Songs I mean, there an auto-generated Spotify list for this but I do NOT agree with how my top five songs came up. I think there’s some element of when you start listening to a song and if it’s placed in a frequently played playlist. So here are the songs I think were my true faves of 2020 … well there are so many so I’ll list my favorites of my favorite artists 1. Blackpink – Lovesick Girls, You Never Know, How You Like That, Pretty Savage 2. Taylor Swift – Champagne Problems, Cardigan, Cowboy Like Me 3. Conan Gray – Heather, Crush Culture, The Cut That Always Bleeds, Comfort Crowd, Affluenza 4. Doja Cat – Boss Bitch 5. Saint Jhn – Roses (Imanbek remix) 6. girl in red – girls 7. Dua Lipa – Don’t Start Now 8. The Weeknd – Hardest to Love, Save Your Tears, Nothing Compares
Books: I only read five books this year so I will not list the “top books.” Rather, the best book I read this year was one published three years ago – a 9/11 oral history called “The Only Plane in the Sky.” I did not have much of a memory of 9/11, being in the 7th grade at the time, and I’ve never really gone back to watch news footage of the day, so it was like reading about something I had zero background knowledge of. This book is entirely about the day’s events, and doesn’t touch on the ripple effects. I learned it was … AN INTENSE DAY. Despite being a pretty thick book, it’s hard not to think of how many more voices are out there that couldn’t be included. For most of the book, I was like OMG THIS HAPPENED?! I still can’t really comprehend the idea of a massive skyscraper just turning into dust. There were a lot of parts where I thought “holy fuck” and I guess it’s probably not healthy to constantly think about the horrors of the day, but there were a lot of details that I would read about and often think “WHAT? This is horrifying.” I think reading about human parts falling from the sky and rescue teams just coming across random severed limbs. Or cars that commuters left behind at train stations.
Shows: I’m going to have to make a separate post of all the shows I had watched/rewatched during covid times. But my favorite show of the year has to be The Haunting of Bly Manor. Oh no I also did love watching The Comeback (obviously not a recent show).
You know what. It’s now June 2021 and I’m not longer interested in reliving 2020. I’m going to post now and move on with my life. If anything, I’ll roll a 2020 lookback into a 2020/2021 lookback pre-Seattle
Wow I was about to go through and purge a ton of posts because they are cringe worthy and rambling… but when I read through one I was like “what in the WORLD, I cannot believe that was a thing that happened!”
Looking at my last post, where I was basically summarizing a typical day in April – I definitely still thought, in April 2020, that we would be returning to the office in May, as scheduled. I know this because at the very beginning of lockdown, I thought it made sense to foster a puppy for the two months we’d be working from home. By end of April, I was like, well shit I didn’t end up fostering a puppy (I didn’t try very hard, at a cursory search it seemed like all the shelters had closed and weren’t allowing on site visitors and that was enough of an obstacle for me to not bother looking further) and I was thinking to myself, well I only have a month left of work from home, so no puppy!
The other thing that is a clue is that I used to count the number of days I’d been working from home, and now I have to just generalize by the month!
Crazy things I apparently did back in April:
1) wakeup at 6:45 – I know this is accurate but it’s also so far from my current reality in December 2020. Maybe I’ll first wake up around 7:30am but I make zero effort of getting up until 8:30am EARLIEST
2) I wrote that I checked Instagram then Twitter then Tiktok then Insagram again – even this feels crazy because I don’t even include IG in my morning social media routine anymore. I’m sure by summer 2020, I was already heading straight to Twitter then Tiktok
3) I wrote that I put podcasts on my iPod shuffle and when I read that, I thought it must have been a typo. But then I wrote that I didn’t bring my phone and then I realized that I actually DID use my ipod shuffle at the beginning of the pandemic! This is a shuffle from probably the early 2000s where the plastic buttons have since cracked and fallen off, and I had to use my fingernail to dig into the circuitboard to click next track or change the volume. I am pretty convinced this little shuffle has electrically shocked me a couple of times. I have since stopped using this shuffle and just hold my iphone in my hand while I walk/run. I’ve probably dropped my phone onto the ground like three times this year (not outside, probably always in my house). When I say drop, I mean the kind of drop where it bounces a couple of times. :X
4) Running at the track – I fell off my running habits after the summer wildfires. And now the pathway that I used to take to walk to the track is fenced off because they are doing improvements. Now that I think about it, I would not even dare to run on a track nowadays, whereas back in the early spring I wasn’t so bothered about running outside near people.
I wonder what else has changed. I mean the most GLARING change is that I have completely fallen off my exercise kick and do very little physical activity nowadays. It turns out the difference between going on runs/walks and doing at home Peloton workouts versus doing next to nothing is maybe just 2-3 pounds of weight. However. I can definitely see the roundness in my face and tummy have returned. It’s hard to say if this boomerang experience should be motivational (I KNOW how to get back in shape, and it is totally possible to do within a few months!) or a deterrent.
No new hobbies or accomplishments to speak of after all these months, other than a collection of favorited tweets and tiktoks. And presumably, I haven’t caught or given covid to anyone.
I guess WFH for me started 3/9/20 and is my Day 0 and the Bay Area’s mandatory shelter in place is my Day 9.
During a virtual hang, Connie was like “I hope you’re keeping a journal for these days” and I was like “I’m actually not!” I guess maybe I would find this worthwhile to look at one day.
Work-wise: I have had way more work to do since we started WFH. I never particularly liked working from home, so never invested in a work from home setup because I didn’t want to change the ~vibe~ of my house (that being, place to lay around). My butt is starting to heavily resent this, because I do all my work on a hard kitchen dining chair now, with my laptop set upon a stack of magazines. Not the best ergonomic setup.
On the one hand, having so much work is a great mental distraction from having to be at home all the time. There was one very busy week where I would work till like 8pm. I’m also working more on a project (that my direct report should be doing, but he is not good enough to be left on his own), which entails a LOT more virtual meetings, which is more socializing than I desire. I think last Thursday I had to endure six hours of virtual meetings. I finally cracked last Thursday and decided I’m no longer taking big group meetings from my dining table, and now I just prop my laptop up on a stool and sit back very comfortably in an armchair like I’m watching a movie. I personally think it’s a great angle and backdrop and I’m very pleased to be able to do this.
On the plus side, I definitely have a very stable job, no concerns of job loss. If anything, the only real complaint I have is that I’ve realized in this time of crisis, my boss continues to turn to me for things that he should really be assigning to someone else. An optimist would take this as a compliment but a realist should recognize it for what it is, I’m A PATSY!
Friend-wise: I have two regular-ish virtual group hangs, possibly three soon! We never even hung out in person with this much regularity, so it’s quite intense to go from a quarterly or even annual hang out to like … a 2 hour plus session once or twice a week. But I enjoy them! Truly the only thing I detest is FaceTime, which I hate that it’s even an option for me now that I have an iPhone. FIRST OF ALL, if anyone wants to FaceTime, I kind of want to be like, CAN YOU JUST DOWNLOAD LINE?! Second of all, I don’t want to hold my phone up for that long, and the camera lens is terrible unless I’m holding it in a very certain position that involves extended arm raising. I can’t stand FaceTime, truly. Line has much cuter face filters and is much more enjoyable.
Family-wise: I have no real idea how my parents are doing. They both seem very calm about everything, but my mom will often send me links to articles that make me think maybe she’s panicked? It’s hard to say. They still go out to grocery stores, but definitely try to limit time spent in public areas. My mom has finally worn a mask, which she used to refuse to wear, even when she was sick IN TAIWAN IN FEBRUARY 2020 because she said she didn’t know how to breathe with it on. My mom in the past week figured out how to install a new wireless router, resolved an issue on my Dad’s iPad and is now downloading software to work from home for the first time ever. I kind of think in this time of crisis, she has really risen to the task of being the Family IT with surprisingly successful results. I also think her life is about to become very difficult because it does not sound like she or anyone in her office is equipped or ready for working from home.
