wine and whiskey
I felt a little like the fool last night when I asked the host of our condo complex's "wine and whiskey" if this was the first one of these events held -- apparently there have been several. This is just the first Shobhit and I bothered to go to. There have also been many barbecues on the west building's rooftop deck, and those I do remember seeing stuff about, but just never went. Perhaps we should.
For all I know, they may have posted flyers about previous events in the elevators before too, and I just never paid attention to them -- I do feel like the little plastic slot for sheets of paper in elevators is a relatively new thing, though. It's how I was reminded of the Annual Meeting on a much more regular basis than just relying on emails being sent out; and it's how I know about the biweekly Action Movie Nights (to which Shobhit and I have only gone once, sometime last year), and was kept reminded of this "Wine and Whiskey" night.
It was held in the Community Kitchen between 7:00 and 9:00, and Shobhit and I went down at around 7:15. I thought we might be the first besides the hosts to show up, but there was already a couple of other people there in addition to them. Tony is a guy who just resigned from the Board and had been heavily involved in the Social Committee, but the Social Committee person highly involved in these get togethers (so far as I can tell, this "committee" consists of just these two people) is apparently this young woman from the sixth floor of our (east) building named Jess. She was more than prepared with the vegetable tray, cheese and crackers, popcorn, wine, beer, and whiskey bottles. This was all set out on the island counter where the stove is, plates not too huge with the set-out food, but replenished when it got low.
Tony, as it happens, is our direct next-door neighbor on the fourth floor of the east building, where he lives with a woman named Sarah; both of them were there too, and already there when Shobhit and I arrived. There was a steady trickle of people coming in over the next hour or so, and I had a little bit of red wine. And probably few too many Triscuits and Wheat Thins with cheese. I also had a few baby carrots with hummus, so I had something slightly healthy!
Anyway, after a while it was starting to feel like we were ready to bow out, but then this guy named Ermel who apparently lives in a unit right around the corner from that kitchen on the ground floor of the west building came in, and I wound up in a pretty involved conversation with him about his profession as a "food scientist." It took some time but I finally figured out the work he does involves coming up with the right formula for things like pancake mixes or getting ingredients right for vegan or gluten free products so they make suitable replacements. I also learned he is around forty years old, born in the Philippines, moved to Chicago at the age of ten, and only moved into the Braeburn last October -- which, as it happens, was the tenth anniversary of Shobhit and me moving into our condo. We were, in fact, the longest-running residents in attendance. Hmm, maybe next time we can find other old-timers with whom we can commiserate about Phil, the asshole building manager who was there when we moved in. Alan's been around a few years now and we all like him a lot.
Looking Ermel up on the directory, it looks like he's a renter -- someone else is listed as the owner. This was how only today I discovered Tommy was still listed as our co-resident renter. Jesus, he moved out in November 2016! Ivan has returned and moved out yet again in the time that has elapsed since then. I just deleted his contact from the page.
Anyway, the conversation with Ermel petered out naturally after a while, and Shobhit and I were on our way. It was a pretty pleasant visit and I'm glad we went. Shobhit asked when we got back to the condo, "Was I too obnoxious?" He asks this semi-regularly and I find it equally sweet and sad. He was fine, really. The unfortunate part is that he doesn't know for sure, which is how, when he is obnoxious, he doesn't realize it. He did get close to bringing up his theory of how the only hope the planet has is for large swaths of humanity to be wiped out, which is rarely very productive conversation and usually just bums people out -- Gina had to shoot it down last Thanksgiving, and I was poised and ready to do the same last night. But, the conversation naturally turned away from that direction very quickly, and in the end my intervention was unnecessary.
Shobhit worked until 5:00 yesterday, so he got home a little bit after I did, after walking home from work. I was nearly finished topping the pizza we had for dinner when he got home, and then it was baked for 25 minutes. We ate while watching old Roseanne episodes -- he wanted to skip Wild Wild Country for the day because he didn't want to see something that might bum him out before going down to the Wine and Whiskey event at 7:00.
When we got back afterward, instead of pressing to watch Wild Wild Country, I went to the iPad in the bedroom to continue with part 2 of HBO's The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling. I was rather surprised to find this one quite long; as opposed to Part 1, which was about an hour and 44 minutes, this one was two hours and 24 minutes. I got through less than half of it before I found myself really tired again; I fell asleep. I'll have to finish it tonight or tomorrow.
I weighed in at 151.3 lbs this morning, and when I told Shobhit about all the snacking on junk I did at work yesterday -- not to mention the snacks at last night's event -- he started laying into me about eating too much, which was pretty rich, coming from him. He still weighs over 36 lbs more than I do. I responded a little forcefully: "Shobhit," I said. "You can lecture me when you lose forty pounds." He was immediately just kind of like, "I know."
I've done pretty well today, though. I only ate a quarter (two slices) of that pizza for dinner last night, and have brought the other two for lunch today. I did have one mini peanut butter cup with a few little banana peanut butter crackers (an inspired combination) when I got to work, but have had no sweets otherwise. I actually ate an apple this morning. A broker coming in for a meeting with Scott and Noah, however, left me a gift bag with a large chocolate bunny in it. What perfect timing. It's in my desk drawer, but I haven't opened it.
[posted 1:12, because I went back to work at 12:30 and forgot I needed to post this! until 1:12]