I’m actually writing this half an hour past midnight, the earliest I’ve done it in quite a while.
Thursday was a state holiday: King Kamehameha Day. It’s one of those rare holidays we don’t move to the nearest Monday or Friday because of the honoree’s stature. It’s an important day for a lot of people, but it’s never been more than a day off to me (and when I was teaching, it wasn’t even that, since I’d be on summer vacation) — I have little or no connection to Kamehameha, and I’m not really sure I’m down with honoring military leaders this way. They did great things, but they did them violently, this one especially violently.
I was happy for the day off, though, after kind of the rough start to the week I’d been having. I love a mid-week holiday, too: you get two Fridays, and Friday is one of the best days. I prefer it to a three-day weekend, really, and every so often when I need a day off from work, I almost always have it on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. They’re better days for being out and about, for one thing (under normal circumstances), since most people don’t take those days off. But I also like the pressure I feel to get stuff done before the day off, and then when I have my usual Friday, I have the pressure again. Friday is often my most productive days of the week, since I hate dragging stuff into the weekend if I can avoid it.
I woke up earlier than I wanted, like around 8:30, after getting to sleep around 5:30. I lazed about for 90 minutes and then had breakfast: a couple of hot dogs with ketchup, mustard, and sauerkraut. Did the Thursday NYT crossword.
(this next paragraph contains spoilers for the Thursday NYT crossword puzzle; skip to the one after if you care)
Thursday is the day you’re most likely to see something playful or experimental, and this week’s puzzle was that. Two of the across answers actually held two answers each, so 20 Across, five letters, held the answers FRANK and ELVIS, while 22 across held the answers SINATRA and PRESLEY. You were supposed to write them one atop the other, so the answers coming down, crossing these multiple across answers, would use both letters. 1 Down, crossing the F in FRANK and the E in ELVIS, offered five squares for the clue “Blunders.” So despite five squares, the correct fill-in is GAFFES, the second F making FRANK going across and the E making ELVIS. Pretty cool idea. It took me 31 minutes to complete, or 11 minutes longer than my Thursday average.
There’s more to it, but I shan’t bore you with details. If you’re in an area where the local paper runs the NYT crossword, it’ll show up six Thursdays from now, or July 23.
The time seemed right for the anticipated nap, so I went back to bed. I got up at about 1:30, did a few work emails, read the news, listened to podcasts, and mostly goofed around on my phone. There was a lot going on on Twitter.
At five, I settled in to watch the local and national news broadcasts. It’s weird seeing the regular midweek news on a holiday. It may have been a slow day around these parts, but it was a normal day everywhere else.
I snacked on tortilla chips and fresh salsa. I may have had a few more than my usual “snack,” something I don’t feel very good about. Yet if I overindulged, it honestly wasn’t by much. It just felt like it for some reason.
I did a few chores, then laid down on the bed to catch up on some text messages. And woke up hours later. Yikes. Felt a little lousy, but forced myself up to make lunch-dinner. I had a bunch of leftover gyoza filling (ground chicken, green onions, cabbage, ginger, garlic, shiitake mushrooms, shoyu, sake, and sesame oil), so I cooked it in a pot with choy sum and kim chi, and had it on some leftover brown rice.
It was pretty darn delicious. I really wish I’d made some fresh rice for it. I’m now out of leftover rice so I’ll make some Friday to go with tonight’s leftovers. I may indulge and just have white rice.
I listened to the new Michael Franti album as I cooked, and by the time I dug in, I was feeling back to myself again. The combination of feelgood music, good food, and cooking something new was a good fix, although I may not have been in too much need of fixing. Something was a little off; I’m hoping it was a fluke.
I texted Ali in Boston to say happy Kamehameha Day and send her a photo of a blanket that looks like instant Korean ramen. It was pretty funny. She responded and I responded and that was it. She’s alternately loquacious and non-verbose, so it’s about what I expected. Plus she didn’t have a holiday.
Crush Girl texted me to tell me where to get a certain ingredient we’d talked about the night before. One of those ingredients they don’t sell at the Kalihi Times Supermarket, which still doesn’t carry oat milk, and which no longer carries Best Foods ketchup. I may need to start shopping elsewhere. We talked a little about our days, and that was it.
The ducks conversation in the engineering ladies’ group text continues.
My friend Julie, one of the participants in the group text, recently moved to Rhode Island (it’s a military thing), so I sent her the IG profile of this poke spot in Providence I’ve been following. I have no connection to it whatsoever, but the proprietors are a couple of rather fetching Asian and Hawaiian women from California and from Rhode Island, and their IG posts are punny, and they are working their butts off to make this a successful business. It’s nice to observe. Anyway Julie loves poke, so I told her in an IG DM to check it out and let me know how it is. She said she’s totally going to do it.
I’m mainly writing this now instead of in the wee hours because I’m hoping to turn in a little earlier, ‘though not too much earlier. I received season six of Silicon Valley, the final season, on DVD in the mail early this week and I think I’ll watch an episode or two before I turn in. Orange is the New Black season four will have to wait.
I still have that pineapple juice from the canned pineapple the other day. This seems like a good time to find some alcohol to mix it with.
My knee still aches so I didn’t go for a walk. I mean sometimes it aches while I’m lying still. This is nearly getting worrisome.
Yay tomorrow is Friday. I’ll spend the early part of the day working on another proposal for the engineering college, this one quite a bit bigger than the last few. If I can get a draft off before the end of the day, I can finally work on these donor stories that have been sitting idle for more than a month. Yeesh.
If you’re not connecting enough with others, as I’ve been lucky enough to do with my nice friends, I hope you’ll reach out. I think it’s the thing that keeps us from going crazy. Happy Friday.