Goals-wise: I never even bothered to put “bake bread” on my quarantine goals list because I already know I wouldn’t have done it. I have been cooking more veggies lately, but it’s just a steady rotation of roasted broccoli, stir fried chinese eggplant, marinated cucumbers, and corn/edamame medley. Maybe I’ll throw a new veggie into the mix, WHO KNOWS! I should just setup a list of recipes to try (this is something I’ve said countless times before and never do, or I make such an extensive list that it becomes overwhelming).
I have been running outside – I drive to a track that’s about 3 miles away. I realize there’s some ethical concerns to this, but I never run on the streets and feel like I will only be motivated to run if I can count the laps, and I try to go when there wouldn’t be as many people. I also think that if EVERYONE on the tracks were actually running and going solo, this would not be a real issue and it would be possible to social distance on the track. BUT THEN there are people who come to WALK the track in GROUPS where they just walk right next to each other in a horizontal line. I really want to yell at them and be like “CAN’T YOU JUST WALK ON THE SIDEWALK” or at least stagger so they’re walking in a vertical line. But I’m very non-confrontational, other than when I run through their line in passive aggression.
I want to start doing more workout routines at home. Though I wanted to start this today, and then I got my period, and I have zero interest in doing a workout routine from home while on my period. I guess it’ll just have to wait till the end of this week!
I haven’t done any makeup tutorials at home. The logic of the goal seems totally reasonable – to practice makeup when I won’t be seeing anyone and have more time to practice and play – but the motivation is not there.
I haven’t read a single magazine. I haven’t finished a single book. I haven’t done any continued learning for my CPA or even new learning for the day that I will one day use to pivot my career. Perhaps this is the greatest failure of all.
Dating-wise: Two weeks into a formal shelter in place, I will say, just thinking about dating/relationships is a fun thought exercise. I choose to believe that I’m in a pretty great position, living alone and being single. It must be worse to be in a bad relationship and not being able to leave at this time. It’d be nice to quarantine with someone, but I’m glad to have my personal space and not have to be around someone 24/7 or have to navigate work from home hours and meetings in the same space. I can do whatever I want whenever I want, and don’t have to spend any energy catering to someone else’s needs.
I have really little interest in going on dating apps at this time. I’m not really interested in meeting someone for the first time virtually. I also have never been a fan of unending texting back and forth – I’ve always thought that after you exchange a few texts and ascertain that you’re not speaking to a bot, you should just meet people in person. I find endless texts to be the death of romantic intrigue. But obviously I’m not meeting anyone now, especially not a stranger! So then there’s no motivation in me to start swiping, it feels like such a waste of energy. But I do find myself opening the apps from time to time because I’ll think to myself, what if everyone ELSE is out here swiping and lining up their matches for the day that we are finally all released back into the world?! Then if I don’t take the time to set stuff up now, I’ll be at the back of the line! It’s definitely a, should I prepare now and trudge through it even though I’m not really in the mood, or should I just let it go and focus on other things now and come what may in a few months? Undecided.
I did go on a date with someone I actually am interested in – we met up for the first time a few days before the shelter in place. If it hadn’t been for the need to shelter in place, I would have definitely met up again. Now it’s in a weird stasis where I find it hard to find the right balance of communication. We’ll text every now and then, I would definitely be texting more except she’s not very responsive and has told me that she’s both turned off her phone to avoid distraction and recently started a new job. HAH writing that out, it does seem like “get a clue, she’s not interested!” But I do actually feel like she’s the type of person who would avoid her phone to preserve her mental health and she’s maybe not trying to give me a hint? It’s hard to decide what’s too much to text, considering we’ve only met once, vs thinking if I don’t keep up the communication then it’ll just fizzle out and neither of us will want to bother trying to pick up again once we are able to step outside.
Who knows! My mood about this changes the more I think about it. I think a very clear minded person would advise me that I shouldn’t think too much about it and I should just text when she texts and let it be when she doesn’t.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve found these lists much harder to make because 1) sometimes it feels gross to admit that I find a celebrity younger than 25 ~interesting~ 2) sometimes I like a celebrity but don’t consume any of their work so it seems like it’s not ~real interest~ or 3) some celebrities are now mothers and that also seems weird to be like, that mom is HOT! So basically, I’m being confronted by my shallowness.
REGARDLESS, here it is. I apparently didn’t make one in 2018.
Daisy Ridley: I did watch Murder on the Orient Express, mainly for her, and I’ve watched two of the newer Star Wars movies, also mainly for her, so in terms of active engagement with her career, this might qualify her as my … #1 favorite celebrity?!?! She isn’t on social media, having been chased off by sexist Star Wars fanboys, so you only really hear from her when she has to do Star Wars promotion, and this privacy only makes me want to know MORE!
Saoirse Ronan: Have I watched the majority of her movies? No. I don’t even have any memory of watching her in Atonement, which is one of three of her movies that I have seen. But I do like her demeanor in interviews, which seems fairly introverted, capable of playing the Hollywood game but deliberately choosing not to, and generally very likable. She also just produces such consistently good work, it’s hard to find fault in her. I can’t believe she’s only 25. I’m sure she’ll win an Oscar one day but she might be 40 when it finally happens for her and she would have been nominated a dozen times by then.
Zendaya: She is 23! Have I watched any of her work? Only one movie (one of the Spidermans, I don’t know the name of it). I don’t even follow her on Instagram because they are very boring posts. Would I watch or read an interview of her? Hm, probably not. But I would happily follow a tumblr of memes of her! This must be my most shallow attraction of all, seeing as how I don’t follow her professionally or even on social media. But she is SO fashionable and stunning, I don’t even care what she does or what random white guy she is dating.
Kristen Stewart: Well I DID watch Charlie’s Angels for her, so give me some credit. Will I watch Underwater? No. Do I like her true, grungy, smoker LA style? No. But I will forever love her slightly off-putting awkward demeanor. Ok I just counted 19 movies that she’s made since Twilight and I’ve only seen five (Still Alice being the only one I would ever rewatch), but four of those movies were watched purely just to see her on screen with zero interest in the underlying material, which I think has to count for something. It feels shallow to only find a cleaned up Kristen Stewart attractive, but when she DOES clean up, it’s hard to deny that sharp jawline and facial structure.
Sophie Turner: Have I watched Game of Thrones? No. Do I know about any of her professional work? No. But she comes off amazing in interviews, she seems extremely funny, and she makes Joe Jonas seem interesting! She’s someone I follow on Instagram with no real interest in her work.
Emma Watson: Do I think lesser of her for her boring and frankly disappointing dating history? Perhaps. Do I mainly like her for her posh accent and beautiful facial bone structure? Probably. Do I know anything about her true personality? I don’t think so. I think it’s not a great sign of her character that she barely did the Little Women press tour and wasn’t at the Oscars. Do I like her acting? NO. But I’ll still watch a movie with her! Little Women, Perks of Being a Wallflower, and the Bling Ring – even though I already knew her acting skills are blah. I will ALWAYS click on an article with a photoshoot of her.
Selena Gomez: Will she ever be able to separate herself from Justin Bieber? I do not think so. I think it will forever color my judgment of her judgment. But I’m often surprised by how many IG followers she has. I think her music is fun and I LOVE her speaking voice. I do not know much about her but appreciate her celebrity star presence!
I particularly want to be their friend: Tracee Ellis Ross, Chrissy Teigen, Emily Blunt
Who DOESN’T like these people: Rihanna, J Lo, Gal Gadot, Lupita Nyongo, Adele
The esteemed white ladies: Julianne Moore, Amy Adams, Jessica Chastain, Sarah Paulson, Carey Mulligan
Maybe not like, but intrigued and will always click on an article about them: Taylor Swift, Elizabeth Moss, Nicole Richie, Wendi Deng
Gay Hall of Fame: Sarah Shahi, Tatiana Maslany, Cara Delevingne, Jennifer Beals
2019 ephemeral obsessions: Macarena Achaga, Barbara Lopez, the ladies of BlackPink
And MEN who made the cut:
Tom Holland: He seems SO NICE and very cute and talented!
Harry Styles: I like his personality and think it’s very endearing that he is frequently with older ladies having a blast
Shawn Mendes: I do find it kind of weird that he is constantly like I AM NOT GAY but he is very good looking.
