— पाँच हजार सात सौ इकतालीस —
Not much to report on last night. I was deliberate about not planning anything after work yesterday, since Shobhit returned from India the day before. I had suggested he come meet me at work and walk home with me, which would have given him some steps and also given him a Social Review point. But, then he texted me that he was getting sleepy and asking if it was okay if I just walked home on my own. Which was fine.
So, I walked home, and Shobhit was so zonked out on the couch that he didn't wake up while I chopped onions, celery, and bell pepper for the food I knew Shobhit planned on cooking. He already had garbanzo beans soaking in water. I also left the condo to take food scraps down to compost and came back. None of this woke Shobhit up.
I just sat in the living room and read my library book (
The Wild Robot) in the quiet, as Shobhit snoozed peacefully. When he woke up he called out to me as though he assumed I was back in the bedroom, and when I answered he was started to find that I was on the love seat in front of the bay windows, behind his head.
So then he got up and set about cooking dinner: the garbanzo bean dish, and a separate dish that was effectively a stir-fry, with onions, bell pepper, celery and mushrooms. (I chopped some tiny mushrooms after he woke up.) He put some celery and onion in the garbanzo beans he now cooked in the pressure cooker. When it was all done, I was kind of amazed by how delicious the stir-fry was, to which I added leftover rice that I had made last week, along with a dash of peanut sauce.
He reheated some tiny little parathas his mom had made and sent him home with. There was a pack of 5; Shobhit had 3 and I had 2, to have with small portions of both the stir fry and the garbanzo bean dish. We sat to eat and watched the most recent two episodes of
Abbott Elementary on Hulu, those being the only ones that aired while he was in India.
— पाँच हजार सात सौ इकतालीस —
— पाँच हजार सात सौ इकतालीस —
Aside from that, I've been very busy and unable to get much work done all morning today, mostly because I had a two-hour dentist appointment at 8 a.m., followed immediately by ninety minutes of meetings starting at 10:30, just minutes after I got into the office.
Fresh Smile, the dentist I had been going to ever since losing my very old retainer forced a change in 2020, has switched out of network, so I had to change dentists again. Shobhit had already suggested I switch to his dentist in the past, mostly because of how often my dentists recommended expensive procedures, but I am too brand loyal for my own good sometimes. This turn of events forced yet another change, though, and I've never been so excited by a dentist location—because they are
on the 19th floor (the top floor) of the Cabrini Medical Center that stands on Boren just off of Madison.
The views up there are spectacular—certainly by typical dentist office standards, anyway. 19 floors isn't a
huge height (this building is
255 feet tall), but it's tall enough, and stands atop First Hill, putting its top floor well above the 19th floors, and in many cases even roofs, of other buildings in the skyline as seen from there.
I took 25 photos this morning. Most were from windows on the 19th floor; a few were of the exterior of the building, and a couple of the
Westbank Frye towers, which fascinatingly lean slightly away from each other and have a connecting skybridge near their tops, which stand a couple of blocks away. I got one great shot of that complext from the very room where my dentist chair was.
Anyway, I quite liked Dr. McKay, the new dentist himself. He was very personable, had an easy and comfortable bedside manner, and most notably—this being why I can see why Shobhit likes this dentist so much—far less quick to suggest expensive procedures than my previous denstist. Now, that was mitigated a bit by the suggestion that I get an "occlusal guard" meant to protect from teeth clenching that he said I likely do more than I seem to think I do. Trouble is, it costs $478 and insurance doesn't cover it unless I have periodontal disease, so I'm a little less inclined. Plus, I just looked up images online and a lot of the photos look very much like the mouth guards I already have, although I did tell him about those and he showed me an example of this much tinier thing. Either way it's something I'd have to go back in and get fitted for. I did up my FSA contribution this year by $500 to $1,500, though, for procedures my last dentist seemed to think I would need to get soon but Dr. McKay is taking more of a "monitoring" approach.
Now that I've thrilled you with all this information I'll post this and get some actual work done today.
— पाँच हजार सात सौ इकतालीस —
[posted 12:38pm]
