— पाँच हजार छह सौ उनासी —
I have a cold. It's fairly mild, and fairly standard. I had a couple of days of a slight tickle in my throat, and today I woke up with less of that and a bit more congestion. As I write this, my throat is a bit runny but I feel mostly okay. I've had two nights in a row of not sleeping well, which has really been the part that sucked the most: waking up every couple of hours, often coughing. I'm not really coughing at all so far today, knock-wood.
I still took a covid test yesterday morning just to cover my bases. My one experience with covid was so wildly different from this, which is quite recognizably just a standard cold, I really wasn't worried about it. But, I had Happy Hour with Laney last night, which we already planned to do in outdoor seating at Smith on 15th Avenue E, so I didn't want to take any chances.
Laney only just got over a cold that was so bad, she said it felt just as bad as when she had covid—but, she tested three times during the course of it and it was always negative. We had seen
The Killer's Game together on Tuesday last week, and her cold started right after. The theater had been so empty that, as she often does, she spent a fair amount of time without her mask on, until some people sat just a few seats away from us. I had my mask on the whole time.
Maybe she gave me her cold. Maybe she didn't. I could have gotten mine from anywhere, really. At the Washington State Fair on Friday, Beth offered to share her soft serve ice cream cone with me, which she also shared with Grace. And I accepted, like a complete idiot. Gina even joked about it: "If any of us is sick, we all are now!" I haven't heard about any of them having gotten sick, but maybe they will later because I gave my cold to
them. That literally just occurred to me.
It's too easy to slip into the kinds of casual behaviors we had before covid. A communal ice cream code in a bonker-stupid idea. I won't do that again.
Anyway! Happy Hour last night was lovely. Shobhit did not work yesterday, so he joined us. I rode my bike home from work, went upstairs to put my helmet away and grab a hoodie, and asked Shobhit if he was coming. He got right up. He had been leaning away from joining us at first, but his mind changed right quick when I told him they have a mushroom poutine dish on their Happy Hour menu.
And holy fuck,
was it delicious! Laney and I both ordered that for our food, and Shobhit ate between a quarter and a third of mine. (He kept saying he ate a quarter of it; I bet it was slightly more.) We were both impressed by how it was not a tiny portion and how filling it was. I mean, it likely had a calorie count that would make you faint at the number, but how relevant is that,
really?
They also had well drinks for $7, which is astonishingly cheap, even for Happy Hour. Shobhit had one; I had two; Laney had two beers and one tequila shot, all of which were $7. Our bills came to the same totals. I'd been wanting to do Happy Hour there for months, because they have an outdoor seating area along the sidewalk, but no heaters, so we wanted to do it while the weather was still warm. We got up to 72° yesterday, which was plenty warm for my bike ride home from work. But I wisely grabbed my hoodie for the walk home, because even warm days in the early days of fall have evenings when the temperature drops fairly quickly.
The whole thing was so affordable and satisfying, I kind of wish we'd gotten around to Smith sooner. But, we kept having other ideas that we have higher priority. At least it's finally happened, and we'll likely do Smith again at least once next year.
— पाँच हजार छह सौ उनासी —
— पाँच हजार छह सौ उनासी —
Okay, let's talk about Cher now.
On Friday last week, she released a new career-spanning compilation album, called
Forever. I can't even remember now how I found out about it, except that I learned about it on Saturday and released it immediately.
Cher has always fascinated me with her greatest hits album releases. She's released
11 of those over 56 years. She seems to release a new version after virtually every notable album release: after 1998's
Believe in 1999; after 2002's
Living Proof in 2003. This time, she released two lesser-known compilations in 2005 and in 2011, but her last full-length album of original songs,
Closer to the Truth, was released in 2013; and her album of ABBA covers,
Dancing Queen, was released in 2018. I didn't even know until this last weekend that she released a Christmas album just last year! I downloaded that the same time I downloaded
Forever on Saturday. That will give me some new Christmas music listening this coming holiday season. There's even a track from that on
Forever.
The standard edition of
Forever has 21 tracks. I only just discovered today that there's an extended, 40-track edition too; I downloaded that this morning.
I don't often get too into best-of collections these days, especially when I already have playlists catered to my own tastes dedicated to specific artists. But for some reason, this collection is really hitting for me right now. Even tracks that didn't used to do much for me are hitting—and I mean even besides those from her albums that are by far my favorites (
Believe,
Living Proof,
Dancing Queen,
Heart of Stone). Sometimes you're in just the right frame of mind to receive a collection of art curated in just the right way, I guess.
— पाँच हजार छह सौ उनासी —
[posted 12:29 pm]