Liam Hemsworth: Admittedly very boring and I like Miley Cyrus as a person over him, but he is undeniably very good looking
omg. MY YEARS IN REVIEWS!!!
It’s already February! I haven’t even been thinking about my 2019 at all!
Favorite books:
– An American Marriage: I have a distinct memory of reading this in the early days of moving into our new office, when I’d go sit outside on the roof terrace when it was like 95 degrees out and be like “mmm I love getting some vitamin D!!” while dripping sweat
– Daisy Jones & The Six: it was such a fast read! And I’m excited to see this movie adaption, which I think will be a Reese Witherspoon production
– State of Affairs: Sad reason to read a book but it did bring me comfort and something concrete to process with
– Disappointments: I’ll take this space to call out a book I HATED: Educated
Favorite movies:
– Booksmart: I watched it like FIVE times in one year! And I think I paid for three theater showings! I have no other favorite movies.
– Movies I still need to watch: Parasite, The Farewell, Little Women, Knives Out, Dolemite Is My Name
Favorite tv shows:
– Sex Education: I would love a comprehensive list of all the Netflix originals because you NEVER hear about this show or Terrace House or Elite and all these shows are SO GOOD! I find any AI recommendation algorithm highly suspect in terms of quality
– Succession S2: I admit the first season was very meh, but I really got into the second season. I have rewatched the season finale multiple times. Honestly, there is a scene in the finale where I connected very heavily to Tom and I thought, OH GOD if the couple I relate to the most is Tom/Siobhan, that is probably a good sign that I should end my relationship.
– Amar A Muerte: This was my strongest obsession of the year. I committed so many hours of my life trying to find translated clips of this show, trying to translate things myself. I essentially tried to re-learn Spanish for this telenovela!!! I think it was well worth all the energy, I mean, I wasn’t doing much with my life then (or now)
– Couples Therapy: I heavily binged this over three nights during winter break. It’s very well done though I didn’t understand one couple’s issues at all and wrote them off as an unsalvgeable relationship, but they decided to have their breakthrough moment at the very end of the show and agreed to work on things. Anyway, this is the show I’m most looking forward to having return in 2020
Favorite podcasts:
I feel like I haven’t added any new podcasts that I would consider an absolute favorite, but I have kept a lot of the same ones in rotation. And I have a LOT in rotation. I’ll list them here, in the order in which I’ve arranged them on iTunes:
Savage Lovecast, The Read, Bitch Sesh, Pop Culture Happy Hour, It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders, Still Processing, Planet Money, Code Switch, Hidden Brain, Science Vs, Throughline, The Bowery Boys, Linear Digressions, Raw Data, What’s Your Drama, Why’d You Push That Button, Nancy, Ear Hustle, Embedded, Today Explained
Podcasts I don’t subscribe to on iTunes, but I subscribe to on Spotify because I enjoy listening to them while driving: Who Weekly, Keep It, LaineyGossip’s Show Your Work
New podcasts that are ok but not musts: American Scandal, The Rewatchables, The Big Picture, Best Friends with Nicole Byer & Sasheer Zamata
The ones I’ve dropped: NPR Politics and The Daily. Honestly, I don’t feel any sense of loss. If anything, I would rather know less and less about the going ons of the real world
Favorite Live Events:
– Who Weekly, SF: very early in 2019, Robyn and I got tickets to see one of my FAVORITE podcasts live, Who Weekly!!! It was a total delight. We also saw them in NYC, their home town, but I have to say, it was NOT as fun as the SF show! Which I found very surprising. I would think the most delightful tour stop would be in LA, where celebrity culture is much celebrated
– Flower Piano At Night, Golden Gate Park: This was a night time event in Golden Gate Park where Robyn’s friends and I could explore the SF botanical garden, and there were various pianos set up in the gardens and you would just walk around and choose what type of piano music you wanted to listen to. Super unique event that I would love to make an annual tradition
– Of Monsters and Men, Oakland: one of my favorite bands to see live! One thing that sticks out in my memory is that we found standing room right behind a few VERY short asians who were themselves standing in front of a ledge that separated us standers from the seated audience. So basically, THE ABSOLUTE BEST PLACE TO WATCH A CONCERT!
– WORST live event: Lizzo in SF. lol just kidding. The event itself was fun, Lizzo is an AMAZING live performer, but history would reveal this night to be the time Robyn met the person she’d cheat on me with. In fact, we met her at the SAME time, seeing as how we were introduced AS A COUPLE, which I continue to find very insulting. Anyway.
Favorite Songs:
– Thank U, Next by Ariana Grande
– Blackpink. JUST IN GENERAL. But if I had to choose, it’d be Kill This Love and Ddu-Du Ddu-Du and Kick It
– Beyonce’s entire Homecoming Album. Well I do stop listening after Single Ladies, but that’s still a good hour+ of solid music
– Lana Del Rey: Happiness is a butterfly and The greatest
– Amour Plastique by Videoclub
– Returning by Erthlings
– Slip Away by Perfume Genius
Favorite Purchases Made:
– a purple hoodie from Big 5 Sporting Goods: I wear this all the time. At first I thought it was an appropriate outdoor outfit, but I’ve since relegated it to casual, indoor use only
– a black hoodie from a super random shop in NYC: that cost $100! Seriously the most I’ve ever spent on a sweatshirt. I think it looks very cool though.
– a JLo top from Kohls that I wear for work LOL
– my black NoBull hightops (gifted by Robyn)
Best vacations:
– Disney World: for the pure nonstop fun of it all, despite the heat (which I’ve actually already mostly forgotten about)
– Washington: this might be the one time I’ve vacationed with my mom without once getting really annoyed at her
– NYC: for how easy and fun it turned out to be, when there was potential for it to go south (though I never really feared that it would)
You know what, I really enjoyed all of my vacations. There’s no good reason for me choosing these three over the rest.
Favorite meals:
– Chicken Guy in Orlando: I essentially chose to leave the Magic Kingdom theme park early, just so I could eat here a second time. I continue to think this was the right choice
– Kossar’s bagels in NYC: I really love NYC bagels, though I think the thing I’m actually enjoying is having someone else spread SO much scallion cream cheese onto a salty, everything bagel for me, because I would never, ever use that much cream cheese by my own hand
– Palacios Cafe in Santa Fe: I don’t even really remember what I ate, but I finished the entire burrito and I remember being extremely thrilled that we had walked so far (like six more blocks than necessary) to find this restaurant, when we were both already quite famished
Favorite Photos taken:
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Favorite tweets:
Just got an email from a student where they referred to the 90s as " the late 1900s" 💀
Steyer: no Tulsi: yes Castro: no Yang: microdosing rn Klobuchar: no (lying) Booker: yes (lying) Beto: shrooms Pete: Beto did shrooms Bernie: yah Warren: helped friends do it safely Biden: we talkin quaaludes? Kamala: ur under arrest for reading this tweet
Is it time? For another … look at my past year’s expenses?!
Maybe this is utterly uninteresting. I also have an inkling there’s an element of financial privacy/personal data that I’m throwing out into the internet. But … I’m doing it anyway! Because I already spend all this time in my life tracking this stuff, I might as well do a summary on it and try to glean something from it.
All right here it is:
First takeaways:
– food: It is always surprising to me that the second largest spend category for me (after travel expenses) is consistently what I spend to eat out. Even though that completely jives with my personality. Imagine if I NEVER ate out or bought another $5 latte for five years. I’d probably have like … $12,000 more in my bank account. That actually doesn’t seem like very much, so I think I will continue to eat out at my current pace.
– transportation 2017?! What a startling long bar. Oh yes, the cost of my new Honda which I think, after getting the insurance money back on my poor Corolla, cost me like $12K in total.
