Jessica, Laney's daughter who is about to turn 41, has been living on the Olympic Peninsula for about the past year or so, but is visiting Laney in town this week. Laney's and my monthly Happy Hour would normally be scheduled for this Friday, but Jessica wanted to join us, so Laney asked if we could reschedule for Tuesday. I said that was fine.
I walked directly there from work, and got there about ten minutes early for our planned meeting time at 5:15, at La Cocina Oaxaqueña—same place we had Happy Hour at last month. And, if you count the one time I got takeout from there for one of Laney's and my pandemic-outdoor-socially-distant Happy Hours in the park, this now makes a record
13 Happy Hours at that location. That's actually been a record since it reached 8; the second-most times
we ever had at one place was 7, at Rooster's Bar & Grill on Broadway, which closed a couple of years ago. In fact, last night Laney declared that, in Rooster's absence, La Cocina Oaxaqueña is now her favorite place in Seattle.
I really like it a lot too, but I sure hope we go somewhere new next month. I don't want to run the risk of starting to get sick of one of my favorite places! Also, I really want to get back to what we had planned for 2020 and then the pandemic pushed aside: a tour of rooftop bars with Seattle city views. Because of Laney's continued Covid precautions we'll still have to make sure they are open-air patios. But I do really want to get back to that. Or, maybe I need to learn to live with the limitations of Laney's age and state of health, and stop pinning hopes on her to be able to plan months in advance to go to a place that might prove too challenging in terms of parking and how far she'll have to walk and/or take public transit. Trouble is, I have no other friends as willing to go out for Happy Hour with me. If Evan still lived in Seattle she almost certainly would. Oh well.
Anyway, Jessica apparently had other plans later last night and so Laney had already warned me we would have to leave by 7:00. I said that was fine, and honestly, by the time 7:00 rolled around we were all basically ready to go anyway. We sat outside with the one space heater next to us, but it could only be positioned next to Laney and Jessica, barely warming them because of how high up on the heater tower the heat actually came out, and since I was on the other side of the table from them I couldn't feel anything from it at all. It was actually pretty nice weather yesterday, mostly sunny, but still low fifties in temperature so I was sure glad I had on the jacket I had on. I wasn't cold per se, but was truly only barely away from it. I would have gotten much colder had we lingered as the evening went on.
Barbara had sent me home from Louisville with a card for Laney, which I totally spaced giving her on Sunday, but I thought to bring it with me yesterday. It was a fun card featuring cows, which Laney loves, so it made her think of Laney. Laney was pretty delighted by it, and before the evening was over she had texted Barbara to thank her.
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Laney and I got our standard Happy Hour meal at La Cocina Oaxaqueña: "Quesadillas Fritas." I had told Jessica they were highly recommended, but she got tacos instead, and then when our dishes came she was jealous of our dishes. "I didn't believe you!" she half-joked. Next time, then! Jessica and I both had two of the House Margaritas from the Happy Hour menu; Laney, who really shies away from cocktails anymore, had two beers. It did make for a really fun photo, though, as you can see at the top of this post. That angle was Laney's idea, something that never would have occurred to me. I'm always trying to think of something novel for our monthly Happy Hour photo, and that certainly qualified. I set my phone on the ground, turned on the self-timer, zoomed just a little, and used the front-facing camera to make it a lot easier to see how we were positioned. The tables in the outside seating area are all grated metal, so that's what you're looking at us through.
I wanted to keep the other photos in this post on-theme, so they are still related to Happy Hours, either directly or indirectly. The above photo of hanging chains was from a place called Zocalo in Pioneer Square, where we went for Happy Hour in April 2019—oh hey, April 5, in fact! That was three years prior, to the day. I had no idea.
The photo below is not from a Happy Hour with Laney, but I suppose it's thematically close enough to our margaritas. It's from a place called Hermosa, a Mexican Restaurant where Shobhit and I had dinner in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island—on April 20, 2019.
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Jessica offered me a ride home, and in the chill of the evening, I accepted. She wound up stopping at a 7-Eleven on 15th along the way. By the time I got home, I probably saved less than five minutes compared to if I had walked. But! I was much warmer in the car. I filled much of the rest of my evening at home by watching the latest standup special by a comedian I never heard of until he hosted
Saturday Night Live last weekend, Jerrod Charmichael. He comes out in this special, called
Rothaniel, which was very funny in parts but poignant the whole way through—I've never seen a standup special in which the performer was so vulnerable the entire time. I really can't recommend it enough.
I don't even watch
Saturday Night Live, and I haven't in years and years. Only occasionally do I watch a sketch online every blue moon, if it's viral enough. But Laney suggested watching a couple of them on YouTube while she was over on Sunday, particularly one called "Seat Fillers," related to the Will Smith slapping incident at the Oscars the previous Sunday. We also watched the
Weekend Update segment. She said I should watch the monologue, and I did that later—only then learning who Jerrod Charmichael is, and even that he had been in that "Seat Fillers" sketch. He mentions coming out in his new standup special, in the monologue, so I put it on my list, and texted Laney that I had done so. She actually watched the special before I did, and said it was really good when we talked about it last night. Thus, I watched it when I got home, and it was great. I even had to text Gabriel that it was highly recommended, and he said he already had it on his list.
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Oops! I am posting way later than usual today because Mary in IT had a lunch in our conference room
celebrating her 20 years at PCC, and she had come by my desk to invite me to join them. Free tacos! I was happy to, and it also included her choice of dessert which was something I had never heard of: "
mochinuts," a cross between mochi and doughnuts. They are very soft and chewy and tasty.
There was a lot of reminiscing about people in IT over the past 20 years, including the story about the sledgehammer which you can read at the link in the above paragraph.
Anyway, I then had a meeting Justine had invited me to join on Microsoft Teams at 1:00, so when I got back to my desk I had to go right into that. I have yet another fucking meeting at 3:00. But for now I'll finally post this and then got on with some actual work.
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[posted 2:05 pm]
