— पांच हजार आठ सौ उनासी —
The biggest event over the weekend would have been Lea's karaoke birthday party—that is, aside from my taking Friday off to spend the day with Tracy in Puyallup, but thankfully
I already posted about that. So, that brings us to Saturday.
This was the third birthday party of Lea's that I have attended. I have
a collection of their photo albums organized on Flickr! This year's had by far the fewest photos, but that's okay. Right now
the album has all of 11 shots in it (10 by me; one by Gabriel, and that's by far the best photo, which I used as the cover photo for the album), but I plan to add at least a couple more, once I finally remember to take a couple photos of the exterior of
Rock Box during the many times I pass by it. I forgot to do that on Saturday, but I pass it all the time; the place is right on Pine Street, with an entrance on Nagle Place, the street that's barely more than an alley that marks the western border of Cal Anderson Park. The opposite side of that block is Broadway. Anyway I thought I would take a couple of photos while on my way to work this morning, but I spaced it because I took an alternate route to return my library book at the Central Library instead. At least I finally remembered to bring the sandwich I made for lunch to work, so I'll take my wins where I can.
Anyway! Rock Box is a karaoke bar that has been on that corner for a long time—
since 2010, so, fifteen years. I had never been inside, although there is a feature in at least one of their several rentable rooms where you can pipe your singing through an outside speaker so people walking by can hear you. Actually I don't know for sure if they even still do that; I haven't heard people while walking by on Pine Street in a while. The room Gabriel rented had a capacity of 11, and was kind of in the back in the other direction. In any event, not only had I never been to Rock Box—I had never done karaoke before. I never did a solo when I was in any of the choruses I've been in either; it always terrified me.
Somehow, I wasn't that super nervous about it this time. I did, however, spend some time earlier last week going through my music catalog, trying to find songs that were in my range, but were also on the searchable list that Rock Box even provides on their website. I did not realize until we got there that you can even search YouTube videos, so that might have been a solve for the fact that I could not find any Suzanne Vega in their list. She and Tracy Chapman would be the two women who are in my sweet spot, where I can sing in my regular voice and not falsetto; the two male singers who fall in the same sweet spot from my own catalog would be Rufus Wainwright and Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys. There's a couple of songs by both Madonna and by Garbage that I thought I might be able to make work ib this way.
Now, Gabriel had quipped in the group text of invitees that "I expect falsetto Madonna. Don't fail me." Which is ironic because he
hated hearing me sing along to Madonna when we were in college. And then Andy replied with his own quip: "I mean - at a minimum - That's in anyone's range." Clearly a joke. There's no way I could make "Vogue" work as a karaoke song, unless I dropped it an octave.
The thing is, I wasn't sure until I got there that I would do any singing at all. It turns out it's way easier than anyone might fear, and in fact, unless you're insanely talented (which I am not), or a natural showman who commands attention (which I am not), people don't even pay attention to your singing anyway. They'll just chat amongst themselves. But, there were 8 people on the group chat, and the initial text invite had said in part, "with the option of your other!" At the time, I kind of assumed Shobhit would not be interested, so when I replied that I would be coming, I only referenced myself. I was later somewhat surprised to find Shobhit was interested in going, but found myself in an awkward position, for multiple reasons, and I wasn't even sure how much drama I might be inviting by bringing him up late in the game. It became a little bit of a thing, between Shobhit and me, where he picked up on a couple of comments I made in passing and that made him say "It seems like you don't want me to go," which wasn't quite accurate. And I did tell Shobhit that we had been told "the option of your other," which is what he is. And in a scenario like this, it should always be assumed that "your other" is part of the package unless otherwise noted.
Gabriel and Lea ran a few minutes late getting to Seattle, so Gabriel called me to ask if I would go over there and make sure the room is booked. "I can do that," I said. Then, when I realized the way I had phrased that and I did not want to have sounded misleading on the phone, I quickly said, "We can do that." Gabriel was like: "What?" And I said, "It looks like Shobhit's coming."