– transportation 2019: OK I was very surprised that it would cost me ~$2000 to essentially drive to work every day and once I looked into it, I have now dredged up BAD MEMORIES OF 2019! My car got towed in San Francisco in early 2019 and my car got damaged during the tow, so all in all, it was like a $1200 problem I had to throw money at. I had put it out of my mind until now and I’m just now realizing how much $1200 is … *sad cry* The joys of sitting in traffic to and from work as opposed to standing on a caltrain platform waiting for another late train is really a ~$800 luxury. OH NO including the cost of my parking permit at work … that’s another $35 per month! Yeesh. Maybe I should rethink this driving to work situation. I justify it by telling myself that by driving, I’m actually giving myself more freedom/pressure to go to the gym after work, which is critical to my happiness. I also get an extra hour in bed in the morning. But then I do end up staying at the office like three hours later to avoid traffic at night. I don’t know. I will continue to use my anti-environmental means of transportation.
– home: I truly spend very little on upkeeping my house (this does not include my HOA fees). I’m not even sure what I would do for my house at this point. If I could do anything, I think my first splurge would be to add crown molding to my walls, because my walls are so boring. And repaint the walls, though I’d probably try to take that on myself vs. pay for the cost of labor. I have never repainted though, because I’m incapable of pulling the trigger on choosing a paint color. I should change my kitchen sink faucet but I feel like I won’t do that until the sink is gushing water uncontrollably (it does actually currently leak when the handle is turned off to the cold side, which is obnoxious but doesn’t require an immediate fix, in my mind).
– shopping: WHAT! $2000 on shopping?! I don’t see that reflected in my closet. Let’s see. It was $321 in Target stuff (generally clothes, but this would include anything I bought from a Target), $375 for clothes from other stores (which is really like, three nice things), $305 for shoes from DSW (it was like four pairs!), $100 for my new glasses that give me a headache so I don’t wear them, and $878 IN GIFTS?!?!?!? Jesus. Who am I buying gifts for?! ok half of that was due to being in a relationship, about a quarter of it was for family christmas gifts, and the remainder was for a work baby shower or other friends. I guess that seems … not that bad.
– other: what the hell was other! ok. Other included $662 in Lady Gaga tickets that I’ll be selling this year so that would go down (and likely give me a profit!) $114 in Max Richter concert tickets, $550 in cash gifts (maybe I need a gift category!) and $250 in rock climbing passes. I guess that’s ok. So the price of friendship was ~$1400 in gifts? lol that doesn’t even factor in the cost of eating out with friends.
– travel: this is a tricky one because oftentimes what I spend on a trip was not the true cost of a trip because my mom will transfer money to me, even though I tell her NOT TO! Basically, I do not pay my fair share for trips with my family or with Robyn. I make up for it in my company. 😀
So here’s a graph below. The entire bar shows the entire cost of the vacation (excluding other people’s airfare), but only the blue part was money out of my pocket. So for Orlando, Washington and Boulder, my mom basically sent me money that covered way more than she should have. We also didn’t have to pay for lodging for the Disney World trip, which would have otherwise added thousands to the bill (seven nights FREE LODGING from Jessica!) Robyn paid for the cost of the NYC hotel which was pretty much the biggest expense. Portland is distorted because I paid for 1/3 of the total trip but I didn’t include other people’s airfare in my graph so it looks like I paid for 1/2 of the trip. Santa Fe is distorted because the lodging was complimentary then our entire hotel incidentals were covered by a generous gift from Robyn’s mom, so that tiny little amount I paid was just for food we ate outside of the hotel and our rental car. The takeaway is … my mom is very clever in paying me for taking her on vacations.
[I finally sorted through the photos on December 10th so it’s been over two months since this trip! This now seems so long ago but oh well, posting this draft with pictures has been on my to do list, so I can finally cross this off today!]
Currently sitting outside of our casita right now! It’s 8am in Santa Fe (so 7am in California) and I’ve already taken my morning walk around the property, so now I’m just enjoying the nice outdoor weather and the wifi that reaches out here. I haven’t seen a single person with a laptop on the premises, and very few smartphones. So maybe I’m breaking an unspoken rule of this spa resort where adults are meant to relax. Oh well!
Robyn and I are at Sunrise Springs for our birthday weekend, mainly because she received a three-night stay gift certificate after writing a review on the place following her earlier New Years Eve stay. Of course I demanded that she use her free stay with me, thankfully she agreed. So here we are!
Private entrance
Missing from photo: fireplace and table area
We flew out on Saturday morning and arrived in Albuquerque around 2pm. It takes an hour to drive out, and we had initially planned on heading straight to Santa Fe. However, upon landing, I sensed that I would get pretty hangry during the drive, so I started yelping places to eat in Albuquerque while en route to the rental car location. OF COURSE I searched for Mexican food – though there were actually a surprising number of Asian restaurants that looked pretty decent, I think because there’s a university nearby so there was more diversity in food selection. Most of the places on yelp only had like 100 or 200 reviews – and then after a few “next pages” over, I randomly found a place that had like 1600 reviews! So of course we headed there – Cocina Azul!
The place did NOT look like a restaurant at all from the outside, but it owned like three different parking lots on the surrounding blocks, so clearly it’s a local favorite. We arrived at the restaurant around 3pm but there were still quite a few people in there. One of the top dishes were enchiladas, which I don’t really like, but I’m always tempted to order because I keep thinking maybe I’m just one good enchilada away from loving them. I ended up getting a chile relleno, another top pick. New Mexico is known for having green and red chile served with its dishes, so I had to have that – Christmas style! (which means having both at once). My dish basically tasted like a big pepper stuffed with cheese, meat and more diced up chile peppers and there was also some sort of fried egg white situation involved. The primary taste was cheese and shredded beef though, so I loved my dish! I also got a glass of horchata which was decent – basically just more sugar to my day. Robyn got a bowl of pozole. (no pictures for this, just imagine Mexican food)
While we were sitting there, Robyn noticed a wooden logo that hanging above the bar that also popped up in a magazine I was flipping through. I guessed that it was a logo for a brewery, which was correct! And that ended up inspiring us to drive over to the nearby brewery, Marble Brewery, after we finished up our meal.
Since it was like 4pm, the brewery wasn’t too busy. It had a cool indoor space, an even cooler outdoor space, and a rooftop deck that we never bothered to venture to (it looked warm up there). Their t-shirt prints were cool but not well proportioned to the shirts (too small) so we ended up buying two glasses as souvenirs (and for me, a stolen coaster!). I think my new favorite travel thing is to collect interesting coasters at bars. It’s the cheapest souvenir you can find – because it’s FREE!
Finally, off to our actual destination! I was asleep for most of the drive – I hadn’t slept very well the night before. I am pretty certain there wasn’t very much to see on the drive. The last leg of the trip was through some fairly narrow backroads, at first I was a bit like … where is this supposed resort?! But suddenly a small driveway appeared and we arrived at a giant gated complex!
There was a guard at the complex who asked for our names. I thought it seemed like he was just testing our response to gauge whether we really seemed like guests or not, but in the minute that it took us to drive to the front desk, he had actually called ahead to reception so they knew our names when we walked in. What service!
Got checked in pretty easily. Someone accompanied us to the room and we couldn’t say no because they didn’t even tell us our room number. You know I hate to have to tip something like being shown to a room especially when my luggage is so light. Technically Robyn tipped because I don’t carry cash, so I shouldn’t complain too much. After the guy’s show and dance, FINALLY we had our room to relax in!!!
The first thing we did was flop onto the bed and then scan their list of resort activities. All the activities pretty much ended at 6pm so we couldn’t do any on our arrival day. But the activities were pretty repetitive between Saturday, Sunday and Monday, so no big loss. The ones we decided to do were puppy play, cat play, and archery (which we did all on Monday). There weren’t many others that interested me at the time – they have a rotating list so there were some that weren’t currently offered that I would have loved to do, like horticulture or culinary activities. Oh well! We had plenty to do anyway.
We eventually gathered ourselves to go for a walk around the property, checking out the gardens and the pools before the sun set. Then we decided we’d just eat dinner at the resort’s kitchen which was perfect – neither of us were very hungry since we had eaten Cocina Azul not too long ago, and I didn’t really want to drive out again as the resort seemed a bit far from anything. Despite saying we weren’t that hungry, we did still order three things – mushroom fritters (basically fried balls of mushroom, pretty good, certainly unique!) a caesar salad (there was no part of the salad that was at all reminiscent of a caesar salad – it was made of arugula, not lettuce, had no croutons, had a parmesan cheese crisp rather than normal cheese, and was tossed with some sort of reddish dressing instead of caesar dressing. I don’t understand it lol), and the main thing I had been craving all along – a cheeseburger!
