Weeknight Out

The alarm went off this morning, I shut it off, and I was happy to have the morning to sleep in. In the next instant, I realized that it wasn’t a day to sleep in. It was Friday, a day without overtime (finally!), and I needed to make a slow effort toward getting ready for work.

I felt exhausted this morning. After getting Phillip up, I walked to the 47 bus stop. My senses were out of whack. The ventilation on the bus sounded like a hurricane. My sense of time was stretched. It felt like we were stuck between Olive and Pine, when in reality, we were merely waiting for a traffic light. The transit tunnel felt like it was 20 miles long. I wanted to close my eyes and nap on the train.

These were not bad sensations, just sensations.

Energy-wise, I felt like I had a hangover. (There was only one bottle of Guinness for me last night.) But there were no hangover-type body aches involved.

We weren’t out very late last night. There was hardly any physical activity. It’s just that we aren’t used to going out on a week night. (It’s amazing to me, now, that I used to do this sort of thing on a regular basis.) But we had free tickets (won from the raffle at the last burlesque show), it was a charity event, we’d turned down another charity event to go to the one last night, and we’d skipped the last such event we had free tickets to, so we went out on a Thursday night.

Yesterday afternoon, at work, Phillip emailed me and asked if I wanted to go to “that Mexican place” for dinner before the show. I answered “Yes” without asking which Mexican place he was referring to. (If it’s Mexican food, I’ll agree to it.)

I was curious, though. I looked at a map, trying to remember which Mexican restaurant we’d recently talked about trying. Tacos Guaymas is close to Neighbours – had we recently talked about it? I didn’t remember us doing so, but maybe we had.

It wasn’t until I got home that I finally asked. Phillip was referring to Rancho Bravo, our favorite place for cheap, food truck style Mexican food. (He couldn’t remember the name, and that’s understandable. There’s no sign outside the place.)

We’d agreed to either bus it or car2go it to Neighbours. I would have preferred to drive our car there, just so we’d have a quick ride home, but I knew parking nearby would be both expensive and difficult to find.

A car2go showed up across the street from Unpaving Paradise p-patch. I booked it.

Since I knew we were going to Rancho Bravo, I drove us to 11th Ave, where there’s typically a spot or two to be found in the back-in angle parking along Cal Anderson Park. Both of use were amazed at the number of cars2go already parked there. There were so many it looked car2go had staged an event. It was like this: four cars2go parked next to each other, then, a couple of spots away, another car2go, then three spots away, three cars2go in a row, then, a little while later, two more cars2go, and so on. I drove along 11th to Pine Street, and then back again, until a spot opened up.

As Phillip pointed out, it is the most convenient place to park in the area. (And why I went there first in search of parking.)

We did not forget our tickets in the car this time.

It was an 8 minute trip, and cost $3.88. (That’s about what parking would have cost, so we didn’t save any money this time. But we did save ourselves a walk back to Cal Anderson Park at night to get our car.)

We had a good dinner at Rancho Bravo. We still had time before the show, so we browsed around Elliott Bay Books. Then we walked to Neighbours.

The doors weren’t open yet, and the bouncer didn’t know when they would be open, so Phillip and I did some window-shopping up and down Pike Street. When we got back to Neighbours, the doors still weren’t open yet, so we waited. We didn’t have to wait long.

Phillip and I haven’t been to Neighbours in – well, we haven’t been to Neighbours in all the years we’ve been together. It was never one of my favorite hangouts. It still looked like I (vaguely) remembered it.

It was a fun show. It wasn’t as polished as the shows we’ve seen at The Re-Bar, and the performers were, perhaps, not as experienced, but they did a good job. It was for charity, so I have nothing to complain about.

After the show, we walked over to the bus stop. OneBusAway told us the next 49 was 20 minutes away. We agreed that we didn’t want to wait 20 minutes, so we walked home. (I thought about all those cars2go, but then I remembered Cal Anderson Park’s reputation at night, and I thought about trying to find street parking in our neighborhood at 10:00 on a week night, so I didn’t bring it up.)

We stuck to Broadway for most of our walk home. It was a pleasant night, and there were a lot of people out. We beat the 49 bus.

I had fun last night, and it was worth the way I felt this morning.