hours that are happy
I love to be able to make a quick, light meal that takes very little time to make. I've never been fond of having to spend an hour cooking. Shobhit, on the other hand, has said many times how he loves cooking, and cooking relaxes him. So even when we make a meal out of prepared Indian meal packets, as we did last night—in this case, two packets of an eggplant dish and two of a tomato based dish with paneer in it, yum—it still has to be this huge production.
As usual I chopped a lot of vegetables for him. Onion, tomatoes, mushrooms, green onions, jalapeño peppers. This would not have taken quite so long except that he also fried up more aloo parathas (flatbreads stuffed with potato), all from scratch. And I must admit, those parathas are fucking fantastic.
I guess they made the whole dinner worth the effort.
We watched an episode of Barkskins, a new-ish series Gabriel had recommended. I'm moderately intrigued and want to see more. Shobhit seemed relatively indifferent but will perhaps watch more with me. Curiously, he certainly has a far greater working knowledge of the contextual history, about 17th-century France and who ruled in Europe at the time, all with widely removed but still relevant presences in the lives of these people building new homes in what seems to be modern day Quebec. Shobhit did not want to immediately go into the next episode, though, so we watched an episode of Designing Women, which he slept halfway through.
I did bring up my day trip idea to Leavenworth while we were cooking. As I kind of figured, he wasn't much on board with the idea. I'd much rather we went together, but I'll go by myself if I have to. This is more than a month away so I figure there's time for him to come around. Besides, as I said to him, my position right now is that if the spread of COVID is still getting actively worse by then, I am more likely to scrap the plan. If it is actually improving by then (and state data seems at least tentatively to be indicating a slight turnaround right now, likely thanks to the mask mandate), then I will want to go. Either way I still consider staying in the house out of the question. But I think a day trip is a suitable compromise, and allows me to be part of things.
We just had our second weekly Zoom Friday Office Lunch Meet-up. Curiously, it was a bit smaller than the 11 people we had last week: this week we peaked at 8. Adrienne, Molly, Aimee, and Brenna from last week did not show up this week; but Andy from IT joined for the first time this week.
There were moments when conversation seemed to lull a little, and Brent even asked if we all thought 45 minutes for these was a better time frame than sixty. But then Mary, who keeps having to join a little late, said she's fine with sixty, and I agreed. I think we'll probably stick with the full hour, at least for now. I do kind of wonder if we'll keep it going weekly or if maybe in the future it might be better to go biweekly. But, who knows; there are lots of us who really miss the office and everyone there—including me—and are probably happy to keep it weekly.
I have my monthly Happy Hour with Laney this evening, and for the first time since February we will meet in person for it—not at a restaurant, which Laney keeps reiterating she will not do until there is a vaccine and she's been vaccinated—but socially distanced, on blankets, at Cal Anderson Park. Whatever we have to do to make it work, is fine by me.
Months ago we already made plans for August Happy Hour to be at La Cocina Oaxaqueña, and I decided the other day that I'll order takeout from that same Mexican restaurant and just bring it to the park. I'm a genius! It's been too long since I have had their truly delicious quesadillas fritas. I even thought about ordering a couple margaritas to go, but decided against that as I can very easily just whip up margaritas of my own in a thermos before leaving. Either way I'm rather looking forward to it.
[posted 1:14 pm]