Boy did I get to sleep late Friday night. I think it was creeping up on four in the morning. Which of course meant Saturday I got out of bed at about nine. Forced myself up, really, to run some quick errands, knowing I could get a nice long nap later.
Stuck a DVD in the mail for Netflix. Stopped at Palama Market to get kimchi, but ugh. I did not like their selection, which was pretty much limited to their house brand, which has far too many ingredients, including stuff I suspect is a preservative. Kimchi with preservatives just goes against my concept of and appreciation for kimchi, expecially when there are house brands elsewhere in town with just a few ingredients and no preservatives.
I was on that end of Kalihi for a reason. This was the day I was finally going to get tofu right from the Aloha Tofu factory, which is also in Kalihi, very near where King Street intersects Dillingham Boulevard. I read an article about it about six months into the lockdown, and it’s supposedly fresher and less expensive there. It was a piece of cake: I just parked my car in front of the lot, walked to this walk-up counter on the side of the building, and ordered two cartons of soft tofu and one of firm tofu. Aaaaand since there was nobody in line after me, I asked a few tofu questions of the guy who served me, which I’ll share later.
Then it was off to Young’s for my every-other-Saturday Hawaiian food, and then to H-Mart for their house kimchi, which is still not my favorite but at least the ingredients are sensible, and there are no preservatives.
Brought it all home and pigged out on Hawaiian food until nature tooks its usual course and I crashed for several blissful hours.
I got up in the late afternoon and worked a couple of chores, including doing the bleach rinse on my water jugs. It’s not hard work but it’s tedious and it takes longer than it should. I had a podcast in my ears as I labored, which helped a lot, and then it was done, and I drove to Mapunapuna to fill everything.
Driving to Mapunapuna, which is maybe between three and four miles from home, when I could drive just down the street or over one neighborhood to do the same thing seems really silly, especially now that I’m mostly over that burger spot. I may have to reevaluate this silly exercise. Now that I’m doing laundry right in my hood, it seems silly to erase the one good benefit by going a lot farther to do a different thing.
If I’m going down there anyway, like to pick up prescriptions or get some blood drawn, that’s a different story. But Saturday night I just drove down there for water.
I hit the McD’s drive-through on my way home, mostly because I wasn’t really ready to go home yet, and once I got the thought of spicy McNuggets in my brain, I had to have them in my mouth and then in my belly.
And then, for absolutely no reason at all, I stayed up until past four-thirty in the morning. I wasn’t even doing anything. Just not going to bed, even though I could easily have fallen asleep hours earlier. I think I just enjoyed being up during those hours. My heart longs to be a vampire again.
I’m a hopeless night owl.
There was some fun happy new year talk in the Suzanne-Cindy group text (no Julie because we were talking about local places to get Chinese New Year food). Jennifer commented on the Ronnie Chieng video I sent and I responded. That was it for texts.
I wasn’t much in the mood for music most of the day, so I caught up on a few podcasts and even revisited a few older ones I’ve kept in my phone. Reply All is doing this outstanding short series about race issues at Bon Appetit, especially in the test kitchen. Fascinating and honestly, I’m so privileged because a lot of the time, I hear the situation and I don’t hear the established racism. My response is to dismiss it and say, “Not everything is racism!” But I’m trying to rethink a lot of things. If many people say something is racist, perhaps I need to get myself out of my shoes and see it a different way.
I still don’t usually agree, but I’m listening. And the podcasts (two episodes so far; I don’t know how long it’s supposed to go) have been very well done.
I listen to two podcasts twice before I take them off my phone: The Tony Kornheiser Show, because I often miss jokes, and also because I just enjoy the show when it’s normal. It hasn’t been normal because Kornheiser is 71 so he’s not doing the show with his usual cast of cohosts until everyone’s got shots in their arms. Also Reply All, which is just so brilliant and funny I listen twice to make sure I learn stuff I’m supposed to learn.
It’s late Sunday night as I write this and I’m not staying up until four tonight, so beat it. But leave a comment if you need someone to connect with. This offer won’t be around forever, so get in while the getting’s good.
🙂