There was a definite pause. This could have had many meanings. Later, I got the sense more than anything that it had to do with the capacity of the room, and having 12 people instead of 11 may have been an issue. That's what I'm going with, anyway. And in the end, that proved to be a moot point: even counting Shobhit, and counting Gabriel and Lea themselves, only 7 people showed. Everyone else apparently canceled at the last minute.
Gabriel was clearly disappointed by this, and I don't blame him. It's a genuine pet peeve of mine when people bail at the last minute. I have some friends who have mental health issues or even physical health issues that somewhat ups the frequency of this kind of thing happening, and I've just learned to accept that it's part of the deal with them. Anyone else, though—if they're just giving a bullshit excuse, I have a hard time pretenting it's anything else. At least outwardly, Lea seems to take this sort of thing in relative stride; I obviously can't speak to how she might be reacting privately. What's more clear than anything is that Gabriel loves her and simply wants her to have a fun birthday celebration. (Her birthday is actually earlier this month, but she was on a work trip to Tokyo.)
Here's how I see it now, though: none of that stopped the rest of us who actually showed from having a good time.
There was a bit of awkwardness when Shobhit and I got there at about 5:50—this place is like five blocks from home, incidentally, so I hardly had any excuse not to come. That is, unless I were to have other plans already, which actually was the case when Gabriel initially tried to schedule this for the 6th (which was the day Shobhit and I went to Karen and Dave's newly built house in Tulalip for fondue dinner). Gabriel even rescheduled the party to the 20th with the idea of it being a day most people would be available. Anyway, we did confirm that the room was booked. They asked for my credit card until the person who reserved the room arrived, which was fine, and fairly quickly after that, Shobhit and I were escorted back to the room.
As it had been unclear to us how separate checks might work in the room, I opened a tab for Shobhit and myself at the bar in front, so we could have a drink while we waited. When I went back to the bar later to get my second drink and close out the tab, the woman who had been the server in our room said she could take orders there. I told her I already had a tab out here that I needed to close. She made an offhand comment about how people think they can't do separate checks in the room, and I don't know if she was disappointed to have missed out on the tips for our order at the bar in front or what.
Honestly, once the evening got into full swing, things felt pretty nuts out there. Had I known beforehand how easy it was to just do all our ordering from the reserved room, I'd have happily done that, but I had never been there before. Hell, I didn't even realize how many rooms they have (twelve!) or that the rooms are fully sealed. From the outside, looking through the windows it looks like the rooms have walls that only go mostly but not all the way to the ceiling; but I think what you see from the outside is just part of the design of the front bar area. I did not realize any of this until I actually went inside.
To tell you the truth, had many more people actually showed, it would have felt pretty crowded in there. As it was, it felt pretty comfortable—aside from the door stop that's practically impossible to see thanks to the dimness of the lighting in the room, and which at separate times both Gabriel and I tripped on and narrowly avoided a disastrous fall. Protop to Rock Box: maybe have the doors swing out into the hallway instead? Every time I went to the bathroom and came back, I pulled on the door before realizing I needed to push, and I had to be careful not to hit the person sitting on the bench right next to it.
— पांच हजार आठ सौ उनासी —
— पांच हजार आठ सौ उनासी —
The three people besides Shobhit and me who actually showed were, I believe, coworkers of Lea's. At least one, if not all, of them had been at Lea's birthday party at their house last year. One is from India, and I forget her name; she had been impressed with the chai I brought last year. There was a moment when she and Shobhit noted they both speak Hindi, but neither of them ever did so; this is a shift that is somewhat fascinating to me, given that Shobhit and Sachin spoke in Hindi with each other a
lot when I first met him, but hasn't in ages. In fact, the only people I ever hear Shobhit speak in Hindi with anymore are his immediate family—his mom, his brother, his sister. Even when he gets on the phone with his nieces and nephews he's usually speaking in English.
