I took the day off work today to burn through my PTO balance, and I want to try and run through the weekend quickly so I don't have to spend a lot of time on it tomorrow while I am otherwise trying to catch up on what I'm sure will be an annoying amount of backlog after only a single day off.

Given the photo I used at the top of this post, I guess I'll start with Happy Hour with Laney on Saturday—which is just as well; all I did on Friday after work was take myself to see Tron: Ares, and that kind of sucked.

Laney and I finally made it to The Cheese Room, the place that now occupies what used to be the very long-running Ristorante Machiavalli on Pine & Melrose. Well, it turns out The Cheese Room is pretty fantastic in its own right—Laney and I both ordered the grilled cheese and tomato bisque, and it was amazing. That said, their "Happy Hour," while it's quite nice they have it from when they open at 4 p.m. until 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, which means they do it on weekends, their "deals" are pretty modest: $ off classic cocktails; $2 off beer; $2 off food. Laney and I both saved six bucks on our respective orders because we both also ordered two drinks, but she had beer and I had two "Peach Bellini" cocktails, which were still $14 each even after the discount. They were delicious, I'll give them that—but, with tax and tip my order stil came to just over $53. Good thing I came in $6 under budget for the grocery shopping Shobhit and I did on Saturday before I met up with Laney!

We did want to keep hanging out, though, and not tie up a table in this rather small place. So, once again, we went to a second Happy Hour location, and we went over to Saint John's Bar & Grill, where Laney bought me a $10 cocktail and we sat out on the covered back patio. They also had skeletons sitting at one of the tables, so we took some photos of ourselves with them.

Yesterday, Laney and I met up again, this time to walk downtown and see a movie: Roofman—which was, honestly, somewhat disappointing.

Laney and I still both regularly remark on how we never seem to run out of things to talk about even though we hang out constantly. We were together for a few hours on Saturday, and without even consulting each other, we both brought lists of topics we didn't want to forget about! And then, when Shobhit joined us just to walk downtown and then go on to get himself more steps, Laney and I still had plenty to chat about on our walk downtown, and again on our walk back after

It actually rained yesterday. Shobhit was still behind on his budgeted steps, and asked if I wanted to take a walk with him later in the early evening. I said sure, and we walked up Broadway to Prospect, up to 15th Ave E and then back home on that street. He wore his rain jacket; I wore my pea coat and brought my umbrella. I thought it would just rain lightly, but it was actually raining pretty hard by the time we were on 15th Ave. I had to take off my wet socks when we got home.

We encountered a random bit of generosity from a stranger when we were on 15th, though. We were passing a house where a guy happened to be on the front porch—the house was on top of a small hill from the sidewalk so the porch was the equivalent of maybe one and a half stories higher than where we were walking. This guy called out to Shobhit: "You want an umbrella?" At first Shobhit said, "I'm good!" But then the guy said, "It's free!" So Shobhit stopped and said okay, and the guy tossed this small, collapsible black umbrella down to him. He thanked the guy, opened the umbrella and used it the rest of the way home.

This clearly made an impression on Shobhit, and made him want to try and "pay it forward," so to speak. We passed one guy without an umbrella and Shobhit wondered it he should have offered it to him, but then it was too late. Once we were under the scaffolding on our building, he did try to offer it to a guy walking past us there, but the guy declined. Well, Shobhit has a new umbrella now. It's pretty cheap and likely won't last long, but hey, it filled the purpose the guy offered to him.

Speaking of the scaffolding, that brings us to today: we got six of our eight windows replaced today, as part of the Building Repair Project. This was originally scheduled for early last week, but we asked to have it rescheduled as it was still too close to covid being in our home. It got rescheduled for today—unfortunately, a day I was back at home. At least I wasn't actually working. Also, I took like eleven photos, which I added to my "Braeburn Building Repair Project 2024-2025" photo album, which now has 35 shots in it.

Anyway, I met up with Karen for lunch at her house in Magnolia, and I was delighted just to get out for a couple of hours; by late morning, six of the windows were just entirely pulled out without any replacements put in yet, and although it mercifully did not rain today, it was pretty chilly. I wore a hoodie under my jacket and was still cold in here. The construction guys would come and go through the rooms of the condo while I worked on photos for next year's calendar. But, then I made myself a sandwich and some chai to go, and I drove over to Karen's.

The original plan was for me to meet her at her office on Westlake, which is maybe half the distance. I even thought I might walk. But, she emailed me this morning to tell me she had a 7 a.m. virtual meeting with some clients in the U.K., and she wouldn't have time to drive to the office before that so would I mind coming to the house. Shobhit was good with me taking the car so I said that was fine. And then, she didn't have any meeting after noon until 2:00, so I was able to stay and visit from noon until about 1:40. which was lovely.

She was pretty excited about the chai I brought, as usual, and she shared some chips and queso with me. I also brought Biscoff cookies for dipping in the chai, and left the two that were still left when it was time for me to go. And I had a lot to catch her up on: having booked our flights and hotels in Amsterdam and Brussels next year; covid; the window replacements today; and plenty more. Most of my lunches with Karen are via Zoom so any chance I get to do them in person, even if it's bring-your-own at her house or at her office, is a delight.

When I got back, the new windows were all in, so it wasn't nearly as cold in the condo. Two of the windows are still left to do later, because apparently there was a mis-measurement on those for the entire stack of condos in the building. I guess those will get done in probably another couple of weeks, when they will also finally replace the doors on either side of our balcony. Our first understanding had been that all of this would get done at once, but things change I guess. We'll have to move all our shit away from the windows again when that happens.

[posted 5:45pm]