Here's a very unusual photo that I also really like: Karen's kitchen island! It took a couple attempts with my phone's camera timer to get a shot this good, the second attempt being with my phone propped against a vase on a high shelf among those on a high stand of padded shelves for Karen's cat, the location being Karen's suggestion.

It's actually the first of two kitchen islands I plan to include in my "islands" theme for my Birth Week this year. I think Karen was slightly bummed when she said this will be the smallest island I visit this week, and I had to tell her there's another one that will be smaller. This one's plenty small, though! I literally measured it, so I know it has a surface area of roughly 35 square feet. I have a feeling that may be on the larger side for your average kitchen island, but then, what do I know? I'm not an architect.

Karen is, though! I told her I had brought measuring tape to measure the kitchen island, and she was like, "You don't think I have measuring tape? I'm an architect!" Oh, right. I should have thought of that.

I drove Shobhit to work this morning, so I could then drive to Karen's in Magnolia for lunch, and then drive to Total Wine to pick Shobhit up when he got off work today at 1:00—it's actually quite close to Magnolia, so an easy drive from there. This did mean, though, that I had to be up rather early so I could get Shobhit to work by 8:30. I had set my alarm for 6:15—an hour later than I usually get up on work days—but I woke up around 5:15 and lay in bed for maybe half an hour before I just gave up on sleep and got out of bed.

My right arm really hurt this morning. Sometime last week, I pulled a muscle or pinched a nerve or something, creating an aching that runs from my shoulder down to my forearm, and how bad it hurts really depends on both the position of my arm and the position of my body. I thought I had solved the mystery of the number of times this has happened in the past by blaming it on cycling home from work with too much heavy stuff in my shoulder bag. I got this backpack from Alexia and thus got the weight more heavily distributed on my back, and it never happened again—until last week. There was no shoulder bag culprit this time, so I have no idea what did it: cycling with the heavy bag, or sleeping on my side wrong somehow, or doing push-ups or blanks wrong. It has to be one of these things now, with the mystery now fully revived, which is very annoying.

This is also an unusually bad case, exacerbated by all the driving I've had to do, which really makes the pain in my arm worse: both the sitting position in the driver's seat and the position of my arm holding the steering wheel. It felt like I was on the other side and starting to get on the mend by yesterday—and I have conscientiously done none of my usually-scheduled every-other-day pushups and planks since the aching started—but then I did the bike ride with Dad yesterday. Waking up with my arm worse this morning, I suspect the bike ride made it worse again. It was bad enough that I took a couple of Aleve this morning, the first time I can remember ever taking it for any pain besides a headache, and it made no difference whatsoever.

Luckily, as I write this evening, the aching is still there, but far less pronounced. Shobhit and I are driving to Lopez Island tomorrow, and I'm just glad I finally won't have to be the one driving. After getting home from dropping Shobhit off at work this morning, I actually got back into bed. Lying down, somehow, seems to be the best thing to make my arm feel better. I even snoozed a little.

Then, I made a sandwich, and I made chai to bring for Karen and me to share at lunch at her place. I also brought Good Day cashew cookies, which Karen had never had but agreed were delicious dipped in chai. I think I've even about six of them today.

She also had little pastry squares from Trader Joe's, complete with a single candle for my Birth Week. There were six and I ate three of them: two of the lemon and one of the chocolate cheesecake. I brought the other three home. Karen insisted I didn't want to hear her sing, so after I lit the candle because she was having difficulty to get the gas lighter to work, she did a sort of spoken word version of "Happy Birthday" for me, which kind of cracked me up.

Karen had a work call at 1:00, so I had to be in and out of her house in a solid hour for lunch. Still during that time I got nine photos, which effectively padded out my "Karen's Kitchen Island 2024" photo album—further padded by a couple of photos Shobhit took from the roof of a building he delivered liquor to, and a couple shots of a birthday card I got in the mail today.

On the way home from Shobhit's work, where he was a little late getting out, we talked about what my plans were for the rest of the day: Laney and I were going to a movie. When I discovered that a) I had a $5 reward in my AMC A-List membership and b) my AMC membership had also given me "birthday gifts" of both a free large popcorn and a large soft drink, he decided to join us.

So, with only 10 minutes to get in and out of the condo when we got home, Shobhit and I walked to Laney's building to meet her there at 2:00, and then we all walked down to AMC Pacific Place to see Challengers, which I think Shobhit just liked okay (he kept checking the time on his phone, which was annoying) but Laney and I both really annoyed.

It had been nice and sunny on the walk downtown, then drizzly to outright rainy on the walk back. Laney had decided she wanted to walk, and with the #11 bus thirteen minutes away, Shobhit and I agreed we might as well walk too. Once we got to her building, we went to the Indian joint across the street to get some naan to have with the lentil dish he made for dinner tonight. I went to write my review while he prepared it.

I was supposed to spend the evening with Shauna tonight after she got off work, but she had to cancel because she said she was going to have to work late. I was especially bummed by this because it's the first Birth Week ever—after eighteen years in a row—that she won't be participating in. I couldn't schedule her any later because tomorrow is my actual birthday and that's always reserved for Shobhit, and Shauna is having eye surgery on Wednesday, unlikely to be recovered enough to get together by the end of the week. I'm hoping we can still do a sort of makeup get-together soon, which I can still include in my Birth Week 2024 collection of photo albums on Flickr; I've done that kind of thing with several people (including Laney) in the past.

That said, Shauna's cancellation otherwise worked out well for me, as I had been thinking I wasn't going to have time to write the movie review, or this very Birth Week post, tonight, and was thinking about bringing my laptop tomorrow to write drafts while riding in the car. Now I don't have to worry about any of that, thanks to his being what will likely be the lowest-key day of my Birth Week this year, the only "Birth Week activity" being the lunch at Karen's kitchen island. But it still counts!

[posted 8:17 pm]