The other two were a lesbain couple. So, a gay couple and a lesbian couple. Two of them would be considered some version of brown, maybe even three. Four women, three men. Only seven people, and so diverse! Hashtag #diversity. (I'm probably the only one of us who even thought about this. Still, I'd be delighted if some crybaby conservative found this and got triggered by it.)
One of the byproducts if it being only seven people, though, was that the iPad controller kept getting passed to me to add a song on it to sing. I decided to split the difference in terms of my range and my first song was Madonna's "Music." I can sing the verses in my regular voice and the chorus in falsetto. I did okay. Nobody really paid attention. Nobody cares about this either, but I'll mention it anyway: I'm a fine singer, so long as I have a decent singer alongside my voice with whom I can either sing along or harmonize. If there's a bunch of ambient noise, and especially if someone else is singing who is utterly tone deaf, I am shit at holding my own in terms of staying on pitch. I later added Garbag's "Only Happy When it Rains," which is from an album Gabriel introduced me to while we were in college and I subsequently bought or downloaded every album they've ever released. I didn't even necessarily expect this but when that song played, he took the other of the two microphones and we sang it together, though he was on the other side of Lea. He said something about me being flat at one point. I probably was, but there was little I could do about it in that environment.
I actually practiced some karaoke singing with karaoke versions of songs I found on YouTube earlier last week—clearly taking this more seriously than I needed to—and I hated the sound of my voice without some other voice blending in with it. I sounded pretty horrible, I thought, and that was when I was able to stay pretty well on pitch without any ambient chatter in the room. I realize that sounding great is not and never has been the point of karaoke. But I remain pretty jealous of people who can do it well.
This seems like a good time to note that Lea was by far the best at it in the whole group. She knew how to use a microphone, she was virtually always on pitch, she knew the words and she knew the notes of the songs she sang. The other woman from India had perhaps the greatest natural showmanship, but Lea had hands down the best karaoke voice.
We were allowed an extra buffer of 15 minutes when the reserved two-hour block ended. By the end, Shobhit had sung both "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion (after, I think it was Lea who added it, Celine Dion's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" had already been added) and The Eagles's "Hotel California." Someone else added Keshe's "Blow," which is my favorite song by her, and I was handed a mic for that and I got really into it. I had added the Pet Shop Boys cover of "Always On My Mind" near the end, but that got bumped out of the queue by someone else.
When we left Rock Box and stood outside the door for a few minutes, the other couple broke off and headed home, but the rest of us still hung out for a while. Gabriel had suggested finding a place to eat afterward, and here was where Shobhit kind of shoehorned into the conversation to ask what people wanted to eat and come up with some suggestions. He suggested Carmelo's Tacos, and even though they don't have outdoor seating, he suggested we get some food to go and then go eat in the park. The group went for this, so that's what we did.
Shobhit and I both had a half-shot of high quality tequila before we left. Then I had two tequilas sunrises from the Happy Hour menu between 6:00 and 7:00. They did surprisingly heavy pours, so even over an hour after that, while we were waiting for our orders at Carmelo's, I said, "I'm pretty buzzed right now." That was the height of how buzzed I was, but it dissipated pretty quickly within about half an hour after that. There had been a mixup with our orders, where Gabriel and Lea had been handed order 312 even though Lea had made it very clear that her number was order 314. It got figured out soon enough, but Shobhit sure jumped at the chance to make this my fault, which really pissed me off; it was the cashier's fault. When I brought this up on our walk home later, as is typical behavior for him, he only responded by saying that I should have been helping him find lids for the salsa and guacamole he took from the sauces bar for our order. He thinks I should read his mind and know all his needs at all times. He should know after twenty years together that it has never worked that way and it never will.
I also consider it relevant how buzzed I was. I was hardly thinking straight. There was a moment when Shobhit spilled some salsa on the floor, which is a detail I remember but I don't have any idea how it happened. Still, if he needed help he could have just been explicit and told me what he needed.
