Lockdown: A Friday 5 and Tiramisu Oreos

Friday 5: The most convenient definitions. From here.

This week’s questions come verbatim from a certain favorite movie.

  1. So — so on Monday, what happens?
    I was scheduled to be in a group Zoom interview with some big donors. As we scheduled and rescheduled the thing, I had a weird feeling about how this was coming together, but I kept my mouth shut except to suggest that group interviews (in this case, two interviewers and two interviewees) required a bit of strategy ahead of time, a comment that was responded to by crickets. However, my boss emailed me Friday morning to say I didn’t have to be in the Zoom call — she’d felt similarly that something was off, so she’s going to handle the interview on her own. Whew. So now it’ll just be a normal Monday, at least normal according to new definitions of normal.
  2. What was that ruckus?
    Neighborhood kids bouncing a ball around, then almost setting off my car alarm. It was mildly annoying but kids being kids almost never bother me, and I let it roll.
  3. What do you know about trigonometry?
    Math didn’t become poetry for me until high-school calculus, but once I had my moment of calculus awakening early in 12th grade, I could look back and see that the prologue was trig. Less poetry and more elaborate puzzle, trig is like those pencil-and-paper mazes you trace your way through, and when you color in the path, you’re left with a drawing of a flower. Or it’s like those Transformers toys. It’s a robot! Until you start moving this thing here and that thing there and then it’s a big, complicated mess — still one structure made up of the same pieces, but completely unrecognizable until you play around with it some more and then: it’s a sleek racecar. That it’s effectively all based on one simple, beautiful theorem is the stuff that makes you realize there had to be an intelligent creator. The secrets of the universe are in the right triangle. Actually, I don’t think that’s true; I think the secrets of the universe are in pi, but Pythagoras was clearly on the path.
  4. Vodka? When do you drink vodka?
    Not very often. I haven’t figured out what my spirit spirit is. It’s not vodka. ‘though I gave vodka a pretty good chance to connect. I have two half-consumed bottles of it in my kitchen right now, in fact. A bottle of Absolut, which I dislike. It has a weird waxy flavor when you drink it neat, although I have to say it’s a good mixer. And a bottle of Ketel One, a much better option that I rather enjoy. While most of my liquor is in a cabinet, I have the Ketel One at the ready in my freezer, a Captain Morgan spiced rum on my dining table, and Buchanan’s blended Scotch on my kitchen counter. None of which I imbibe very often. I just like having them ready. That Buchanan’s, by the way, is horrible right out of the bottle; I get why so many YouTube whisky raters don’t score it highly. However, if you pour it and let it sit for a few minutes before sipping (neat), it’s quite good. I don’t know what the explanation is.
  5. How’d you like to go fishing this weekend?
    Man, I would love to. I wouldn’t mind grabbing a bamboo pole and getting ankle-deep at Waimanalo and hooking oama for a few hours. I haven’t been oama fishing since elementary school days with the McGuires. Any nice beach time at all right now would be great, really.

Friday was mildly productive in a super-slo-mo kind of way. I was rolling on this proposal I backburnered near the end of March. I got up to take a break and saw that I had a Zoom meeting in forty minutes, and I didn’t think it would be worth it to get re-absorbed in the proposal only to have my workflow interrupted by the meeting. Then the meeting got called off, and then I had half an hour until the regular daily Zoom call, so I kind of waited around for that. It was not the best use of my time.

I don’t think I’m going to be pleased with myself if I don’t spend some time this weekend just wrapping up the first draft to send to the fundraiser. Urrrrrggggghhh.

I didn’t go walking Friday either. Urgh again. Just felt super lazy and even though I knew I’d feel great once I got moving, it just didn’t happen this time. My weekly stepcount is going to be its lowest in months, I think.

I did, however, get Taco Bell for lunch, something I’ve yearned to do for six weeks. I wasn’t even hungry. I just saw a window of opportunity and once the idea popped into my mind, I could not shake it. So a burrito supreme, a taco supreme, and a 7-layer burrito with a large Diet Pepsi. The Taco Bell drive-through didn’t have a pay-with-phone option, much to my annoyance. It’s a brand-new building, not two months old yet! They didn’t outfit the drive-through payment system with a phone payment capability? I’m appalled.

Breakfast was a bowl of Churros breakfast cereal. Soooo bad. Dinner, which I just had a moment ago, was some of that pulled pork and kale, with hapa rice. Delicious. The hapa rice for certain dishes is going to work out if I don’t cook it in the Instant Pot and then let it sit in the keep-warm phase for 90 minutes as I did this evening because I fell asleep. I will try to stick to brown rice for most dishes, but there are certain things brown rice just doesn’t work for.

Don’t tell my doctor.

I did a lot more snacking than usual. A couple of times I had a few bites of potato salad just to drive the twitches away. And right before I decided not to go walking, I had four Oreos. While I am not much of a cookie guy, I’ll enjoy the occasional three or four Oreos, and the supermarket had these tiramisu flavored Oreos. They’re quite good.

It looked like there would be no interpersonal connection via texting Friday, but then Ali in Boston finally reponded to my messages going back two weeks. We chatted about a few things. I miss her.

Then Sharon asked me about the Hawaii Stories project I’m working on with Ryan, and we talked a little about Ellen DeGeneres, Demi Lovato, and Christina Aguilera. No contact with Crush Girl but it feels okay.

IMed with F5 girl for a little while too.

It was not my best day, work-wise or life-wise, but I am grateful for the interaction with these friends.

Oh, I did one semi-productive thing today. I continue to set up my workspace at home, a task I could have finished six weeks ago but which I continue to drag out. I finally took an old HP tower off my desk and cleaned up the stuff that accumulated beneath it: mostly hair ties and a few coins. I’ll take the hard drive out of the machine Saturday and destroy it with my drill. My goal is to have the entire table cleared of everything except the (working) computer stuff and things directly related to my daily work. This desk doesn’t have drawers, so I’m keeping stuff I need but not all the time in a plastic bin on a TV tray next to my desk. It’s mostly working. I just have to get all this other garbage, the accumulation of years and years and years, off this table so it’s a nice, clean workspace.

It was a long week and I’m looking forward to this weekend. Gotta do some stuff for the Hawaii Stories project. Some personal writing. A little bit of work (making that my first priority for Saturday when I eventually get out of bed). A ton of walking. Reading. I’d like to squeeze a movie in, too. I won’t have to do any cooking, since I have so many leftovers in my fridge, but I fed the sourdough starter this evening. I’ll have another go at sourdough bread in the afternoon.

“In these uncertain days…” it can be easy to feel disconnected from the world, which if you want it can be a glorious thing. Believe me, I’ve been there. But if you don’t want it, it can be horribly discouraging. Don’t be discouraged. Reach out and I’ll be happy to spend some connection time with you, in texts or DMs or IMs. “Because we’re all in this together…”

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