the week prior.
This year, though, Lynn, who has participated in my Birth Week
14 times now, was unavailable last weekend, and asked for a rain check, suggesting this weekend. She actually hasn't missed a Birth Week since 2014, and I am loathe to say she "missed" this one either, as she really went out of her way to choose a place in Everett that fit this year's "Observation Decks and Viewpoints" theme: Shobhit and I drove up to Everett and met them at a place she suggested, called Grand Avenue Park.
She noted that it wasn't super high, but it does overlook the Everett Marina. Shobhit and I got there first, and we had just enough time to walk down the Grand Avenue Park Bridge to the marina level and find a nearby restaurant bathroom to use, and I was utterly delighted by it. It may be only an elevation of
about 111 feet, but being right by the marina, it was high enough to look well beyond the marina and the boats, and see far into the nearby islands of Puget Sound. My favorite, actually, was the
great vantage point on viewing Jetty Island, the two-mile-long, man-made island alongside Everett's waterfront, which we had visited last year as part of my "Washington State Islands" Birth Week theme—we actually went twice, once for my Birth Week when it was super rainy and cold and there were no boat rides out to it; and again in August, when I could actually reserve a boat ride out for us. We could even see the old building that houses the beautiful Muse Whiskey Bar & Coffee Shop, which we had also visited last year.
Lynn and Zephyr were running slightly behind, but had just gotten to the single picnic table we found at the park by the time Shobhit and I returned from finding a bathroom. They also had Nick, Lynn's 24-year-old son, with them. They had picked up sushi at a nearby Safeway; Shobhit and I made sandwiches at home before leaving. I also made chai, which Lynn said she would love. I had been slightly concerned about having too much of it when I filled two thermoses full, but I hadn't realized Nick would also be joining us, so it turned out perfectly. I had brought paper cups, and the two thermoses perfectly filled all five of them. I also brought Good Day cashew cookies to share, saying they were perfect for dipping in chai.
They seemed to quite like it. They had also brought desserts to share: nut and chocolate chip cookies from Safeway, and some delicious
chocolate covered strawberries. There was so much to eat, I didn't even open the pint of smoked mozzarella pasta I also brought, which I got when we went to PCC yesterday morning. I ate half of it last night and brought the rest to have for lunch at work today.
Anyway, there had been a slight threat of rain yesterday, but all that ever happened was a few barely noticeable sprinkles by the time we were wrapping up our picnic. It did start raining a bit harder later, but by then Shobhit and I were nearly back home so it no longer mattered. In any case, I had looked up Grand Avenue Park on Google Street View and could only see benches, so I thought we'd have to pull out our blanket tote—but when we got there, we discovered the park to have one single picnic table, which thankfully was unoccupied. (The threat of rain probably helped us there.) We parked right next to it, but as I said we walked down to the marina level first. While I was down there I got a nice shot of the lush cliffside that the 5-acre Grand Avenue Park runs along in a narrow strip at its top—hence the view.
Yesterday was also the Everett Farmers Market, which Lynn wanted to go to and asked if we'd like to—I knew Shobhit would be all over that, he loves all the farmers markets. So, when we wrapped up the picnic, we got into our respective cars and headed to the Farmers Market. We spent a pretty good while there. Some vendors even had food that sounded pretty damned good, but I was way too full to consider anything, never mind how tight my budget is.
The Farmers Market closes at 3:00, and Shobhit was taking more time than I think Lynn wanted to. Even though it was only 2:00 when this happened, Lynn moved ahead, saying she wanted to get through it all before they closed. In the end, she was actually just browsing from one end to the other first, to guage what she might want to spend more time at. She bought a tomato plant, which she was later planting in her garden when we dropped by the house.
In fact, we ran into them a couple more times as we all browsed the market at our own pace. And when we parted there, we were unsure if we would drop by the house, which I had been to but Shobhit hadn't. He wanted to check out a
Punjab Grocery market we discovered to be in Everett, and even though it was relatively small, we spent a pretty good amount of time in there. Shobhit bought several frozen flatbread items (which I kept inside out insulated tote but were well thawed by the time we got home; I just re-froze them); a hefty bag of fresh okra; and we even found a couple nore boxes of Good Day cashew cookies to buy. We have quite the inventory now, between those and the several packets we bought at DK Market about a week ago.
So from there we drove by Lynn and Zephyr's house, having decided we had the time for a brief visit before heading back home. Shobhit, always interested in talking gardening, chatted a lot with Lynn about the many things, both edible or pretty, she has growing in her yard and garden. We then went inside, she gave us the tour, and we visited for a while in the chairs on their back patio—Shobhit sat in a chair by the back door, Zephyr wound up sitting on the freezer they have back there, and Lynn and I sat at the back patio table that was more off to the side. Their plot is a little odd, basically triangle shaped, the small backyard being the top, pointy part of it. The triangle shape is much less visibly noticeable out front.
Soon enough we said our goodbyes and drove home. We made Deep Indian Kitchen naan pizzas for dinner, creating some space in our freezer for the aforementioned flatbreads. I edited and uploaded photos from the day, making a
40-shot photo album (21 of them at Grand Avenue Park). And then we watched
The Last of Us and
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
As for the rest of the weekend, I guess I should briefly mention that on Saturday Laney and I had our May Weekend Happy hour, at
Paradise Broadway, which used to be Olmste(a)d, which used to be Broadway Grill—I also created
a dedicated photo album to mark this specific history.
We were there for a couple of hours and it was lovely. I budgeted $50 and I wound up spending $48.98, because their Happy Hour prices are not super cheap, just $2 off on select drinks and select items. But, the potato flautas I had were delicious; so were the two Moscow Mules I ordered; and the very young server, straight as he seemed, was super adorable. We learned the chef was his dad, who he called "my pops." We got there at 3:00 and for over an hour we were the only customers in there. A few others were in by the time it was around 5:00—and the Happy Hour was over. Anyway, we had been aiming to go there for Happy Hour ever since they opened several months ago, and we both said we'd go back. Given our schedule, maybe sometime in 2026.
Shobhit and I did go out for a walk in the morning before that. We walked up 15th Avenue to Louisa Boren Lookout, then through Volunteer Park and down to walk back via Broadway, a pretty typical route. But hey, it got Shobhit another Social Review point!
I had no real social activity on Friday, though. I got home and suggested to Shobhit that we go out to Costco and also to Amazon Fresh—in reverse order, actually, because I first wanted to stop by the Douglass-Truth branch library, where I knew a copy of the 1982 Paul Newman movie
The Verdict was checked in on DVD. I checked that out and we watched it when we got home . . . it was all right. Solid, but not as great as
The Big Picture podcast made it sound when that day's episode was a "Hall of Fame" for his filmography, in celebration of what would have been Paul Newman's 100th birthday this year.
I did watch another library movie over the weekend, which I nearly forgot: I was looking at my Letterboxd "watchlist," and saw that
Deathtrap was streaming on Hoopla, the public library streamer. I checked it out there, and managed to screenshare to the TV via the Apple TV box. We watched that one Saturday night. This one was actually
a great deal more enjoyable, if not as definitively "good" as a film.
This was totally by chance, but I was also shocked to discover that both
The Verdict and
Deathtrap were directed by Sidney Lumet, and both of them were released in 1982! I had arrived at these two choices over the weekend for two very different reasons, so there was a bit of fun cinema serendipity there.
[posted 12:32pm]