I should stress this was just a blip in the evening. Once we got to the park we we all good for the most part, I think. I was the one who brought it all up when we were later walking home, because I really thought it was unfair of him to immediately jump to laying the blame on me for the order mixup. His response to that was just to try turning blame back around on me. But, then we just moved on.
While we were all eating at the park, I really wished I had brought my hoodie with me. I thought of that even while we were walking there, but by then it was too late. Neither of us brought a jacket, so Shobhit was all about going back home as soon as he was cold too. I don't know if he has undiagnosed ADHD or what (frankly this seems deeply plausible), but within moments after that he was asking if I wanted to go to Molly Moon's for ice cream. "You just said you were cold!" I said. We didn't get ice cream.
We did walk Gabriel and Lea, and the other friend from India whose name I can't remember, to the parking garage where they had parked. Hugs all around, and Shobhit and I walked home, where we wrapped ourselves in the comfort of PBS Saturday night reruns of
As Time Goes By.
— पांच हजार आठ सौ उनासी —
What else, then? Well, before the party on Saturday night even happened, Laney and I did go to a movie:
The History of Sound, which we both loved way more than the
score of 63 on MetaCritic might have you expect. I really liked it a lot.
I did not socializing otherwise yesterday, and in fact took
myself to a movie:
The Baltimorons, which I was utterly charmed by. I'm sure happy to be entering the fall when movies on everage are getting much better again.
That showtime was at 3:35. I got home and wrote the review; we had episodes of
Task and
Last Week Tonight to watch on HBO; and then it was basically time for bed. Yesterday felt incredibly packed and busy, mostly because of all I needed to do before I even went to the movie: directly before the movie, Shobhit and I went out shopping, to Costco, PCC and QFC. And before that, I had to spend quite a bit of time writing up the list and essay portiosn of
the Summer 2025 Social Review. (Ostensibly I post those on the day the seasons change, but the equinox is actually September 22; I have always posted those on the 21st of every third month just for dating consistency.)
Before I even got into the shower yesterday, though, was the more exciting part: Shobhit and I booked reservations at two different Amsterdam hotels for late July and early August of next year. We'll wait a bit longer to book a hotel in Brussels, as they won't have anything like World Pride happening there and it shouldn't be as pressing to book early. But, we also booked our flights on Saturday, right before we left for Lea's party. It's definitely happening!
We've got the dates all set now. We fly out of Seattle on Saturday, July 25 of next year, with a layover in Reykjavík on the way to Amsterdam; the same itineray back will have us landing in Seattle on Tuesday, August 11, fairly late in the evening. I'm taking Wednesday the 12th off as a jetlag buffer. This is essentially the same stretch, and even days of the week, as our last trip to Australia, in 2023: the only difference is we left on Sunday for that trip and for this trip we leave on Saturday. It'll be the same number of PTO days for me to take (13), but the trip itself will be one day longer for Amsterdam.
I've got a working list of points of interest. Cathryn, who has a sister who lives in the Netherlands so she's visited multuple times, sent an email with several recommendations just this morning. I already started a "planned expenses" template for tracking my trip budget—I aimed for $10,000 for this trip; between the airfar and the two booked hotels, I've already spent $6,895.60 and thus have a $3,104.40 budget balance, some of which will have to go to the Brussels hotel. We booked a hotel with a kitchen, though, so as usual we'll bring a bunch of our own food and it shouldn't be too hard to spend relatively little while we're there. After all, we spent $6,946.20 total on airfare plus hotels for the Australia trip, and we still spent a total of $8,340.51 for everything on that trip, which means we did all of $1,394.31 in on-location spending there. I suspect we'll wind up spending a little more than that for this trip, but we'll see; right now I feel relatively confident we can still stick to the $10,000 budget.
— पांच हजार आठ सौ उनासी —
[posted 12:34pm]
