I had hoped to write a bit about yesterday earlier than this, but today wound up being a rather long day -- which I will have to write about tomorrow. But, I wanted a dedicated post for yesterday's visit to the Amazon Spheres -- my fourth!

I even wound up with a lot more photos than I expected, with a dedicated photo album including 48 shots -- the very same number as the first time I visited, with Uncle David and Mary Ann, Claudia and Dylan, last May. My secod visit, in November with Danielle and her work friend Elise (whose wedding in Syracuse, New York I will be accompanying Danielle to in June), yieled only another 21 photos there, but in an album of 51 shots that also included the Theo Chocolate Factory Tour and the Volunteer Park Conservatory. My third visit, in early December, with Danielle again and now including Shobhit, was to check it out after dark and yielded 37 photos.

Yesterday's visit would have yielded only 35 shots, but for once I made it to the "Understory" free exhibit detailing the concepts and design and construction of the structure. (My first couple visits, I didn't realize it was a free exhibit; last month I intended to check it out but it was closed before I tried. This time, we made sure to go in there before our 4 pm timed entry into the Spheres.) Anyway, I got 13 pretty cool shots inside the Understory exhibit.

In any case, just before starting this entry, I finished the captioning of all yesterday's photos. So you can click over to that for those details.

So after four visits, as awesome as I do think the Amazon Spheres are, I think I'm good for a while now. I just realized: my first visit was in May, a sort of post script a couple weeks later to the botanical gardens marathon of my 2018 Birth Week. I did not return for six months, taking me to November. But then the next three visit were once a month for three months: November, December and January.

The visit this time was with Laney and Jessica, a rescheduling of the December visit, which actually had been originally intended for going with Laney. I made the reservations before I found out Laney was busy that day. So, Shobhit and Danielle went instead.

Of all the people I went with, I think Laney and Jessica were the most impressed -- somewhat ironic since they seemed to have the most open hatred for Amazon as a company. Well, Jessica did, anyway. Still, I do love it in there, and they seemed to as well.

And when we were ready to go, we went to check out the bar that's on the south side of the Spheres. It looked pretty swanky, complete with a red velvet rope, and then we got a look at a menu: $17 cocktails! Where do these people think we are, New York?

So then we all decided to find a place on Capitol Hill to get a drink, and after several texts I finally convinced Shobhit to walk down from home and join us. This was after we went into our first choice, Bill's Off Broadway, and then left again because it was too packed watching the football game the Seahawks ultimately lost. We went half a block down the hill to Linda's Tavern, which thankfully had no TV screens.

Shobhit wanted to be watching the game, but he finally decided to come meet up with us when I texted him a photo of the $6 dishes on the Happy Hour menu that goes until 7:00 there. He had the quesadilla, after we were both pretty disappointed with my Happy Hour Nachos. My Moscow Mule was pretty good, though that had no discounted price.

Yesterday was itself a pretty long day too, come to think of it. Laney and Jessica and I actually met at the Capitol Hill Light Rail station at 11:50, to go downtown and see the 12:30 showing of Mary Poppins Returns, which I knew Laney would enjoy -- and indeed she did, quite a lot. When it was over, we had less than an hour to kill before our Spheres reservation, and we spent much of that at the Understory.

I weighed in at a whopping 157 lbs this morning, largely because of the huge brunch I made myself before leaving, while Shobhit was gone at a work shift he picked up: I made French toast out of the last three mini blueberry bagels that came in my holiday gift bag at work from Franz Bakery. And then also two English muffins that had come from the same gift. This was to use up the three eggs I had whisked together; I really only needed two. Note for next time!

I really do need to reverse this gaining weight trend once and for all. January seems like good time to get serious about it. I no longer have the holidays as a convenient excuse.

[posted 9:44 pm]