The dining room was actually pretty crowded when we arrived – we got what looked like the last two-top in the room. Food was all decent and we were pretty much one of the last tables remaining at then end of the night. After dinner, we took a short walk around the premises to check out the greenhouse (very cool!), the gym (never came back here again) and peer through the fence of the puppy pen where we could hear a puppy running around. Maybe we watched an episode of Succession after heading back to our room, but all I know for sure is that Robyn was asleep in bed well before midnight!
Seems like a rarely used gym
Greenhouse plants!
Their reception house
Next morning, we woke up with the plan of making it to the restaurant by 7:50am so we could beat the 8am rush. Well, we did make it by 8am, but there was NO morning rush. haha plenty of tables to choose from. Well … there were only a few two tops available and every single one of them was bathed in sunlight! I ended up getting the seat with sun in my face. Breakfast is included with the stay – I wasn’t entirely sure how it worked as we had to order from a menu, but it turns out we could order anything and it was entirely covered! I left very full every morning, but of course in hindsight, I do irrationally think, should’ve eaten more!
For the first breakfast, we shared a terrible fruit smoothie (which tasted like frozen, blended up orange juice) and corn meal pancakes – Robyn got a breakfast burrito for herself and I got a oat & quinoa porridge (I thought I’d kick the weekend off to a healthy start). Food was just ok – pancakes were my favorite of the items (actually to be very specific, the pancakes were just ok but the syrup was fantastic). We also ended up getting house coffee but the next days we would get lattes!
Sunday was our Santa Fe day. Soon after breakfast, we left to drive into town (about 25 minutes away) and got to Meow Wolf by 10am which was when we had reserved our tickets (I also later found out this was the opening time). We arrived on time, around the 60th percentile to arrive I’d say.
Not sure how to explain Meow Wolf – I call it an indoor, immersive art installation/maze. Robyn calls it a collection of Burning Man exhibits. It was certainly more interesting than I was expecting! We ended up spending nearly three hours here! It is definitely a place for all ages – kids love it and even some pretty old looking people were getting around. I think my favorite parts included a black and white room which felt like you were in a B&W cartoon, the hallway to the bathroom which had all sorts of things paint in glow-in-the-dark paint on the walls, and some sugar confectionery figures encased in glass. The coolest parts of the building included a drying machine, a fridge and a fireplace, which were all secret passageways to other rooms. Also, there’s a small open space that is likely the stage for concerts (though the space was so small I don’t quite understand how they’re able to fit enough people on the floor for a concert – they have pretty decently sized acts come through!). And a more central room where they’d built a treehouse with platforms going across as the second level. Again, very cool! Lots of photos.
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We exited around 1pm and debated getting food at the truck stationed in the parking lot but decided to try and make it to some artisan art fair that was located at the Santa Fe Railroad Yard (also the site of their farmers markets, which wasn’t open on this day). The art fair was pretty much the size of a large public space room. From here, we planned out our next stops –
1. I HAD to eat something and didn’t have time to look for a proper sit down meal so I typed in “donuts” into yelp and found Whoo’s Donuts. Robyn was amenable to make a stop here, though she did immediately nix my idea of walking 0.7mi away and demanded that we drive (which was in all fairness, was the sane option as it was already VERY hot). It took some time to find Whoo’s Donuts as it was tucked away in a weird location, but we found it! We were the only patrons the entire time we sat here (it was a bit late to be eating donuts), and the donuts were decent. I initially had my eyes on four different donuts, but we only got two – a blueberry lavender and a chai glaze. I wish I had skipped the chai glaze (as it just tasted like a regular glazed donut) and instead tried their white chocolate lemon pistacho (there was also a cherry coconut and a boston cream donut, my next two choices). Ah well, it was a perfect amount of food for us to get the energy to soldier on!
2. Now ready to continue with our day, we headed to downtown Santa Fe and managed to snag really good, central (and free!) street parking. We were close to the bookstore we’d wanted to stop by – Iconik – which is also a popular cafe. We were in here for quite a while, the bookstore had a great selection! For some reason I’ll always remember this weekend as the weekend that Demi Moore’s memoir came out. Then we just started wandering around. I like this downtown area, it doesn’t feel too touristy yet and there isn’t too much of the same thing over and over, which can sometimes happen in other downtown areas. There’s also quite a bit of street art fairs and art galleries in Santa Fe.
3. We eventually started getting hungry and crazily, there weren’t THAT many places open to eat even though it was only like 4pm on a Saturday!!! We ended up walking about 0.7mi to get to our restaurant of choice, Palacio Cafe. This was the one place I’d found on Yelp that I had bookmarked that I REALLY wanted to try, mainly because it had really high ratings at 4.5 stars and 600+ reviews. I’m glad we came, this one of the best meals of the trip! Our server was so friendly with us. I ordered myself a house lemonade (haha he said ‘we have a house lemonade’ and I said ‘hm … can I get an agua fresca instead?’ and he said ‘so … a house lemonade?’ and I said ‘… yes …’) and a ground beef & cheese burrito covered in chile – SOOOO good. Robyn got herself steak tacos and we were both very happy.
4. We then continued our walk around the area, mainly going into gift shops. I got a pretty cool ceramic balloon for my parents to hang in their garden! We eventually started petering out and decided we’d leave the downtown area and hit a few more stops before going back to our hotel, but first …
5. Kakawa Chocolate House! This had REALLY high reviews on yelp … so I was expecting a lot more. But it was just ok. I thought we’d have like chocolate tours or chocolate samples or something, but it wasn’t that generous. House is a generous term for the establishment – I mean it does kind of look like a house from the outside, but it is clearly a store meant to shuttle consumers in and out without allowing people to loiter for too long. The chocolate WAS very good – I remember getting a horchata (my favorite), a peanut butter bar (delicious), some sort of marshmallow caramel that I didn’t even try, and then … hmm … I think there was a peanut on the outside and unfortunately their website doesn’t list their products individually so I may never remember the fourth!
6. Then we decided we’d drive out to Santa Fe Brewing Company. Robyn was a little uncertain about adding this as a stop, as it’d already been a long day, but I said, let’s just drive by and see! And I’m glad we did! But FIRST we made an unplanned pit stop at a Trader Joe’s that we passed en route so we could pick up crackers to go with the champagne and cheese plate that Robyn’s mom had gifted us. We ended up deciding to just get enough snack provisions to round out a dinner for ourselves that we could eat dinner in our hotel room – rosemary crackers, an additional cheese (Iberico, my new fave), and a green tea/lemonade for myself. It was a fantastic idea!!! We knew we wouldn’t be hungry enough to warrant a dinner at the hotel restaurant again, and also wouldn’t want to drive out again late at night, so this was PERFECT!!!
7. Post Trader Joe’s, we made it out to the Santa Fe Brewing Company! Another cute spot – very large premises. Turns out they neighbor a concert venue. I ordered a cider for myself and a beer for Robyn and we ended up sitting on their outdoor rooftop deck, where we just spied on a fellow patron’s two giant Great Danes, while trying to stay warm in the wind. Another perfect pitstop!
We finally finished our drinks and made our way back to Sunrise Springs. We’d end up going to the pools for a night time soak, then eating our dinner of cheese and crackers with a fabulous setup in our room where we propped the laptop up on the bed and stationed our chairs at the edge while watching Succession! I am again, pretty certain we were asleep by midnight yet again lol
Our majestic dinner
Oh dear that was just SUNDAY!
Monday! Ok actually this day is light because it’s mainly resort stuff. I ended up waking up early and going outside for a walk, with the intention of getting some sunrise photos. It turns out that there’s very few areas on the premises with a clear open shot of the sky. But I did get a great walk in, with lots of shots of the property! There weren’t very many people out, especially at like 7am haha. First I circled the usual resort walk from our room to the dining area to the pools, and then I ventured beyond the perimeter into their hiking area. I was afraid of getting lost – I guess in a way I did because it turns out I never even got to the TRUE hiking area, I was just in another adjacent walking area! I eventually made my way back, though I did need a clue from a worker who pointed me away from the teepee I had stumbled upon. When I arrived back in the room, Robyn had just finished getting ready (what perfect timing!) so we could immediately bounce off to our breakfast.
