I flew to Seattle Thursday to spend Christmas with my gentlemen friends (as Lisa terms them).

Ages ago we three spent a first Christmas together. We celebrated the holiday proper in Seattle and Bainbridge, then flew to Puerto Rico for a few sunny days, then to New York to see an opera and do New Year’s in the chaos. That’s also the trip where we decided to go to India a few months later.

Literally so, in this case.

And here we are, years later, mid-pandemic. I still adore both of these men and am very aware of how lucky I am that I get to spend holidays with them, even if we are much more bound to one location.

So much so that I am here in Seattle for an unexpected extra two nights. After three different delays and four gate changes at the airport yesterday, Delta finally cancelled my flight (and almost every other flight) altogether. It’s the result of staffing shortages due to the Omicron spike, the holiday, and a snowstorm.

The snowstorm hit on Boxing Day, missing a white Christmas by a few hours. It’s good since it meant Amy and her mom Carol could get up here and back to spend Christmas afternoon and a raclette meal with us and Justin’s younger brother, Bryce:

It also made for lovely views:

We had seen Amy the day before and, more importantly, met her kitties when we drove to Olympia Christmas Eve.

We had lunch at a restaurant at the end of the Puget Sound which had huge windows with amazing views and is where I discovered that having moving water in view while I’m sitting still causes motion sickness rather quickly. Fortunately Amy was kind enough to swap places with me mid-meal so I could face away from the picturesque and sickening vista.

The day trip included a dwindling outdoor market and a detour through Tacoma to admire the curbs and pavement that Justin’s been working on for the last five years as the civil engineer behind the light rail expansion there.

Now it is Monday and I am blogging on Jason’s couch as he packs away his holiday decor and we listen to Ateez in honor of Rachel, Andy, and me getting tickets to see them in LA at the end of January. (I will let Rachel tell you more about that upcoming adventure as she has far more information to share.)

I’m not sure about the rest of the day. I don’t want to impede Jason’s post-holiday return to normalcy, but it is also still snow-packed and 20 degrees outside. I take as evidence how rare this must be the fact that the streets weren’t even salted/sanded, let alone plowed. Meanwhile it’s 52 in Denver with no sign of snow still. Which bodes well for my drive to Junction later this week (assuming I make it out of Seattle).