Their contemplation circle
Dining space
Reception area, a favorite shot of mine
This day, I decided to try the sourdough avocado toast – DELICIOUS! Robyn got … ok I can’t remember what now (looking at the photo, maybe it was the same order), but we also shared the blueberry french toast. At this point of the trip, I’d tried everything that looked interesting on the breakfast menu – sourdough avocado toast, french toast, pancakes, and the oatmeal.
Ok – that’s where I left off. It’s now nearly three weeks post-trip and I’m currently sitting at a cafe where I intended to do some CPE study but have instead ended up reading through this draft again and wanting to finish it up! I’m actually really surprised I had written so much of the trip – I thought I had left it off at Albuquerque! Let’s see how well my memory serves me …
After breakfast, our first scheduled activity was puppy play! This is a very cool idea – the resort brings in dogs in training to become therapy dogs and the benefit is that these dogs will be able to get used to meeting lots of strangers and different faces. The whole goal is to get them to not be afraid of new things/faces/sounds. They even have tons of random props laying around the puppy play house and they tell guests that they can use these to make noise so the dogs learn not to get startled – like dropping cookie trays on the floor! When Robyn came to this resort the first time, I think the puppies she saw were already like several months old, so not true puppies, but this time they were only 8-weeks old! And very cute! There were four black English labs and their mom was there too. It was cute but if you know me, I am not really a dog person and having puppies jump and nip at me was overwhelming. I left with a giant chunk of my right knee having been “nipped off” by a dog named HAL. TRAUMATIZED!
After this, we sat by the chicken coop while I continued to press a paper towel against my bleeding knee. We eventually went back to just lie around our hotel room, but before we knew it, the next activity was CAT PLAY! What I’ve learned from this weekend is that I am slightly afraid of overly excited dogs, and I think cats are much more manageable and suited to my personality, but cats are kind of boring. The cats were kept in a little airstream trailer – we had to walk back out to the edge of the perimeter (to where I had just done my morning walk a few hours ago) to where the trailer was. Two other people joined us and we basically spent like 45 minutes just holding out cat toys. Cute! But it did make me realize that the cats have no interest in the humans holding the toys.
After this … I have a feeling we rounded out the next few hours by eating more of our cheese and crackers in the room while watching another episode of Succession. I vaguely remember the archery activity started at 2pm. My first archery experience! This activity taught me that I have ZERO upper body strength. The instructor did say I had surprisingly good form considering this was my first attempt. The problem was that I could never remember how to swiftly aim and shoot the arrow after drawing back, so I’d spend a ton of energy keeping my bow drawn, which requires a lot of muscle. I definitely reached the peak of my archery ability pretty early into the hour. After a while, my fingers and arms were too sore from keeping the bow drawn, and my aim got progressively worse. Overall though, it was a great experience and I remember being sore for about two days afterwards. It kind of just inspired me to want to exercise more because I could see how practicing archery would work out a lot of great upper body muscles. Of course, now it’s three weeks later and I’ve done nothing.
looks gross but I never order hotel food so I feel like it still needs to be memorialized
After this, we went back to our room for MORE SUCCESSION! We also ended up ordering food for pickup from the kitchen (I was willing to spend money on a meal but not to pay tip to some employee to walk it to our room!) We got baked brie (yum – a lot of cheese this weekend!) and a salmon stir fry (fine, filling, hit the spot). Our next activity was a scheduled hot tub session that Robyn had booked! So if you stay at the resort, you have access to four spa pools of varying temperatures (and a swimming pool and hot tub that we never used). When Robyn was here the first time, they were still building out private hot tubs you could reserve for a fee – these are more conventional hot tubs but they’re enclosed, private, and come with a fireplace and a shower. Though I blanched at having to pay extra for something that we already had access to, the private tubs were (obviously) a more luxurious amenity and pretty fun. Also, Robyn’s mom had surprised us with a $200 gift certificate and it turned out at the end of the trip we had spent exactly $200.66, so if we hadn’t had this hot tub experience, we wouldn’t have cleared the $200 mark!
Robyn had picked a time to be in the hot tub right when the sun set which was fun. After this, we went back to our room and I remember it being like 8:30pm or something … we were now hungry but didn’t want to eat in the hotel restaurant but there was VERY little open near us at this hour!!! I ended up finding a Mexican “food truck” that had very few but very high review on Yelp.
This ended up being another one of my favorite meals!!! It was about 7miles away from the resort, on the way but not in downtown Santa Fe. The “food truck” was more of a truck stationed in a parking lot. It was open till 10pm, one of the very few places to be open past 9pm. And it was DELICIOUS! Thank goodness Robyn speaks passable Spanish – she ordered. I had to google most of the menu. This was the kind of place that made me sad that I didn’t have the stomach capacity to try everything on the menu. They had tortas which I love, but I wasn’t hungry enough for bread.
We ate on the tables outside, in the light of the food truck. It was weirdly a perfect ambiance for the end to our birthday weekend. Super casual but delicious. I really wanted to snap a photo of the entire place but felt self conscious. Another testament to how good this place was – there was a never ending flow of Mexican men who kept coming, ordering, and waiting in their trucks for food before driving off, even though it was like 9:30pm!
After this, more Succession, then sleep. The next day, we had our flight back home, I think it departed at 2pm? So we had to leave the resort by 12pm. I woke up early again, took another solo morning walk around the premises, then our last breakfast. Since it was a Tuesday morning, it was the emptiest restaurant seating yet. For this last breakfast, we opted for our faves – Robyn with the breakfast burrito and me with the sourdough avocado toast. Split pancakes. Having had the toast twice in a row, I was incensed to find that this second toast was WAYYYYY smaller than yesterday’s. I mean, in the end, I was still full and it was still a breakfast already covered by the gift certificate. BUT STILL! Ah well.
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Got to the airport with a reasonable amount of time – we had initially mapped our route to get gas and get a coffee from a cute cafe Robyn had found. Unfortunately, I ended up mapping us to the second cafe location – it was only a five minute difference from the original, but by the time we got to the area, Robyn was getting bothered that we might not have enough time to return the rental car and get onto our flight. So we skipped the coffee! Which I’m glad we did, because we didn’t need it. Glad we made our flight!
And that’s the whole trip!
Lol while on the plane, there were three different times that I thought “ooo the Grand Canyon!” – I’m not sure if ANY of these are the Grand Canyon.
me: i might come home for thanksgiving because i broke up with robyn
mom: what happened? … did she find someone else?
me: wow. why would you assume that
mom: i don’t know. well what happened? what about your thanksgiving flights then?
me: that’s what you care about?
mom: no that’s not it
me: well what then
mom: i don’t know. listen, i would love to talk but … i really have to poop
me: it sounds like you’d rather me just go to new york than come home
mom: no. well. i don’t know. it’s just that sometimes people get into an argument and then get back together. so you never know. maybe you’ll end up going.
me: is this because you just don’t want me to throw away the flights?
mom: no. well. i think it seems like …… well she’s not a HORRIBLE person. it doesn’t seem like she mistreats you so … i … have no opinion on her
me: wow. no opinion. you don’t even have a good opinion?
mom: well. she’s ok. but you know. i’d rather you find a man to be with.
mom: you know i’m very open minded. maybe you’ll go to new york. maybe you should go to new york alone. or maybe mom can buy a ticket to new york and join you there!
mom: so who did you have hot pot with?
me: frances
mom: frances chen? the one who is dating henry? THEY’RE not broken up are they?
me: NO. thanks. you know, you’re not the best person to talk to about this stuff
mom: oh? well. ok then. what did you do tonight then? hopefully go to the gym?
Ok I’m exhausted – AGAIN! But not exhausted enough I guess because it’s 2:35am and I’ve decided to blog about the day! It’s so late because my 9:40 flight ended up taking off at 11pm. BAH to Delta! Also, very weird, but when I went to scan my boarding pass, the airline attendant told me to stand to the side and printed a checked luggage tag for me. I thought to myself, I didn’t want to check in my luggage … but I thought maybe overhead was completely full. So I just dutifully put my suitcase next to all the other luggage, didn’t ask her anything or put up a fuss, got on the plane and then saw that almost the entire overhead bin was empty!!! I was so annoyed but didn’t bother trying to get my luggage back. I was just worried that they might lose it, or that maybe the attendant had thought I was someone else and tagged my luggage incorrectly. In the end, I have my luggage and it maybe only took an additional 5 minutes, so I can’t stay mad.
Today we woke up in our Greenlake AirBnB. I had yet another full, deep sleep but my mom apparently had woken up at night and was unable to sleep. I’d planned to meet up with Caroline at her apt at 10am, and my mom and I woke up around 8am. I thought we’d have plenty of time to get ready and check out, but my mom ended up showering TWICE that morning, so we still ended up arriving late! haha
Well goodbye Seattle! The second airbnb was a converted basement, and the amenities weren’t great quality so it wasn’t my favorite (but at least they provided amenities!). Easy to check out though, and we were only a mile or so away from Caroline’s apt, which was perfect! Well it would have been, except my cell phone’s GPS wasn’t very precise so I kept getting lost after missing several turns.
Caroline ended up spending practically 6-7 hours with us! Which was awesome – I feel like I haven’t seen her since basically her wedding! (That may not be true – maybe we met up in socal). She showed us around her apt, and then I drove us over to Ballard. Haha, she used to love driving, but now she also hates driving in Seattle. The streets just weren’t built for having SO many cars on the road, and there’s SO many SUVs parked on the edges, so it’s hard to see if there are cars coming when you’re trying to turn onto a street.
We went to Ballard Farmer’s Market first – this was my favorite farmers market of all time but honestly it seemed a LOT smaller this weekend! Also, the weather was too hot for my liking. We did a quick walk and ended up getting golden raspberries, a DELICIOUS olive bread, and a cardamom bun to share. There was ALSO a Seafood Festival which had stuff like lobster corn dogs and salmon baos and paella, but Caroline doesn’t like seafood and my mom and I aren’t that into food trucks. The only thing I got was a mango lemonade.
Then we walked over to Ballard Locks, which I’ve never been to before! This ended up being surprisingly fun, and we spent quite a bit of time here. Lots of pictures of boats! And then we walked over to the adjacent gardens, and there just also happened to be free summer concerts on the lawn! Very cool.
Then we drove over to Un Bien for lunch. I’m glad we got to try this location out. I was worried my mom would be sick of sandwiches, but by the time we ordered, she was already so hungry that she didn’t mind at all. We ended up ordering a scallop and a fish of the day (mahi mahi) sandwich, while Caroline got the #1 Caribbean Roast. My final verdict – I don’t think there’s a significant difference between Un Bien and Paseo, but Un Bien might be more flavorful. Maybe the bread is better? I think what SHOULD happen is a blind taste test! Since I didn’t get the tofu sandwich, hard to compare!
I had debated taking us to Theo Chocolate Factory but decided we didn’t have enough time. So I dropped Caroline off (cries!) and then my mom and I headed to the Costco in the international district to get gas and see what sort of Seattle-specific items they had. I’m really surprised this is the closest Costco to Seattle. How is there not a city Costco?!
I’m glad we didn’t go to Theo because my mom would have panicked while we were in the airport, but we probably could have gone to Theo and made it to the airport if we had rushed. Now I have no souvenirs to take to work! Oh well. Instead, I ended up at the airport at like 6:30pm, when my flight was scheduled to take off at 9:30pm and ended up leaving at like 11pm!!!!!! GAHHH!!! After I waited for my mom to get on her flight, I ended up just sitting by my gate and watched two episodes of Big Little Lies.
2,942 total pictures taken on mom’s phone
605 total photos taken on my phone
716 miles driven
20.5 hours in car
$1,935 in expenses – 47% for flights and rental car, 44% in lodging, 9% in food!
I’m exhausted. But I feel like I really want to write all my Seattle blog posts while I’m actually in Seattle. This is going to be tough because I’m already behind on two posts and I have a feeling that the other two that I wrote just peter out at the end because I was so tired and pretty much fell asleep with my hands on the laptop. (Post trip comment: I did a decent job of drafting all my posts before returning home, but now I have so many photos on my phone that I never have time to sort through them and post them along with my blog, which is why they never get published until weeks later. I have no idea how I was able to do all this back in the day!!!)
Today was actually supposed to be my ~ relaxing ~ day and it was … but we still did so much!!!
We were staying at the Embassy Suites in Bellevue – technically our most expensive stay but I wouldn’t say it was the best lodging on the trip. That honor goes to our first night’s stay in a Ballard AirBnB. We arrived at the Embassy Suites around 10:40pm and the parking lot was FULL. We luckily snagged a spot way in the back of the lot, and it was a TINY spot. I’m pretty sure we only got it because another car had passed it up, otherwise we’d have been SOL. There were a ton of small cargo trailers in the parking lot that took up multiple spots – and at the sight of those I was like, oh god, there’s a band staying here.
The hotel itself feels like it’s geared towards work conventions. It is HUGE. It feels a little … used … like everything has a “been used” shine to it. When we entered the lobby, I think partially because of the design, it really felt so raucous inside. Especially because it was practically 11pm and it still sounded like people were running around having a party! I remember thinking, oh god, have a bunch of kids decided to stay in this hotel for the night? Or is a wedding taking place here?
Our room was #202 and it just happened to be right next to a stairwell and pretty close to the front lobby and the breakfast area, so my mom and I felt like it ended up being a great spot. Especially because the elevators here were SO. SLOW. The room was HUGE and also we walked into a very well air conditioned suite. By the time we had arrived, my mom and I were kind of snippy at each other – Mt Rainier day was probably our most tense day of the trip.
We dropped all our stuff around the rooms. My mom said she wasn’t going to go to the hot tub because she was too tired, and I was a little miffed because I had kind of rushed to get us to the hotel at least before 11pm, and it turned out the hot tub was open till midnight, so that felt like such a win! I honestly now ONLY choose hotels with hot tubs for my parents, so I kind of wanted to be like WTF I PAID FOR YOU TO USE THE HOT TUB!!!! But I didn’t want to create another snippy argument so I just said, fine, but if you want to go I will go with you. It only took like ten minutes for my mom to decide that she would muster up the energy to use the hot tub, which was what I was expecting because she would NEVER give up that amenity!
It turned out to be a great decision – although we did get into a HUGE fight at the hot tub as well – but she came back to the room happy and said the next day that she was glad she had gone to the hot tub.
Ok how did that even fit in with the beginning of this day?!?!?! What was I even trying to say … well whatever. This stay at the Embassy Inn was my mom’s most deepest sleep. I actually sleep really well at every place, so I can’t pick a best sleep location. I probably first woke up around 5:30am but kept lightly sleeping until 7:30am when my mom first stirred awake.
So off we went to breakfast … ahh I always try but I honestly never remember what time we started things. The breakfast here is marked as “exceptional” which I think is given to any place with an omelette bar … but there was also SO many people at this hotel, it kind of cheapened the feel of it. I ate A LOT of eggs today for breakfast. There was a general hot buffet of regular eggs, bacon, a biscuit and potatoes, which I got in addition to a whole omelette. Honestly, this is a lot of the same stuff that Hampton Inns serve (my family’s choice hotel chain), but this place served them at far larger quantities in nicer serving hot trays.
We had a nice morning – a somewhat slow morning because I wanted to really feel like we made the most of the room, so we both took showers in the morning and just took it easy. My mom even went on a morning walk while I was showering, which was when she saw that there were a TON of old style motor vehicles lined up at the front of the hotel. Major bummer is that she didn’t take a good picture of them lined up. But we did go downstairs to take some pictures of these cars and the hotel. Unfortunately, most of the vehicles had already left, but we went to take a picture with one of the straggling vehicles and ended up talking to the owner’s wife!
Mom asked for a picture and they were like “sure” and she went “WITH YOU!” which they weren’t expecting
APPARENTLY, and I find this so cool, they were part of a 28 car caravan of these Ford car collectors and they had decided to drive from New York to Seattle together!!!! Just her and her husband in this little car! Well actually I don’t know who’s driving the trailer, but I realized then that all the trailers I had seen were not belonging to a band, but to all these (I’m assuming) white people driving Ford vehicles cross country!
She confirmed that it was indeed very loud to ride in the car – there are no enclosing windows – it’s pretty smelly from the gas tank, and the cars only go up to 35 mph!!! And she didn’t even know anyone in the caravan, they’d just gotten together to do this as a 110th anniversary of when Henry Ford himself drove the car cross country! I find this so crazy but interesting and when I’m less tired, I intend to try and find these people through social media. I have low hopes though, because I imagine everyone in this caravan is probably too old with no real taste for social media.
OMG LOOK AT HOW LONG I’VE BEEN WRITING AND THE DAY HASN’T EVEN STARTED
Ok well we checked out and then I drove us about 10 minutes away to the Bellevue Botanical Garden. Every time my mom and I travel anywhere, I always check to see if there is a botanical garden that we can go to. It turns out this is a free admission place! We kept looking for a ticket office and felt really weird about walking around until I noticed on the map that it was admission free. What a treat!
I’m sure everyone in Seattle and Bellevue thought the weather today was perfect, but it was SOOOOO HOT to me. I think it was up to 80 in the afternoon. This made the botanical garden a little less perfect – ideally it’d be overcast and my photos would be beautiful! We arrived here around 11:30 so there was quite a bit of sun cast down on the flowers.
This botanical garden is beautiful, truly, especially because the weather allows a ton of interesting flowers to grow here, like alpine flowers and perennials. SOO many flowers that aren’t in most botanical gardens! I ended up giving my mom a quota of 20 flowers that I’d take close-up shots on her phone. Though she didn’t end up hitting 20, it was hilarious to watch her debate whether to ask me to take a photo or not on her phone.
I mean, it’s a botanical garden. What else can I say?! I had told my mom to bring snacks but she didn’t think we’d stay here longer than 30 minutes so she only brought her beloved beef jerky. WELL. We stayed here for THREE HOURS!!!!!
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Since the arboretum has free admission, I think they make money by having guided tours for a fee. So we saw a TON of groups going around, getting a tour. My mom and I both aren’t really the type to take tours though – I never listen and my mom claims she doesn’t really understand English (but I just think she doesn’t have the patience to go at someone else’s pace).
From there, I then drove us to get food at a place I had yelped called Greek Pita. I was looking for fast food Mediterranean and this was it! But it turns out my mom didn’t really like it, because she was expecting thinner sliced meat and our pita sandwiches had chunky meat. She also didn’t tip, even though I had told her to, so at the end of the meal she felt too awkward going back in to use the restroom. I had told her to tip and felt really weird that she hadn’t, even though it was a counter service kind of place. Unfortunately I only had a $5 and a $20 on me, so I dropped a $5 in the tip jar – making sure my mom didn’t notice – and used the restroom HA
From here I then drove us to Snoqualmie Falls. Originally my plan for the day was that we’d stop here, and then continue through to Snoqualmie Pass and do a long hike. But after Mt Rainier, I didn’t think we had it in ourselves to do another long hike, so I told my mom we would just do Snoqualmie Falls and then head to Seattle after. Especially since we had our morning hotel relaxed start, taking our time with the breakfast, and then we were at the botanical garden till like 2pm, this worked out well!
You can see the lodge right at the top
Snoqualmie Falls is apparently Washington’s most famous waterfall. The place is close to Seattle and Bellevue, is a landmark, and has a nature tinge to it, so of course the parking lot is PACKED. It took quite a while to just get into the parking lot, because everyone is searching for a spot when they are finally able to get in. But as we kept driving through the parking lot, it turned out there were a TON of free spots in the upper lot! Meanwhile, people would slow down and follow people to their cars and then just sit and wait in these super narrow driving lanes, so no one could go around them. What a mess!
You walk over a pedestrian footbridge from the free parking lot, and then you pretty quickly see the falls! My mom was like, what that’s it?! I guess it really is just a short trip! But I had read there was short 0.6mi hike to go down to the foot of the waterfalls. The walk down somehow felt like it took so long. It was pretty steep and crowded. We stopped first to look out at the waterfall, and then you could head a bit back and get river access, which was fun too. The walk back felt so short – though we did take a small break on a bench to eat the cherries my mom had brought. We also stopped at the Shalish (?) Lodge & Spa, which is the hotel that was built right at the top of the waterfall. Of course, this meant a trip to the hotel’s gift shop and then the bathroom. The bathroom was SOOO nice despite being SO close to this super popular tourist attraction. I guess people didn’t venture this far. The towels there were the very absorbent kind that very fancy restaurants stock, and it turns out my mom took like 10 of them, which is a pretty sizeable stack.
View of the falls from the river access point
Then off to Seattle! This was a 45minute drive – we decided to head straight to the Paseo in Fremont again for sandwiches. Luckily they hadn’t run out of bread – but what I hadn’t realized until now was that Paseo is under new management since when I went years ago, and the old owners started their own new store called Un Bien!!! SO we’ve been going to the WRONG PLACE!!!!!!!!!
Oh well – my mom still loves the sandwiches. Even though I didn’t know about this management change, I did think that my tofu sandwich wasn’t as amazing as I had remembered it. This time, we got the alaskan cod (my mom’s new favorite – but by the end of the trip her favorite turned out to be the scallops) and I got the #2 Paseo Press which is pork shoulder w ham and cheese. Normally I only ever get the tofu sandwich, but I knew my mom would prefer to try something new. I didn’t mind it, but it’s WAY too much meat for my mom and me.
Off we went to our airbnb! I picked one right next to Greenlake. I must make the obligatory, “there’s SOOO many more cars now in Seattle!!!!” I kept thinking, if I had lived in Seattle in 2019 as opposed to 2010, I don’t think I would have loved the city nearly as much. It was much easier to drive around back then, like the streets were of course confusing, but at least traffic wasn’t as horrendous as it is now. It’s a lot more stressful now with so many more cars on the road.
The place we’re staying is a converted basement. It actually still looks pretty nice, and is very cozy, but compared to our first night’s stay, it doesn’t feel QUITE as nice. We dropped our stuff off, quickly put some water bottles and the IPA that had been rolling around the car trunk into the fridge, and then set out to go walk around Green Lake!!!
I lurve Greenlake. SO many memories!!!!!! I don’t have a clear memory of this, but I’m sure I ran around the lake at least a few times. We even took a detour to visit the old house I had subletted. My mom told me not to tell her which house it was, so she could see if she could identify which one it was. I didn’t remember the number exactly, but I was able to identify which house I had lived in – though I will admit I wasn’t 100% sure and had to check to see exactly which house it was. The house I’d stayed at is currently for sale!!! omg I should look up the listing
OMG listed for sale 2011 for $524K and last purchased in March for $975K!!!!!!!! This is why I can’t move to Seattle anymore. The price increase is just too ridiculous for me to wrap my mind around.
My mom couldn’t remember which house it was
Anyway … must move on. We then walked back to Greenlake to finish our night walk. We started running at certain points and probably finished the loop around 10pm. It wasn’t completely dark outside, and there were a handful of people still out as well, but it was slightly spooky. I remember it being A LOT more creepy if you were out in Greenlake at night years ago though. I was really impressed that my mom could sense when we had to exit out of the loop to head back to where the airbnb was. I have absolutely no sense of direction for this kind of stuff.
So back to the airbnb! We finally opened up the IPA that our first airbnb had gifted us. It was nicely chilled which was fine. My mom actually drank her entire glass, whereas mine is still sitting on the table! Now we’ve been having our own decompression time, and I’m downloading ALL HER PHOTOS which is like 3,000!!!!!!!!! Ugh I really hate filtering her photos, it is SO MUCH of the same thing. But I guess that’ll be my next project!!!!
Answers to Unasked Questions 